Everybody knows the Book of British Birds is not inspired by the designer and creator of all British Birds.

Listening to somebody who has only read the Book of British Birds is like listening to a convert to Christianity who has only read the Gideon Bible in his hotel room and been convinced by it.

Dawkins has read the Bible.

So what on earth makes him consider himself to know anything about Christianity?

Steven Carr

The tragedy of the church over the ages is that the message of God has been diluted by the substitution of the teaching of man. Therefore the church has become weakened and has become closer to being atheistic than theistic. It is an error to think that the church and atheists are polar opposites. Rather they are closer than people think.

The turning away from the word of God is the reason that politicians and others feel that they can do what they like to be popular regardless of moral and scriptural constraints.
Perhaps the greater danger is within the church, rather that the “New Atheist Crusaders” outside it.

Richard Coonan

You touched on a good point regarding trials and character. I enjoy reading what James says about this. However, you didn’t talk about the relationship between a New Creation and the ongoing temporal and physical life of a person. Here we have something (a New Creation) that is not of this world and which includes eternally becoming adopted sons of the Father, coexisting with a temporal body which is “appointed once to die.”

Are there two separate tracks that these events run on?

Would you say that Jacob’s son Joseph was a “type” or “picture” of Christ? Would you say that Joseph lived out his own personal life, albeit with visible instances of Divine Providence, at the same time that his life represented a “type” or “picture” of Christ? If yes, how do aspects of the eternal life and truth of Christ find expression in the temporal events of another person’s life?

If yes, how does something that is timeless (Messiah) find expression in something temporal and bound by time (Joseph)? If yes, what purpose does this image serve for us? Are there good lessons in Joseph’s life and character?

Which message do we accept? The one about Jesus or the one about Joseph?

Viewed as a type of Christ, did Joseph inherit the eternal life that is to come and remain with us or did he die?

I am attempting to understand, with regard to space and time, where you place eternal and heavenly things. What bindings do you believe exist between God’s Heaven and our present temporal environment? Are symbols used in scripture to correlate ideas and teach us what is to come, or are these Heavenly things bound here with us in the temporal environment?

Does any scripture ever carry more than one direct meaning?

Shane Coley

I would answer “yes” to your question. One’s circumstances don’t fundamentally change when one becomes a Christian but what does happen is that God uses challenges and hardships to mold one’s character through God’s grace. God’s providence ensures that you will encounter challenges that require purging you of your sinful character and intentions.That is how God has set up the universe – to deal with our sin and drive us to Christ.

That is why life isn’t always so grand and that there are challenges to be taken! When human beings sinned God made sure that life got harder so as to deal with our characters and inward intentions – to drive us to Christ.

Hope this helps in some miniscule way.

Damien Spillane

As for the Israelites, the passage I quoted above regarding unbelief is a good scripture reference for what you are attempting to explain. I’m not sure exactly how you see that issue given your comments.

Please consider this:

Is a Christian immediately a New Creation? And at the same time does this new Christian continue in the temporal world and according to the laws of the natural order? I.e. sleep, eat, work, vacation, read, learn, grow, etc.

If you say yes to both, then how do these two conditions coexist? How and in what ways are these two conditions or states of being related? How do they interact?

Shane Coley

There have been believers who have also espoused deism. But I would regard a deistic Chrsitian as a contradiction in terms. A biblical Christian believes in the thorough interaction of God with the created order, most supremely demonstrated in the incarnation of his son, and his saving work at Calvary. God becoming man, walking among us, and dying for our sins, sounds like an involved, concerned and relational God, not the absentee landlord of deism.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Thanks for your explanation re Theism/deism. I still have difficulty with “G” vs “g” when referring to the relevant G(g)od’s. I cannot see how a deistic god could be referenced with a big G. I always thought that the “G” god was strictly for the Judeo-Christian God. As we agree a definition of a deistic god can be quite variable. Is there such a thing as a Christian “version” of a deistic God? If so, that would not make much sense because the bible points out there is only one God. I still cannot see how the terminologies can be interchanged within a Christian paradigm. For me, an apple is not an orange but they are both fruit.

Ben Green

Not that the subject is uninteresting, but I was disappointed that the conversation tracked off into evolution and earth age. My original question is in direct reference to your closing section What you can do.

You provide a good overview of the preparation and contributions that enable a person to have an impact.

Deception is a tool of the adversary, as you note, and we must be diligent in preventing people (including ourselves) from being deceived. A primary driver for successful deception is the appeal to popular opinion or appeal to expertise.

First, this is a spiritual battle. The god of this world is out to deceive and mislead people, and turn them away from serving the true and living God. So this is idolatry and spiritual deception of the highest order, and we need to be spiritually protected via prayer and spiritual warfare as we enter into these debates.

You also list C.S. Lewis as a primary apologist with whom we should be familiar, thereby confirming his importance in this arena.

You list in another area, as an apologetics resource, a book which uses C.S. Lewis as weighty apologist who is claimed to have “had no problem with Darwinian Evolution”. I find this to be a false statement.

I have had dialogue with the author of the book and plan to write a response to his assertion and hope that others will do the same. However, prior to doing so, I want to run my observations through the mill first.

As yet, neither the author nor anyone else has provided support for this assertion about Lewis and evolution.

I find this point to be important because I think C. S. Lewis held clear positions on evolution which can be understood and those positions are different than typically ascribed to him. In what I have discovered thus far, even those who doubt his support for evolution miss some of the strong and clear statements he left with us.

When Lewis is used as part of an already weak argument for evolution in a book that is handed out as a useful apologetics work, we have a prime opportunity for deception to take root.

What I am hoping to see develop is a clear and concise distillation of Lewis’ positions. It seems that you doubt Lewis went any farther than theistic evolution, but I am suggesting that is an unnecessary point to concede. Lewis clearly debunked the Popular Myth of Evolution. The “micro-evolution” or adaptation he supported is scientifically observable and incapable of modifying “kinds”. Lewis’ Myth-making for effect is meaningless with regard to evolution.

Thanks,

Shane Coley