Randomness December 18, 2007
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration, I won't keep things purposely vague , trackback |
Currently Watching It’s a Wonderful Life By James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers see related |
Item # 1: Who wants to buy used journals? This question coming after reading the post on the Rebelution which led to the post on Josh Harris’ site which led to Amazon offering “new and used“. Right-oh.
Item #2: In case anyone else gets Tabletalk, there is something in the January issue which kind of jumped out at me. R.C. Sproul says “His reasoning, though strong, was not always technically sound. For example, in his defense of the resurrection, he used an argument that has impressed many despite its invalidity. He follows an age-old argument that the truth claims of the writers of the New Testament concerning the resurrection of Jesus are verified by their willingness to die for the truths that they espoused. And the question is asked: Which is easier to believe — that these men created a false myth and then died for that falsehood or that Jesus really returned from the grave? On the surface, the answer to that question is easy. It is far easier to believe that men would be deluded into a falsehood, in which they really believed, and be willing to give their lives for it, than to believe that somebody actually came back from the dead. There has to be other reasons to support the truth claim of the resurrection other than that people were willing to die for it. One might look at the violence in the Middle East and see 50,000 people so persuaded of the truths of Islam that they are willing to sacrifice themselves as human suicide bombs. History is replete with the examples of deluded people who have died for their delusions. History is not filled with examples of resurrections.” (Taken from http://www.ligonier.org/docs/Tabletalk-Sample/January-2008/index.php)
Now, is it me? Or did Dr. Sproul change the argument slightly somewhere in there? The argument is that if the men had created this myth, they would not have died for it. Dr. Sproul states that if they had been deluded into believing this myth, they would have died for it nonetheless. This is, no doubt, true. Paul goes into this in great detail in I Corinthians 15:12-28. But the argument is not that they are deluded into believing it; rather, it is dealing with the possibility that they made it up. The only way these two ideas seem to fit together would be if the apostles claimed that Jesus had risen and gotten so carried away with the whole idea that they forgot that they had made it up. And that seems a bit far-fetched.
It’s entirely possible that there is a flaw somewhere in the argument, but I don’t think that was it.Â
And I do have a lot of respect for Dr. Sproul… so much so that this was note-worthy enough to be “bloggable” just because I did not agree with him for once! (Although I also don’t about the book The Five Dilemmas of Calvinism, from what I read of it.)
Item #3: I ended up thinking of a blessing the other day which I don’t recall giving much thought to before.  Not only am I thankful for my friends, and that we met, and that we didn’t kill each other before realizing that we liked each other anyway, but we all speak the same language.
Weird thought, that. And obviously it was part of God’s plan for our lives but…
won’t it be strange to meet people in heaven who were alive at the same time we were, but we never even knew it? This relates to why I don’t like big cities; because I wonder about absolutely everyone in them.Â
Item #4: I’m thinking about my Best and Worst of 2007 post. Slight problem, but it isn’t a terrible problem to have — there have been a lot of good CDs I found this year. Oh well.Â
Goodnight.
Comments»
Just think, you’ll probably be meeting me in heaven for the first time!
That sounds like a good book, I’ll have to see if I can get it.
Eric