Has Counter-Apologetics Peaked? By Robert Conner

Everyone old enough to remember that day knows where they were

and what they were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001, the day of madness that marked the true beginning of the 21st century. As the world watched in a mixture of horror and incomprehension, nineteen Islamist terrorists flew planes into American landmarks. United Airlines flight 93, reportedly intended to hit the U.S. Capitol building, crashed instead in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers wrested control of the plane from the hijackers.

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Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation?

[Written by John W. Loftus] I don't believe what I wrote below for a minute, being the atheist that I am. But the two articles below got me fired from teaching philosophy at Great Lakes Christian College, Lansing MI. Those of you who read my book might be interested. See what you think.

Is Baptism Necessary For Salvation? [From: Integrity July/August 1995 issue]. 

When someone asks me what they should do to be saved, I usually say they can do nothing. Salvation is free in Christ Jesus, I continue. God in Christ has provided the sacrifice that alone offers us salvation. What God has done we could not do. Our responsibility is to lovingly respond to God’s personal gift in Christ. We do this by a faith that compels us to repent, confess, and be immersed in baptism. 

Nothing of what follows is meant to undercut this basic message. I am not of the opinion that we should change the message we have been commissioned to preach. If the message includes baptism, then we should teach and preach it, even if we don’t quite understand why. 

But we who wish to preach this message of salvation are presented with a particularly unique problem. The problem is that such a message is not widely shared among those who claim to be Christians. This fact must be recognized and dealt with honestly. Are we the only Christians, or are we Christians only? 

The Development of Legalism –  

When the Restoration Movement began in the 1830’s, many different churches united into one body of believers. The people of these various churches claimed no other name but Christ’s, no other book but the Bible, no other creed but Christ. Our movement brought Christians together under the Lordship of Christ even though many of them didn’t agree about everything important. And herein lies some irony. In our zeal to restore a biblical view of baptism in the salvific process, somewhere along the line we developed a legalistic view of baptism, demanding its necessity before someone can be saved. Hence, rather than uniting all believers in Christ as we did in the past, we now exclude them from our fellowship because of their views on baptism. A movement that began to unite people under Christ now separates them. 

The legalistic view of baptism in its extreme form maintains that unless someone is baptized that person will be in hell throughout all eternity; an unbaptized person is a lost person regardless of his or her faith in Christ, and should not expect to have eternal salvation. A Christian who holds this extreme view of baptism probably could not worship with an unbaptized person, and would certainly not want to be a part of a worship experience where an unbaptized person is the worship leader or preacher. “What fellowship has a believer with an unbeliever?” they might ask. (II Corinthians 6:15). 

Have We Forgotten Unity? –  

In the interest of helping us regain our role in uniting people who seek to follow Christ, let me ask some questions and offer some criticisms of the legalistic view of baptism. In doing this I know there will be Christians who will respond quite negatively. A sacred cow is, after all, something which does not come down easily. But it’s one that must tumble if we want to be honest with God’s word and his interests in the world. 

Some of my questions will be based upon reason as well as Scripture. There is little that should alarm a Christian at such an admission. God created us with the desire for intellectual coherence of all that we believe by faith. It is through our reasoning abilities that we try to make sense of the data of Scripture and our lives into a coherent whole. To deny reason is to deny our faith because ours is a reasonable faith. Of course, reason should not be the judge of Scripture, nor should it be used to deny a clear teaching of Scripture. Faith and reason compliment one another, and they shouldn’t come into conflict because we serve a reasonable God. 

Having said all of this, I offer the following ten clusters of questions: 

Ten Clusters of Questions – 

1) Why is it the N.T. never states that anyone who has not been baptized will go to hell? Can we honestly conceive of a loving God who would condemn a person to hell who deeply loved him—except that the person failed to be baptized? It isn’t hard to see why many people view us as misguided, legalistic, and cold-hearted. If such a God existed, they would say, he would not be good. 

Besides, there is a huge difference between an affirmative statement and a negative one. If I gave someone detailed directions on how to get to my house, I would be telling them the best way to get here. What I would not be telling them is how they can’t get here. Telling people how to get here is an entirely different question than telling them how they can’t get here. There may be several ways to my house. By the same token, by telling us to be baptized God is revealing to us the best way to accept salvation. What he’s not doing is revealing that there is no other way to be saved except by being baptized. 

2) Baptism pools (called mikvehs) were abundant throughout Israel in John the Baptist’s and in Jesus’ day. These pools pre-date the preaching of John the Baptist, who baptized Jews in preparation for Jesus’ coming. They were used in a ceremonial rite of cleansing in preparation for worship. To these people baptism symbolized purity. Any visitor to Israel today can still see the ruins of these pools at Masada, Qumran, Capernaum, Korazin, and Jerusalem. Is it too hard to suppose such washings were brought into Christianity as a cultural symbol, yet divine requirement, of full commitment? There doesn't seem to be anything transcultural about the act of baptism itself. People from other cultures would not automatically recognize the act of baptism as indicating purity or suggesting full commitment. Perhaps baptism was a divine requirement to a people who understood its meaning. If so, then what would God think of believers in today’s culture who failed to be baptized because baptism was not viewed in the same way? 

3) Isn’t it true that throughout the gospels we see a Jesus who is much more interested in the heart attitudes than any outward act? While some acts were important (Matthew 23:23), it was the heart that mattered the most to him (Matthew 5-7; 12:33-34). Outward acts of righteousness merely show the inner disposition of the heart. 

4) Paul opposed anything that could be considered a sacred cow in deference to the worship of God himself. The apostle Paul is on record as opposing the rite of circumcision because some Jewish Christians used it to exclude uncircumcised believers from their fellowship. Paul argues against this view in the book of Galatians. Likewise, when the Corinthian believers took undue pride in the person who baptized them, Paul minimized baptism. He wrote: “I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized into my name.” He also stated that “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach (I Corinthians 1:14-17). Could Paul really say this if baptism was the exact point of salvation? Even though many Corinthians boasted of who they were baptized by, Paul nowhere commanded them to be rebaptized. He calls them “brothers” (I Corinthians 1:10), indicating Paul thought their baptisms were legitimate ones. If Paul thought they were saved at the point of baptism, shouldn’t he rejoice in their baptism, regardless of the mixed motives at work? Paul’s response here stands in contrast to his view of those who preached from mixed motives. There he rejoices that the job is getting done regardless of their motives (Philippians 1:15-18). 

5) Paul taught baptism as a response to God’s grace (Galatians 3:27; Romans 6). But we must ask what Paul might say if he met the legalists among us who border on stressing baptism to the exclusion of grace through faith? His message stressed grace through faith, and surely he would reject anything that would supplant it or disgrace it. When I have asked students in many of our Sunday Schools what they must do to be saved, most often the answer I hear from them is this: “Be baptized.” This is a gross misunderstanding of Paul’s message. It leads me to wonder how much Paul would downplay baptism in order to stress Christ. What would Paul say if he saw baptism profaned like the Jews profaned circumcision? Would Paul once again stress “a circumcision of the heart” (Romans 2:29) over the rite itself? 

6) Is God narrow-minded enough to condemn people for minor offenses of ignorance if they earnestly seek him? To answer in the affirmative is to misunderstand the holiness of God whereby holiness is equated with legalistic righteousness, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Whom do you think is more valuable to God, someone who loves him, prays daily, studies his word, tells others about Christ, or someone who is baptized and just attends church once a month? I find it extremely difficult to think that God, in all of his intelligence, cannot see life in terms of a series of trade-offs, like most of us do all of the time. When our kids offer sincere commitment to help us around the house, should we condemn them when they forget to do something we consider important? Or should we look past what they neglected to do and note their desire to please us? I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where sincerity in devotion to God is outright condemned in nonessential matters. In the case of Christian baptism, aren’t our faith and our love the essential things about the act? 

7) Should the experience of all unbaptized people who claim to be Christians be discounted in total? We use universal experience to argue for the existence of God. Most scholars will also admit that we simply cannot interpret the Bible in a vacuum—that personal experience helps to interpret the Bible—and that anyone who says they discount all experience when coming to the Bible is merely naïve. Many unbaptized people who claim Christ as Lord and Savior have received manifestations of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). They testify to answered prayer, they are zealously evangelistic, and have an inner strength they claim could only come from the Holy Spirit of God. I myself experienced this three months before I was baptized. 

8) There are many commands in the Bible that we fail to obey on a daily basis, called sins of omission. Why is it that omitting to be baptized is so grievous a sin when compared to the person who fails to evangelize, or who doesn’t care for orphans and widows (James 1:27), or fails to visit those in prison or feed the poor (Matthew 25:34-40)? The legalistic view of baptism makes an unbaptized person one who has committed the unpardonable sin. Is this a just God? Is this a merciful God? Is this a proper view of God’s holiness? 

9) God is God. He is not in a box of our making. The Pharisees misunderstood God, although they did their exegesis. Can we be humble enough to admit that the legalistic view may be wrong? There are many people in other Christian churches who read their Bibles and cannot see it any other way than what their particular denomination teaches. Some of these people are poor, unintelligent, illiterate, downtrodden, and abused. How will God judge these people because they could not see the error of their church leaders, whom they respected and trusted? While in ministry Jesus showed a special love for these very people (Luke 4:18-19). Would God reject them because they could not see the truth on this issue? 

10) Then there is a very practical problem. I baptized both my son and daughter when they were each ten years old. Most all of us will say that my children, at the earliest stages of their lives, were not yet accountable and so were safe in God’s hands. But what if my wife and I misjudged their faith and baptized them before they were fully accountable? If this is the case then, like infant baptism, is their baptism null and void? And what if they are never rebaptized, thinking they had already fulfilled their duty to God? Are they now lost? But what if we put our children’s baptism off because we wanted to make sure they knew what they were doing? Would we be placing them in danger of eternal condemnation because they may indeed be accountable to God but not yet baptized? What if they died while we waited an extra year or so? To deny them salvation would place an undue burden upon parents who would be required to decide the exact day each child was ready to be baptized. If baptism is the exact moment of salvation, then we dare not baptize our children one day early or one day late. 

Conclusions – The result of all of this is that there are cases in which baptism is not necessary for salvation in a legalistic fashion. Surely God is not Pharisee-like in his holiness, but instead desires a loving interpersonal relationship with his creatures. Yes, he has commanded baptism as a part of the soteriological process, but only as a loving Father and not a legalistic potentate. He is a personal God who responds to us in personal ways. 

 

Is Baptism Necessary--One More Time [From Integrity, Jan/Feb 1996]. 

I’ve received several negative responses to my previous article titled: “Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation.” Some thought I was offering a promise of salvation to those who refuse to be baptized. But this simply missed what I was saying. I stated quite clearly that the message of salvation includes baptism, and this is what we tell those who desire to be saved. I dealt strictly with the issue of the unbaptized believer and how God would respond to such a person on judgment day. As far as I can tell there are any number of positions to take on baptism. Here are four positions on baptism: 

Position one: They preach baptism for salvation and also believe those who aren’t baptized are lost. 

Position two: They preach baptism for salvation, but they don’t claim to know the fate of the unbaptized. 

Position Three: They preach baptism in order to “identify with Christ,” but those who aren’t baptized can still be saved. 

Position Four: Baptism is not included in their preaching, because it is just a cultural symbol of salvation. Baptism just isn’t that important. 

 While there are other positions on baptism, my position is closest to number three above. In my previous article I was arguing against position number one above, and while I at least understand view number two, I will argue against that view shortly. I do not hold to position number four. 

A "Cluster" of Responses --

My articulation of the third position comes from Virgil Warren’s writings. He speaks of “a cluster” of responses to God’s offer of salvation in Christ, which in turn restores our relationship to God and allows us to receive the gifts that come with that restored relationship. Taken together these responses identify us with Christ on an interpersonal level. He writes: “Repentance, faith, and baptism are not three things, but aspects of one whole response: repentant faith expressed in baptism. The total response identifies a person with Jesus Christ. Identity with Christ is the basic condition for the natural set of gifts that form one whole consequence: restored relationship.” 

“There is one issue--interpersonal relationship, one condition--personal identity with Christ, and one consequence--reconciliation between persons. [Virgil Warren, “The Interpersonal Nature of Christian Baptism,” Christian Standard, Jan. 7 & 14, 1990]. 

Because we have adopted a legal--versus interpersonal--system for understanding baptism, Warren charges that “Christian baptism gets transformed into something akin to a business transaction with the feel of (a) automatic and (b) uniform results.” Hence, “a repentant believer committed to Jesus Christ might die without baptism through some misunderstanding or insuperable circumstance. His situation gets interpreted as being like the case where someone has not filled out properly all the right documents for a passport, or like a case where someone becomes a traffic fatality on the way to signing for a sizable life insurance policy.” By contrast, in an interpersonal system, Warren writes, “formal matters like baptism can even be overlooked entirely for legitimate practical reasons. Paul observed this principle when he says of circumcision in its spiritual dimension: ‘If then the uncircumcised keeps the ordinances of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?’” (Romans 2:26).[Virgil Warren, “A Position Statement on the Meaning of Christian Baptism.” As far as I can tell this paper is unpublished, but similar statements can be found in his “Concepts and Practices Foreign to Christian Baptism” Christian Standard, July 22 & 29, 1990]. 

Warren continues by claiming that: "We are not dealing with a God who is trying to see how many people he can send to hell; so we do not expect condemnation on a technicality or condemnation because the ‘paperwork’ did not get done in time.” “What is really necessary is identification in Christ, and God has commanded baptism as the formal way of doing that.” But “the identity with Christ, not the act that identifies us with Christ, is what provides the basis for salvation.” [Virgil Warren “A Position Statement...” See also his “Understanding Christian Ordinances,” a paper delivered at the Open Forum in Indianapolis March 15, 1989, and his book: What the Bible Says About Baptism (College Press, 1982), pp. 194-409].

In another context (including but not limited to baptism), Warren speaks about honest misunderstanding in formal matters, and he argues that such misunderstanding “should not be categorized with intentional disobedience in interpersonal matters. In respect to honest misunderstanding we take it that God looks on the heart and knows people’s intentions.” And while sincerity does not save us, “hopefully it does make us forgivable. Misaction based on honest misunderstanding is still misaction, but something can be erroneous without being reckoned against us. Errors are not reckoned till knowledge comes (Romans 7:9, 10; cp. 3:25; 4:15; 5:13; Acts 17:30-31) at which time the repentance-forgiveness process comes into play.” [Virgil Warren “Central to Less Central: An Interpersonal Format for Prioritizing Issues in Christian Unity” Christian Standard. September 4, 1988]. 

When Baptism Becomes Legalistic --

I turn now to the major objection some have with my claim that “baptism is not necessary for salvation in a legalistic fashion.” This objection is phrased something like this: 

1) “God commanded baptism in order to receive salvation, so you do not have the authority to change his command.” 

2) “Moreover, what God says cannot be changed because God is unchanging and His word is eternally true.” 

In regard to the first objection: By admitting that people can be saved without being baptized it is true that I am commenting on something God didn’t comment on, speaking where he didn’t speak, making a claim that he didn’t make. I admit this. Yet I think we do this all of the time. Anytime we deal with an issue that God didn’t deal with we are doing this. For instance, there are a great many ethical issues that the Bible doesn’t strictly speak to. Where in the Bible is a direct discussion of the morality of nuclear war, socialism, contraception, euthanasia, gambling, genetic engineering, surrogate mothering, suicide, civil lawsuits in a democracy, and so on? There are a host of ethical issues, apologetical issues, and theological issues where the Bible simply doesn’t speak about directly--issues too numerous to list. Yet when confronted with these issues we must make decisions about them based upon inferences and deductions from Scriptural premises. [Thomas Campbell in the Declaration & Address (Proposition 6) admitted that “inferences and deductions from scriptural premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God’s holy word...”]. 

The objection, of course, is that God has spoken regarding baptism and that the message is clear. So by speaking otherwise I am changing what he so clearly stated. To the contrary, I claim that God didn’t speak to the issue of the unbaptized believer. He didn’t do so precisely because there weren’t any such people in the early church. Every believer was a baptized believer. This is Paul’s assumption in Romans 6, because at that point in his discussion Paul was finished speaking about God’s gift of salvation and our response of faith. In Romans 6, Paul uses baptism to illustrate the effects of salvation, something every believer in his day had done. 

The argument that I’m making is similar to the one claiming that the Bible didn’t speak directly to the kind of dehumanizing slavery that existed just prior to the Civil War. It’s clear that the Bible doesn’t outright condemn slavery, so the argument goes, because the slavery in Biblical times was different; it was more “humane.” The slavery in Biblical times could be the result of the spoils of war, but it could also be voluntarily chosen, or a form of punishment for non-payment of a debt--something socially acceptable. At the very least it did not deny the full personhood of slaves. By contrast, our country in the nineteenth century denied black people the status of personhood. Slavery in our era could be much more brutal. But if American slavery was very different from slavery in Biblical days, then the Bible didn’t speak directly to the issue of American slavery. Therefore, the anti-slavery movement turned instead toward principles found in the Bible that condemned it, like the brotherhood of man (cf. Acts 17:26). The modern argument on behalf of homosexuality depends on the same kind of argument. This argument is based upon the claim that the Bible does not speak directly toward a loving monogamous relationship for life between two persons of the same sex. Sound hermeneutics admits such a possible argument. Those who would argue against homosexuality cannot merely quote Scripture verses unless they deal seriously with the claim that the Bible is only condemning gratuitous homosexual lascivious acts. 

There is nothing wrong in doing this. Jesus himself regularly claimed that certain Scripture verses did not directly apply to the ethical and/or theological issues before him. The “sermon on the mount” of Jesus is an example of this. Overall, it is a sustained argument that seeks to show that the Pharisees of his day misapplied the text of the Old Testament in life and teaching. That is why Jesus is seen stressing his strong belief in Biblical authority before the statements that followed. He said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Matthew 5:17-20). Jesus knew that he had to stress Biblical authority because the Pharisees would think that by denying their understandings he would be denying God’s word. Then too, Jesus’ controversy over the Sabbath day is mainly an argument over the applicability of certain Biblical texts to certain situations. Jesus maintained that these texts didn’t apply legalistically to the particular issues at hand. 

Likewise in the case of Christian baptism, the whole issue depends entirely upon whether or not the New Testament speaks directly to the issue of the unbaptized believer. I simply maintain that it does not do so. The fact that I believe this is not changing God’s commandment at all, for there isn’t anything to change. I do believe however, that there are Biblical principles that speak indirectly to this issue which force me to conclude that “baptism is not necessary for salvation in a legalistic fashion.” 

Is God Flexible? --

Let me now turn to the second part of the major objection to my position: that “what God says cannot be changed because God is unchanging and his word eternally true.” Your readers should know that the immutability of God is presently undergoing a revision by non-Calvinists, among whom I count myself. The Calvinistic doctrine teaches that God cannot change at all. I believe this doctrine comes from the Greek philosopher Plato, who argued that God must be an eternally perfect being so that any change in God must by definition be a change for the worst. Now it is true that God is described as unchanging (Ex. 3:14-15; 34:6-7; Numb. 23:19; Psalms 33:11; Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8). But what does it mean to say this? Christians agree that God’s nature and character do not change. But do these verses require more of God than that? Does God know of no change whatsoever? God is described as changing in several passages (Gen. 6:6-7; Ex. 32:10-14; Dt. 9:13-25; I Sam. 15:11; Psalms 106:44-45; Jer. 18:7-10; Joel 2:13; Amos 7:3; Jonah 3:10). 

Along with many other non-Calvinists I deny that God is the sort of being Plato said he was. He is not a Platonic idea, law, or static Being out there who cannot adapt to new situations and human choices. I would consider such a Being an imperfect God—one who cannot be flexible. I would affirm that God is a loving person (I John 4:8), and it is the essence of love to be flexible and to change in response to the ones to whom love sets its affection. A static God who cannot change in response to us cannot be a loving God. Instead he remains an aloof judge or rule setting potentate. A loving father on the other hand, is something quite different. So I maintain that we either serve a dynamic God or we don’t serve a God of love at all. [For an introduction to this non-Calvinistic kind of thinking see Clark H. Pinnock & Robert C. Brow, Unbounded Love (Downers Grove: IVP, 1994). While it still has its problems see also The Openness of God by Clark Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, Hasker, and Basinger (Downers Grove: IVP, 1994). To be fair, one doesn’t need to accept this point in order to think God is flexible and accommodating to us. I fail to see though, how an inflexible and completely unchanging Being can be a father to his children]. 

The Calvinistic doctrine of God’s immutability is blown apart in the incarnation of Christ. God-in-Christ revealed himself as one who enjoys relationships, makes decisions, acts upon plans, and has deep feelings. The parables of the lost coin, lost sheep and lost son indicate a God who knows both loss and discovery, joy and sorrow. We also see him deal creatively with each person he meets. 

This more correct understanding about God doesn’t lead us to the conclusion that God doesn’t mean what he says. On the contrary, what God says is eternal, and his word is ever true (Mt. 24:35). But what it does suggest is that he is a true Person, and this involves being flexible with his people. That is, while his overall will for us doesn’t change, because his nature and character are immutable, his methods do change. He adapts to our feeble efforts to please him, he is flexible with us because of our capriciousness, and he is compassionate with our shortcomings. This is his grace. 

In the Old Testament we see God being flexible with people on the issue of divorce. Jesus said that it was because of the hardness of their hearts that an exception granting a divorce was allowed by God. (Matt. 19:8). [While Jesus informs us that it was Moses who permitted this exception, it would be incorrect to read Deuteronomy 24:1-4 and conclude anything else but that Moses was speaking by God’s authority]. Yes, God was not pleased to allow such an exception, but, and here’s the extremely important point for our purposes, he allowed/tolerated it because of his love for his people. They didn’t follow his intended rules, but God made allowances for this because he loved them and didn’t want to make life unduly unbearable for them. 

God also allowed/tolerated the eye for an eye, tooth for tooth principle of revengeful judicial punishment (Ex. 21:23-25; Mt. 5:38-39). Apparently, such a limiting principle actually saved lives since many people of that day undertook revenge on every member of a particular family for a particular offense. The eye for eye principle ends up legitimizing a brutal and uncivilized kind of punishment because it was more “humane” than the barbaric kind of punishment meted out by ancient people. In the Gospels Jesus stressed a love for one’s enemies that would eventually undercut such a barbaric kind of revengeful punishment among civilized societies. God accommodates to us with his commands; this too is his grace. He deals as a Person to persons. 

In the New Testament Jesus demanded all or nothing when it came to following him; but he certainly tolerates less. Jesus demanded an all or nothing approach to possessions: “sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Luke 12:33), and “you cannot serve both God and money” (Mt. 6:24). Yet, most people in his day and our own do not obey this. Jesus further stated that the cost of being a disciple involves being willing to “hate his father and mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life.” Otherwise, Jesus continued, “he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27). Whom would you suggest has obeyed this command fully in his or her heart? Even if you can find people who have done this to a great degree, it doesn’t mean that Christ rejects those who don’t have this complete commitment. The reason, again, is because of his gracious love and mercy. He loves us and accepts us where we are in our commitments and understandings. This is exactly what it means to love. There is no contradiction in God demanding everything but accepting less. This is the point at which God’s holiness meets his grace, where God’s commandments meet man’s misobedience, and where God’s desires meet man’s actions. 

So let’s grant the entirely Biblical view that God commanded baptism for salvation. How would he lovingly respond to the situation we presently face today with a wide divergence of opinion in the denominational world over baptism? What exactly would God do about the person who was misinformed about baptism by a denominational preacher, and who didn’t have the intellectual muscle to see through that teaching? Would God hold a person accountable for not being able to think through the arguments of such a preacher, when this is the only thing he’s ever been taught? 

Someone might simply respond by charging that baptism is clearly stated in the N.T., and I agree. But then we must ask: If it is so clearly stated in the N.T., then why have a majority of Christians gotten it wrong, both in the past and the present? I don’t have an answer for this. I do know that we think foot washing is cultural, and so is greeting one another with a kiss. We reinterpret what a woman should be wearing in church on her head, and whether or not we should sell all our possessions and give to the poor. Many denominational church leaders think this way about baptism, and we think they are wrong. But will God actually punish someone eternally simply because they are wrong on this? The answer I believe that is the most Biblical, reasonable and loving is that he would accept/tolerate their ignorance on this issue provided they longed to follow him with their heart and sought to obey all that they knew God to command. He demands baptism but he would lovingly accept the other committed believers in Christ. 

Some would disagree by saying, “we simply don’t know whether or not they’ll be saved--they have no guarantee of salvation.” I understand this. But didn’t Jesus compare our love with God’s when he said that if we know how to give a loaf of bread to our children when they ask for it, then how much more will God give us that which we ask for? (Matt. 7:9-11) In other words, our love for our children is something like God’s love for us, except that God’s love is much more than that. So if any of us were to judge a committed but unimmersed believer, it would be a no-brainer--we would show mercy. So I ask, if we humans would extend mercy, then how much more would a loving God be willing to do so? 

God is Holy (Isaiah 6:3). This is true. But the Biblical God does not have a Pharisaic or legalistic kind of holiness (cf. Mt. 5:20). This is something Jesus battled against most forcefully in the Sabbath Day controversy. Jesus taught that it was okay to break the Sabbath law in order to save someone out of a pit, and likewise to heal simply because people were more important than mechanical obedience to laws (cf. Mt. 12:1-14). It is here Jesus quoted from Hosea 6:6, in which God says: “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” I think it’s fair to say with Jesus that God is much more interested in our character (our “mercy”) than in being punctiliously obedient in the outward observance of baptism (our “sacrifice”). 

A legalist is someone who stresses the letter of the law: “be baptized or else be damned.” I simply reject the notion that a holy God must by definition be a legalist. I follow the principle laid down by Jesus who stated that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) I would preach baptism, but in following this principle, baptism would not be allowed to be legalistic stumbling block in the way of human need--in this case a restored relationship with God. To paraphrase Jesus here, “baptism was made for man, not man for baptism.” 

So again I ask, knowing what we know about God, would he really withhold salvation from people for whom he died merely because they were misinformed about baptism? With all of the sins we have as Christians I think God has much bigger problems to deal with than whether or not we’ve been baptized (cf. 1 & 2 Corinthians; Revelation 2-3). And if his grace isn’t active before conversion leading us to him, then how would we come to him in the first place (John 6:44)? And why would he withhold his mercy and love from us because we failed to do an act that neither feeds the poor, or helps a neighbor in distress--things which he surely is more concerned that we do (Jas. 1:27; Matt. 25:31-46)? 

Evidence of God's Blessing --

Those who disagree on this remind me of the people who argued with Paul and Barnabas at the first council in Jerusalem (Acts 15). Here they were debating whether to accept Gentiles into the church who were not circumcised. They made their arguments and counter-arguments. Paul’s argument however, included personal experience and testimony that he had witnessed God giving Gentile believers the Holy Spirit, and that God “purified their hearts by faith.”(vs. 9) In the midst of their debate it says that “the whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.”(vs. 12) The irony is that those who disagreed with Paul were claiming that God wouldn’t accept uncircumcised Gentiles, when God was already doing so! 

Likewise our discussion about whether God will save sincere but unimmersed believers needs to stop and examine the testimony of what God is doing around the world in the lives of people.

I have met many such people and heard their testimonies. I have been affected in my view of baptism by attending Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Marquette University, and meeting what appeared to be believing students and teachers who were unimmersed. I have attended philosophical lectures and debates where Christianity was defended by believing philosophers who probably were unimmersed, and I have read their writings. I have been affected by listening to some musical artists like Amy Grant, Steve Green, and others who lead me to God even though I have no idea as to whether they have been baptized. I have read the writings of Charles Colson, James Dobson, and others who don’t see it as essential. Seeing the number of lives that have been changed by Billy Graham rallies and meeting some of them, has affected my understanding. So also has my being involved in pro-life causes and rallies, and the Promise Keepers, none of which views baptism as an important doctrine with which they are concerned about. I cannot deny what I have experienced in seeing lives who were obviously touched by God, yet not baptized. Mine was one of them prior to baptism. 

Then too, I’ve done a lot of reading of some great defenders of the faith in Christian history who were apparently unimmersed. There are also long-standing denominations whose official teaching and practice allows infant baptism. 

Those who deny experience in assessing the status of the unbaptized believer are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Paul’s experience of conversion was itself a powerful argument for the truth of Christianity (Acts 9, 22, & 26). While experience is not the test for truth, our understanding of the truth must be able to explain personal experience. I cannot stress this truth too much. Experience has always been a check on exegesis, whether it comes to Wesleyan perfectionism, perseverance of the saints, second coming predictions, Pentecostal miracle workers, understanding marriage, parenting, ministry, and so on. The whole science/religion discussion is an attempt to harmonize the Bible with what scientists have experienced through empirical observations of the universe. According to James Sire in The Universe Next Door [(IVP, 1988), p. 214-217] one of the tests to judge worldviews is whether they comprehend the data of reality--data of all types. Likewise, for our purposes here, the data that must be comprehended within the Restoration movement is the experience of thousands upon thousands of unimmersed believing people who have had the same experience of God as we. That they do have the same experience can’t be denied, as far as any outsider can tell anything of someone elses experience--except that I am not an outsider to such an experience before baptism. 

Before I finish, let me quote from someone who took a very strong public stand on the clear teaching about baptism, and yet personally believed that sincere unimmersed people were Christians. He wrote: 

“Who is a Christian?...I cannot make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. 

Should I find a paedo-baptist more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than...one immersed on a profession of faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth most. Did I act otherwise, I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians....I do not substitute one commandment, for universal or even general obedience. And should I see a sectarian Baptist or a paedobaptist more spiritually minded, more generally conformed to the requisitions of the Messiah, than the one who precisely acquiesces with me in the theory or practice of immersion as I teach, doubtless the former rather than the latter, would have my cordial approbation and love as a Christian. So I judge and so I feel. It is the image of Christ the Christian looks for and loves; and this does not consist in being exact in a few items, but in general devotion to the whole truth as far as known....” 

The author of the above quoted letter was Alexander Campbell recognized as one of the founders of the Church of Christ. [From his famous “Lunenburg Letter” quoted by James DeForest Murch in Christians Only (Standard Publishing, 1962), p. 118.] According to James DeForest Murch, this was a position he reiterated in columns of the Millennial Harbinger and quoted extensively from The Christian Baptist and other published works to show that he had always held to this position. 

At this juncture I’m reminded that in Thomas Campbell’s Declaration & Address (Proposition # 3) he wrote: “nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as articles of faith, nor required of them as terms of communion, but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them in the word of God.” If I’m correct that the New Testament doesn’t expressly teach about unbaptized believers, then by Campbell’s own standards what I conclude in this area is not something that should receive censure--it falls into the area of liberty. 

Barton Stone, the other leader in the Stone-Campbell movement, would go beyond a mere personal statement on the issue. He favored fellowship on an equal basis between the immersed and the unimmersed in Christian churches, thus “making Christian character the sole test of fellowship.” [James DeForest Murch, Christians Only, (p. 119)]. 

------------------------------------------------------ 

John W. Loftus is an adjunct instructor of philosophy for Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, MI; and Tri-State University in Angola, IN. Because of his previous article, “Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation” (Integrity July/August 1995) his teaching contract with Great Lakes Christian College, Lansing, MI, was not renewed.

Why Doesn’t Bible Chaos Bother Christians?

…enough for them to just say, “NO”

In The Adventure of the Final Problem, published in 1893 in The Strand magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes. Twenty thousand enraged fans canceled their subscriptions to the magazine. When Doyle published The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901 (he set the story before Holmes’ death), there were 30,000 new subscribers instantly. It is just a fact that humans make huge emotional investments in stories; more modern examples include, of course, Downton Abby, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones.

Good fun, right? But religion has demonstrated a particular talent for exploiting our attachment to stories; even I appreciated Father Andrew Greeley’s charming description of the role of stories in Catholic piety. Obviously, however, many different, competing religions have claimed that their stories hold the key to achieving favor with the gods, and above all, for escaping death. Christianity has specialized in the eternal life promise: “You’ll get there if you just do this.”

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A Pop-Quiz for Christians, Number 8

Dealbreakers in the Bible  

Based on my own experience—I was pastor of churches for nine years, and have authored two books critical of Christianity—I’m pretty sure of this: devout folks don’t want to think too much about issues that can undermine their faith. Which means that reading the Bible is almost a No-No. Because there is so much in scripture that should prompt educated people to say, “Well, that can’t be right.” There are so many deal-breaker texts, just in the gospels. So in this Pop-Quiz for Christians I want to focus on some of these really embarrassing texts. How can the faithful read, study, reflect seriously on these patches of scripture—and not head for the exit?

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The Bible, Gross Income Inequity and the Christian Right

I have been pushing for Bernie Sanders with his Democratic Socialism. There has been quite a kickback from the very people who should be endorsing this position, right-wing Republican evangelical Christians. Here's a bit of what I've been saying in opposition to the conservative status quo.

Bible quote: Jesus said, "if you wish to inherit my kingdom, go and sell all your possessions and give the profits to the poor, then come and follow me." (Matthew 19:21)

Actual Christian response:

I'm not sure where you're going with this thought as the quote is simply addressing the dangers of people relying on Government help without working and trying to provide for themselves and contribute to society. I believe the Bible passage you quoted to be more about letting go of items such as wealth that inhibit us from following Jesus with our whole heart rather than dictating how the poor are to be taken care of.

The Bible is quite clear in both. The New Testament and the Old Testament that we are to work to provide for ourselves and our families. Here are just a couple quotes:

2 Thessalonians 3 10-12: For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

Proverbs 14:23: In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.

John Loftus:

First off, notice the radical individualism inherent with the misuse of these texts. This may be the over-all problem in America, an antiquated Westward-Ho individualism, and it's still here today.

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My Response To An Encouraging Email With Questions and Suggestions

Here is the email from Jeffrey Kuhn of Cincinnati, Ohio (used by permission):

Dear Mr. Loftus,

My name is Jeff Kuhn, and for the past several months I have been reading a number of your books, or books which you have edited, with great enthusiasm, and wanted to reach out to you directly with some thoughts concerning these works. So, hopefully you will indulge me for just this brief inquiry.

First, I want to say that I found all the works I read (The Christian Delusion, The Outsider Test of Faith, Christianity in the Light of Science, and Why I Became an Atheist) not only compelling but ultimately convincing, and that I am in agreement with the conclusions you and the other esteemed contributors present.

Secondly, and just for the record, I have no credentials in either Christian Apologetics or science. I am just a lay person (67 years old) who has been a Christian most of my life but has struggled mightily over the past 20+ years with the obvious conflicts between Christianity and science, the problems of suffering and evil in the world, the problems and conflicts in the world created by religious demagoguery and ideologies, and the lack of critical thinking of people who I know to be of more than average intelligence when it comes to accepting events which cannot obviously be true as stated in the Bible. (This one is especially troubling).

Ultimately it was single event which occurred several months ago in which a man in Florida, holding four young children hostage in a police standoff, killed all four (and himself) that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. The children were 6 months, 6, 10, and 11. I cried for days after this event thinking what they must have been going through before they were killed and wondered how a merciful and loving God could find "Glory" in this event , and be either unwilling or incapable of preventing it. Certainly there have been larger and more tragic events in history that could have been averted by the God of Christianity, but this one event sealed the deal. So now I have rejected the entire concept.

But to my point. The books I read were very convincing and lay out the facts in such a way that it would be very difficult for any reasonable person who took the time to consider the information to not arrive at these conclusions. But, though it is stated the material is written for college level, the reading is difficult at times and the logic of the philosophical arguments sometimes is very circular and difficult to follow. I am a reasonably intelligent person, and well educated, but I have to admit there were sections I had to read several times, and do additional outside research, to understand the discussion.

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Natural Theology for Chimps

It's long been just understood that humans are unique among all animals in their capacity to engage in altruism, the expenditure of energy and or resources to aid others who are not closely related or otherwise capable of providing reciprocal value. A mother duck will act injured and try to distract an approaching predator away from her ducklings, an unselfish, and possibly sacrificial act, ostensibly, but we understand that this is not really altruistic in the intended sense; her efforts align neatly with the imperative for her offspring (and thus her genes) to survive. In other cases, we observe that some animal species engage in sharing, but this too is accounted for as "self-interested sharing". Sharing food from a kill with others in the group creates a context for reciprocity, and allows the successful hunter who shares to participate in the successful kills of others in the group when he is hungry and did not manage a kill on his own.

Altruism, though, is a kind of shibboleth for humans, and particularly for Christians. Our "better angels" have always been a key distinction for humans, an unbridgeable ontological chasm between the rest of creation, and man, endowed by God with the imago dei. Christian writers from Paul in the first century to C.S. Lewis in the 20th century have made much of this unique sense of man, of which altruism was a distinguishing sign. Man not only knew God was his creator intuitively just by surveying the world around him, man had an innate moral conscience, a built in sense of ought that was utterly intractable as a matter of biology. Christians commonly wonder, bemused at the thought, how evolution could account for something so... self-defeating as selfless charity and self sacrifice. Humans, for instance, send money, food and medicine to the other side of the world, to aid people they've never met, never will meet, and couldn't be more perfect strangers, genetically or otherwise. What's the selective imperative for that, they demand.

This is an important point for Christians, as Christ is understood to be a kind of apotheosis of this idea. God is supposed to have became flesh and sacrificed himself through no fault of his own, perfect in his being, in need of nothing, just giving of himself as a reprieve to (believing) man because that is his nature. Jesus instructed those who listened to love their enemies, another rendering of altruism, becoming less, being vulnerable in services of a higher good on the Christian view. Modern apologists rely heavily on the "moral argument", the idea that man cannot account for his moral sense, or moral convictions without positing God as creator, divinely provisioning them. It's just unthinkable, in contrast, that man would evolve in an impersonal universe with this innate moral sense, in their view.

What do we make, then, of research like this study done last year which investigated and compared the altruistic capabilities and tendencies of chimpanzees and human children? Here's the author's summary of the research:

Debates about altruism are often based on the assumption that it is either unique to humans or else the human version differs from that of other animals in important ways. Thus, only humans are supposed to act on behalf of others, even toward genetically unrelated individuals, without personal gain, at a cost to themselves. Studies investigating such behaviors in nonhuman primates, especially our close relative the chimpanzee, form an important contribution to this debate. Here we present experimental evidence that chimpanzees act altruistically toward genetically unrelated conspecifics. In addition, in two comparative experiments, we found that both chimpanzees and human infants helped altruistically, regardless of any expectation of reward, even when some effort was required, and even when the recipient was an unfamiliar individual—all features previously thought to be unique to humans. The evolutionary roots of human altruism may thus go deeper than previously thought, reaching as far back as the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

(emphasis mine)

There are (at least) two important implications of this kind of finding. First, it assaults the ancient shibboleth, the distinction of man as uniquely equipped and aware in the enterprise of altruism. To be sure, the experiment does not find chimpanzees organizing global relief efforts for men or monkeys if far off lands, and by no means would we mistake these findings for some kind of altruism in chimps that places them in parity with humans, by quality or quantity of their altruism. But here you have a structured set of tests that show that our closest relatives manifest behaviors of the kind that has always put man alone on one side of the "moral chasm", with every other living thing on the other. Now, it seems, in light of recent investigations, that maybe we need to make some room on our side of the moral divide for our chimpanzee cousins (and who knows who else might get added to the list).

Second, its hard to read the article and not be struck by the similarities demonstrated between chimps and small (human) children. In both cases, when the researcher doesn't demonstrate distress, chimps and kids aren't distressed either, and don't help out, as ostensibly no help is needed. When the researcher sends clear signals that they need help, help that the chimp or kid might render, they do, much more often then when no "need-state" is in view. We humans, being humans, intuitively understand this; if someone is having trouble, you ought to consider helping, even if there's no reward in view, immediately or ever. As the study affirms, this isn't something we must be taught in class to develop, but something that is innate at some low level.

That's not strange to most humans. But it is strange to see the same kind of response from chimpanzees when your worldview says that that "ought" can only come from God, and can only come to man. For the chimp who has perfectly nothing to gain (on the caricatured view of evolution as seen by most Christians) in helping someone reach something just beyond their grasp, whence the "ought" that prods them to help? Does God spare a little moral sense, sense unto altruism, even if in rudimentary form, for the chimp?

If so, it's a spotty application. Chimpanzees are notorious for their inclination for infanticide, the brutal killing of infants in the group, sometimes resulting in cannibalism of the young as a follow up to the frenzy (see here, for example). If there is some kind of natural theology for chimps, it seems much more compartmentalized that it is even for (allegedly) fallen, depraved humans. I won't even bother to recount the illustrious sex life of the average chimp, Google that up some time if you are not aware and inclined to think just maybe God dished out a helping of the same sense of "objective moral values" he designed for man, to use a favorite (if problematic) term from William Lane Craig.

Infanticide and sexual promiscuity the likes which might make Larry Flynt blanch aren't a problem from a naturalistic standpoint. There are both plausible (and to increasingly evidentially supported) explanations for such features of chimp behavior, and no "moral chasm" to bridge. Man is a moral being and capable of ethical reasoning in ways that no other animal is, as best we can tell. But while we stand apart, we stand apart by degree and by circumstance on the naturalistic view. For the Christian, man stands apart in kind, in essence. If we are to find, as this study suggests, that that degree isn't nearly so different from our closest genetic relatives, it's interesting and informative, but it fits the model. Chimps and man shared a common ancestor some time long ago, and the discovery of chimp altruism just points us back to our common heritage, a developmental history where we shared the "proto-ethics" that later developed into the concrete forms we see in chimps and humans today.

On the Christian view, though, it's hard to know what to make of such findings. There's always the trusty "common design" hobby horse to trot out whenever parallels and isomorphisms are identified in biology between disparate species. But common design, weak as it is, just utterly fails in this case, as mankind is sui generis in terms of his moral conscience, per Christianity, a "bespoke design" as a British friend recently called it. The sensus divinitatus is what makes man different from all other creatures for the Christian, and it is this that man draws upon, even and especially the unregenerate man in acting on moral impulses.

This is why morality as a matter of biological evolution is flatly, unequivocally rejected by Christianity. If morality emerges as the output of evolution, then it's as available to the chimp or the dolphin as it is to man. It's different for the same reasons the species themselves are different: they occupy different ecological niches, and have unique paths that brought them where they are as social animals. The more we learn though, the more the evidence accumulates that works right against the "moral chasm", against the sensus divinitatus, and toward the idea that morality fits right into the unifying principles and dynamics of evolution. If morality is supported as an integral part of the impersonal biological processes of man's development, one of the load-bearing beams of Christian apologetics, and the appeal of Christianity itself, falls apart.

The Warneken et al study is not the final word, of course, but just a piece of the puzzle. Chimps being helpful, even at some cost, without a basis for reciprocity or any kind of compensation, doesn't quite rise to the commitments of say, a Mother Teresa (Hitchens' objections to her notwithstanding). It's representative of the "pebbles" that are ever accumulating into what has grown now to be a significant pile of data that supports the idea that the "moral instinct", or the "moral grammar" as Marc Hauser would call it (with a hat tip to Chomsky), is a natural byproduct of evolution. No imago dei, no sensus divinitatus provisioned by a supernatural deity needed. A very good amount of the moral finger-wagging by Christian apologists depends on this message: you can't be moral without God. Or, more recently, a slightly more sophisticated revision: you can be moral, but you can't justify your morality without God. The more we learn, the more clearly plausible and evident becomes the picture of man as a moral being by virtue of his evolutionary biology.

So long as man is the only "altruist" -- the only one on the "moral" side of the moral chasm -- that's not a big problem for Christianity. A theistic evolutionist can nod at all the evidence for man developing a moral sense in the context of evolution. In her view, God is working, invisibly, behind the scenes, pulling invisible strings to steer man's nature toward its proper, intended moral constitution. But the identification of that kind of moral development, the emergence of even such sublime features as moral, conscious altruism in other animals, is problematic. That kind of evidence is a disconfirmation of the idea that man is unique, alone in his moral endowments. If we find emergent morality and ethics in other species of the very same kind we find more fully developed in man, the chasm is bridged, and this works strongly against the idea that man is ontologically distinct from the rest of life on earth.

Natural theology for chimps is a problem for the Christian worldview.

How Much Faith Must the Faithful Have?

Exactly how much faith must the faithful have? If I had a dollar for every time a believer smiled serenely at my pesky questions and then replied with the ultimate slap in my logical face: 

“God requires that we have faith,” 

I’d have accrued a sizable little nest egg by now. It’s the deal breaker reply for me and the believer. Stop the train! Let me get off right now. There’s nothing else that I can say. The ardent believer really BELIEVES that they won the argument with a non-argument. God’s tricky like that, apparently. If I insist on proof that she’s there, she gets offended. 

Why can’t I just believe? 

What’s wrong with ME, not what’s wrong with the expectation that I’m required to just have faith that some kind of god is out there, minding my personal business no less. 

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David Marshall and Guillermo Gonzalez: How Untruth Becomes Gospel Truth

My post on “Craig versus McCullagh”  noted William Lane Craig’s inconsistency in using “consensus” as a measure of the validity of an historical claim. See Craig v. McCullagh.

When the consensus agrees with Craig, then he deems consensus as a sound barometer of truth. But when the consensus does not agree with him (e.g., the acceptance of evolution by some 99% of scientists; the consistent use of non-supernaturalism by nearly all academic historians), then he deems consensus as something akin to the Party Line of totalitarian regimes.

Part of my response to Craig showed that, if there has been anything akin to a Party Line, it has been one administered by Christian institutions that have disemployed, persecuted, and killed scholars that did not agree with orthodox positions for about the last 2,000 years. 

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Why Faith? Reviewing Mittelberg's Book "Confident Faith" Part 3

Mark Mittelberg is a bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and the Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Evangelism, in partnership with Houston Baptist University. He wrote the book Confident Faith: Building a Firm Foundation for Your Belief (2013)—which won the Outreach Magazine's 2014 apologetics book of the year award. Yet, it appears his book has been flying under the atheist radar—so far. I aim to rectify that with a few posts offering my thoughts and criticisms of it.

The third important matter that comes to mind is to wonder what Mittelberg was thinking when he defined faith? He defines faith as "beliefs and actions that are based on something considered to be trustworthy--even in the absence of proof" (p. 2). According to Mittelberg then, if your conclusions (i.e., beliefs) and actions are located above the threshold of what is trustworthy, you have a reasonable faith. If they are located below that threshold, you have an unreasonable faith. His main polemical point is that everyone has faith. For if we base our conclusions on anything less than absolute proof we do so on faith.

Mittelberg brashly tells readers Richard Dawkins has faith because on his 1-7 spectrum of atheist probability Dawkins is only a 6.9! Dawkins's conclusion, he says, "is a belief that he holds in the absence of real proof...one that goes beyond what can be known with certainty." (p. 4) "Dawkins doesn't know there is no God...Rather he takes it on faith there is actually no God" (p. 4, italics from Mittelberg). Dawkins "exhibits what might best be described as a religious faith" Mittelberg says, because he can only say God "almost certainly does not exist" (p. 141, italics from Mittelberg).

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Which Atheist Books Do I Recommend?

Having previously linked to some reasons why philosophical apologetics is not changing very many minds, especially the most sophisticated philosophy that every serious philosophical apologist loves to recommend, because it says that they understand it! Congrats to you!! A lot of it is obtuse and obfuscationist though. As it's practiced today, it isn't that helpful if one wants to change minds. After all, the more sophisticated that philosophy is, the more sophisticated the reader is. At that level it doesn't change the minds of sophisticated readers because they are already entrenched in what they think. It also has a way of being turned around as a pat on the back! Just see how William Lane Craig responds to a very detailed and knowledgeable question about philosophical apologetics at his website, Reasonable Faith. Craig wrote:

I include your question here for the instruction and encouragement of our Reasonable Faith readers. You have masterfully surveyed for us the current philosophical landscape with respect to atheism. You give our readers a good idea of who the principal players are today.

I hope that theists, especially Christian theists, who read your account will come away encouraged by the way Christian philosophers are being taken seriously by their secular colleagues today.

The average man in the street may get the impression from social media that Christians are intellectual losers who are not taken seriously by secular thinkers. Your letter explodes that stereotype. It shows that Christians are ready and able to compete with their secular colleagues on the academic playing field.

To see this you need to read my book Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End. This is the first book I'm recommending, with others to follow below. If nothing else, consider the recommendation of atheist philosopher Nick Trakakis, co-editor with Graham Oppy of several important philosophy of religion books, and the author of his own book on The End of Philosophy of Religion, plus The God Beyond Belief: In Defense of William Rowe's Evidential Argument from Evil. He even wrote a chapter in my book, God and Horrendous Suffering. He said this of my book Unapologetic:

I am in wholehearted agreement with you. I actually find it very sad to see a discipline (the philosophy of religion) I have cherished for many years being debased and distorted by so-called Christian philosophers. Like you, I have now finally and happily found my place in the atheist community. I’m slowly making my way through your "Unapologetic book", it’s quite fascinating, loving the Nietzschean hammer style.

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Who Would WANT the Christian God Anyway?

He makes too many big mistakes

If we could pose this question to folks coming out of their weekly worship services: Do they really want the God they worship? …we would hear enthusiastic affirmations, “Oh, Yes, I want the Lord! Our God is so wonderful.” But I wonder. Have they really thought it through? There are several things about this God that are a turnoff. Many of us would put he/she/it near the bottom of a list of gods to follow. Let’s look at a short list.

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Neuroscience is Destroying the Notions of Free Will, Sin and Salvation by Faith

Neuroscience is making it extremely difficult for believers to still claim that by freely choosing to believe we are saved (or condemned), that we freely choose to sin, or that there is a wrathful God who will judge us on the last day. Case in point, girls and boys, are the following two essays, the last of which I will quote from. The first is Grandma’s Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes. Now for the second one, "The Brain on Trial." [Be sure to read this essay at least as far as the highlighted money quote in red!].

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I'm less than convinced

My line of work affords me the opportunity to convince a variety of people to do various actions. I am acutely aware of motivating factors, and how they impact situations. We realize that we must interact with these motivations, because ignoring them will only bring doom.

It is fascinating to me, communicating with so many different people on so many different levels, as to what one person finds extremely significant, another finds completely irrelevant.

As deconversion stories abound, we see people, due to the variety available in humanity, question their long-held belief for various reasons. This should not surprise us, given the make-up of humanity.

I find it even more intriguing how others will criticize the deconvert for doing it “incorrectly.” As if there is only one proper way in which one can deconvert!

So what is that proper way? What steps must I follow to deconvert? Why is it that the way in which you are convinced; I must be convinced?

This is a deviation from my normal blog entry. No Bible verses. Only little cry for methodology. No hermeneutics. Never fear—I will be back in full form and function.

As I said, I am actively involved in convincing other people.

I convince clients. Perhaps they want to pursue a course of action that is not beneficial to their case. Perhaps they do not fully understand the implication or costs involved in a certain action. Perhaps they believe the practice of law is similar to what is on TV.

And in our discussion, we talk about motives. One of the first questions asked in a new divorce matter is whether there is a new love interest on the part of a spouse. Such a factor will have a huge motivating force. (Those with love interests tend to want to resolve the divorce quickly, even to the point of financial detriment.) Mothers tend to be motivated by maternal instincts; Fathers by finance. The most common tactic in the book is the man fighting for custody to scare the mother, and the female fighting for higher child support to scare the father.

I have seen clients motivated by greed, jealousy, revenge, money, principle, fear, anger, business direction, spouses, friends, parents, children and just about every facet in-between. And each must be deal with at their motivating factor. If a person is motivated by principle, there is no sense convincing them of the unnecessary cost of a matter.

I convince judges. Here’s a great feeling—going into court prepared to the hilt to argue a legal issue. And hear the Judge say, “I don’t find that very important. What I would like to see is some argument on this other legal issue.” One that frankly my position is not nearly as strong. What can I do? Argue with the judge as to what is more important? Or convince him that I will prevail on both the weaker issue, and then attempt to persuade him that the legal issue I originally wanted to argue is clearly the crux of the matter.

And each judge is different. Some follow the letter of the law, some the spirit. Some want the case to go away, regardless of how it is done. Some favor oral argument, some despise it. As we practice, we learn what the judge desires, and what persuades him or her.

I convince jurors. At times, the most difficult of all. We are presented with a mixed cross-section of the community, and are given only a morning to question them. Within that morning, we attempt to learn what they will find important, and what they will ignore. Then, with that little information, we spend the next few days using that data in the hopes to gain or prevent millions of dollars, or decades in prison.

Talking to jurors after a trial is always enlightening. Very often they will say, “You spent way too much time on this point” or “We were surprised you did not talk about this point.”

We think to ourselves, “I have been a trial lawyer for 15 years. My opponent has as well. We have each done 100’s of trials. The Judge has seen 100’s more. Clearly we thought these points were important, or those were not based upon our experience. Had we anticipated the jury would think completely differently, obviously we would have focused our attention otherwise.”

See, at that moment, with those few people, what all our experience(s) informed us was meaningless. To them certain items were persuasive and others were irrelevant. Because each jury has a different make-up; a different motivation.

If each of us look in our lives, we use different methods, different words to persuade different people—based upon our relationship, or their personality, or what they are interested in at that moment.

Why should deconversion be any different?

I read deconversion stories. I read them as a Christian (upon learning such a thing existed!) wondering what would make a person want to stop believing in something as obvious as a God. I read them while deconverting, to attempt to understand what I was going through, what to expect and what to avoid. I read them now because I find the story of the human race continues to enthrall me.

One concept that sticks out, almost universally, is the desire to investigate alternative forms of information. Either we were always reading Christian books, and discovered scholars in fields other than our particular form of Christianity, or creationists discovering scientific fields or historians reading secular history. Does this always lead to deconversion? Of course not! But I cannot think of a single deconvert that does not mention graduated levels of study of a broader spectrum during the process.

But what led a person to investigate originally? Perhaps for some, it was an incident or a tragedy that made them begin to question how God works. Or, for others, a personal struggle that brought them to the point of looking for answers. Perhaps a purely academic endeavor or an interest in debating the topic.

In every other aspect of our lives, humanity’s motivations are too varied to contain in a limited number of boxes—so, too, with deconversion.

Which brings me to the odd question: What makes a deconversion legitimate? Is a deconvert more justified in her action because she decided to engage in a study of the origin of Christianity, as compared to a homosexual that decided to investigate why God made him that way? Or is a scientist that discovers the viability of evolution a more suitable deconvert than a questioning parent who loses a child to disease?

There are two items that strike me as particularly humorous in this regard. First, for a religion that prides itself on faith, it certainly has a fascination and worshipful awe for intellectualism. “Thinking” one’s way out of Christianity is demanded, but “believing” one’s way into it is required. Second, since all deconverts have an equal degree of heathenicity, does it really matter by what method we started or traveled this path? “You were never saved in the first place” is equally tattooed to the homosexual deconvert, the scholarly deconvert, the scientific deconvert, or the {fill in the blank} convert.

So…you tell me. What is the “proper” way in which one becomes a deconvert?

What is disappointing about this discussion is how small the Christian God becomes. Even as humans we figured out that people are different. That their needs, wants and desires are different. Consequently, and certainly not surprisingly, what persuades them is different. To some, a series of books that is complied over the course of few centuries which contain amazing stories is enough. For others, in observing the world about them, they need more.

We are often told “Who are you to ask ‘Why?’ of God?” (“Often.” Heh heh. There’s an understatement!) Who am I? I am a person with different motives than you. I am a person that cannot sleep with “ultimate purpose” as a response to the Problem of Evil. I am a person that is not convinced a series of books with possible, not plausible, resolutions to contradictions qualifies as spectacular. I, like numerous other humans, am looking for more evidence that convinces me.

You, as a human, can figure it out. If you were selling me a car, or trying to date me, or persuade me to not see a Movie, you would understand that you must first learn what motives me. What persuades me. What is convincing to me. And your God cannot figure that out?

So many times we are told, “THIS is what God claims must convince you. THIS is what is persuasive.” And yet it turns out the “THIS” is exactly what persuades the person making the claim. Can’t God do better? Can’t God actually persuade someone else with evidence that convinces them and does NOT convince you?

Because we see that happen in life all the time.

If my deconversion does not meet your standard, if it was deficient and ineffective in some way, please; I ask you. Provide me with the “proper” way in which one can be a legitimate deconvert.

More Jesus Quotes Christians Could Do Without, Part 4

Maybe Jesus himself could talk you out of Christianity

Where would theology be without human imagination? The gospel authors show just how true this is. Matthew came up with dystopian fantasy when he reported (Matthew 27:52-53) that many dead people came alive in their tombs at the moment Jesus died, then wandered around Jerusalem on Easter morning. This detail is missing from the other gospels, whose authors didn’t imagine it. Likewise Matthew reported an earthquake when the women arrived at the tomb on Easter morning: an angel descended from heaven to roll back the stone, then sat on it. This also was beyond the imagination of the other gospel authors. In John’s gospel we find the story of the voice-activated resurrection of Lazarus (i.e., a magic spell)—which the other gospels authors knew nothing about. John’s imagination ran wild: his gospel is so different from the others. Elsewhere I have accused John of theology inflation.

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A Hugely Defective Gospel Sequel

A high quotient of fake news

 

The red flags in scripture are all over the place, and easy to spot. By this I mean story elements that alert readers to be suspicious. If we came across these in a Disney fantasy or in Harry Potter story, we’d say, “Very entertaining, but not to be taken seriously.” There are so many red flags in the gospels, and they show up in the first chapters of each. In Mark, a voice from the sky tells Jesus, “You are my beloved son”—right after his baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus had sins? A god yelling from the sky doesn’t sound at all like a real-world event.

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