Are Mormons Christians?

QUESTION:  I really enjoy watching Glenn Beck, and a while back he was talking about different faiths an he made a comment about how people probably don’t look at him as a real Christian because of his Mormon faith. He made a point in the middle of his political segment to point out that he personally was saved by the grace of Jesus Christ atoning for his personal sins.  Mormons do have different beliefs that most Christians don’t believe. But I have a hard time seeing a man who is by far a better man than I, and has asked Christ to come into his life and forgive him of his sins being a “non Christian” and I personally see him as being a part of God’s family.  I don’t understand why people believe him to be more wicked then them. Your thoughts.

ANSWER:  Your question is simple, are Mormons, Christians?  That’s not an easy question to answer, and I’ll dive into it below.  But first, it's helpful to clarify the biblical definition of "Christian".  You’re speaking directly to that definition, when you talk about being saved by the grace of Jesus Christ and faith in Him.  

However, when dealing with Glenn in particular, you move quickly to discussing his moral achievements - several times in fact.  You say he’s “far better man than you” and that some think he can’t be a Christian because he’s “more wicked than them.”  When we discuss biblical Christianity, true Christians are those who are saved, not because of good works, or lack of wickedness on their part, but only through the merits of Jesus Christ.  (Acts 15:11)

This merit is imputed to the believer who by faith and repentance has welcomed this saving work, and as a result has been washed, forgiven, set free and filled with God’s Spirit to walk in newness of life. (Rom 3:21, 22)

So Glenn being a decent man is not really the issue.  We mustn’t judge Glenn’s salvation (or anyone else’s) based on his good works or lack thereof.  They may or may not be an indication of new birth.  A man may be unsaved, though he does many good works, and a man may be among the saved (a true Christian) even if he has done many bad works.  A man may even confess Christ verbally and not be saved (Matt 7:21-23).  Jesus said, on the day of Judgment, there will be surprises (Matt 21:28-32).

Now, some would like to make this simple and categorically deny that any Mormon can be a true Christian.  Why?  Because Mormons use the same words as Christians but often mean different things.  Who is Jesus to them?  And what is Salvation to them?  Some would immediately say that once you understand what a Mormon means by Jesus (not the Unique Son) and Salvation (not by grace alone), it settles the question – the Mormon is not saved.  

I don't think it's that simple.

We all walk around with errors in our theological knowledge.  If I am mistaken on the exact formulation of the two natures of Jesus, am I worshiping the wrong God?  Am I lost?  If God is open to the future, but I believe in a fatalistic God behind the universe, am I lost?  I don’t think so.  This is not to say that what we believe doesn’t matter.  I’m saying that among the lot of us who don’t have all our beliefs correct (that's 100%!), there are two categories:  

There is the person whose untrue beliefs are a matter of ignorance that is gradually being dispelled on issues not central to his response to the offer of God’s grace.  In the other category are people whose untrue beliefs are a matter of deliberate suppression of the truth, or deceptions believed about very core Truths regarding himself or God that are needed for them to be reconciled.  The person in the former box is saved and the one in the latter is not, but neither have all their doctrine straight.

When in conflict with another human, for example, there are many things the two of us believe that may conflict but none of those things preclude us from reconciling.  Yet if we disagree on certain matters of the heart between us, or disagree about the severity of the offense, or on the standards that were violated, or on the right path forward, or if we disagree on purity of motives in the other, we cannot reconcile.  

So, with two categories of people who hold false beliefs, we are not great judges of which category a heart may be in at any given moment. Especially when judging is dependent on words people have in their heads that may carry vastly different meanings.  God knows the heart and whether false beliefs constitute rejection of salvation or (like with Apollos) areas of ignorance in a true believer needing correction.

I know a fine Christian teacher and apologist who has worked with many Mormons who are sold out to the Jesus of the New Testament and who will say they are trusting in His Grace and His shed blood to be saved.  Now, if we really make them describe what they mean by all these things, some will go outside of biblical Christian teaching.  For many, their practical works-based program is a fundamental denial of the gospel of grace that we believe is at the center of what it means to be a true Christian (see Eph 2:7-10).

But for other devout Mormons, their day-to-day experiential walk with the Lord really lines up with Biblical Christianity – more than some Evangelicals would like to admit.  I don't fully know what to do with that, but my tendency is to give their devotion to Jesus the benefit of the doubt.

Now, this does not apply to all Latter Day Saints – my friend would say, in his experience, "only to a handful".  Unfortunately, the Mormons I meet are explicitly trusting in their Church and their good works to prepare them for life as a divine being.  This is the official doctrine of the church, it’s polytheism, and it’s a serious diversion from the Christian faith and if believed, it’s no different than being a Muslim or any other kind of moralist.  This is not Christianity.

And this doesn’t begin to dive into the LDS stance on truth in general which I would describe as "elitist" and "closed to critical inquiry".  Elitist because the official stance of Joseph Smith (his very first revelation) is that all other Christian sects are an abomination to God.  Closed to critical inquiry because they refuse to acknowledge how the central historical tenant of The Book of Mormon (that native Americans are actually emigrated Semites from the Ancient Near East) has been repeatedly refuted by sound and unbiased scholarship, putting all of Joseph Smith’s prophetic work in question.

So with regards to Glenn Beck, who knows where he might fall on all this.  His comments about trusting in the finished work of Jesus and his grace are encouraging.  We can give that the benefit of the doubt, because it’s God’s job to judge his heart.  We however, are called to break down proud arguments that set themselves up against the knowledge of God and part of that calling is to resist perversions of true faith that may look similar but are in reality way off.  And wouldn’t Satan want some of his diversions to look quite similar to the truth, to be the more powerful delusion? (2 Cor 11:14,15)  Of course. 

So where a LD Saint explicitly says:  “I’m trusting in my tithing to the Temple and my good works and my church to save me, and by 'save' I mean, I will be a god someday and populate my own planet in the celestial heavens” we know we're dealing with a non-Christian.  And as with all outsiders to faith, we should be ready to correct their misunderstandings with Truth and demonstrate in love the full freedom of the biblical Gospel.  Where a person says, “I’m saved by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ”, and you don't know whether that's a true-hearted commitment of faith in Jesus as revealed in the Scripture and the Creeds?  We can and should suspend judgment.

Is 'Real' Judaism On Hold Without a Temple?

 QUESTION: I heard you say there are no 100% traditional Jews anymore because there’s no Temple.  I was trying to explain this to my (partially) Jewish co-worker (raised Baptist) who was thinking that maybe the temple could be spiritual or metaphorical?  Also, she made a comment about it could be inaccurate because the bible was written by men!  Can you re-explain it to me and direct me to the exact passages in the bible that talks about Temple being integral to Judaism?

RESPONSE: What the Bible is clear about is that not only were the Jews given an elaborate sacrificial system put in place to atone for sin, the location to implement this system was clearly spelled out.  Moses says that sacrifices could only be brought to the “entrance of the tent of meeting” per Lev 17:2:

“Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the people of Israel and say to them, This is the thing that the LORD has commanded. 3 If any one of the house of Israel kills an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp, or kills it outside the camp, 4 and does not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it as a gift to the LORD in front of the tabernacle of the LORD, bloodguilt shall be imputed to that man. (Lev 17:2-4)

The Jews could not just make their own sacrifices wherever they wanted after the Lord had provided the Tabernacle.  But the tabernacle was mobile – it was just a tent after all – so Moses anticipates a time when they are no longer nomadic and on the move after they’ve entered the Promised Land.  So he tells also them to be ready for God to establish a permanent, non-mobile place of worship for the sacrificial system to be located. 

Deut 12:5-6: But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. (ESV)

Now, it was literally hundreds of years between when Moses wrote that, and when Solomon built the first temple, which God sanctioned through his father David as the place he chose to “make a habitation for his Name” (2 Sam 7:12-13).  But once there, that was the place – and the only place – to fulfill the Mosaic system.

All this means that “real” Judaism is Temple Judaism.  There is nothing in the Law or Prophets that sanctions the sacrificial system to be relocated or “spiritualized”.  So what happened when the Jews were exiled and Solomon’s first Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians?  Did they just do the sacrifices some place else, or do them "metaphorically"?  No, they just stopped performing the sacrifices.  The sacrificial system was in some sense, “on hold”. 

They still did everything else that Moses commanded, obey the moral law, the ceremonial law, the food laws – but the center of the covenant, every Jew knows, is the burnt offering system to atone for sin.  And that system was suspended when the Temple was destroyed.  Then, when it was rebuilt, the Jews were ecstatic because, in some sense, their religion was restored to them (Zech 8:7-9). 

That is also why the Jewish authorities in Jesus time (when Herod’s second Temple reconstruction was completed and operational) are so anxious about Jesus stirring up the crowds.  The people wanted revolution to save their freedom, but the Jewish leaders wanted the Temple to save their religion - the latter being far more important than the former.  And they knew that too much trouble and their precious, all-important Temple would get destroyed. 

Eventually, that’s exactly what happened: the Temple was utterly leveled by Rome in 70 A.D., and for the last 2000 years all that remains are some foundation stones which can still be seen today (that’s the famous “Western Wall”).

Now, that obviously doesn’t mean that Judaism is dead totally.  After the Temple was demolished and the Jews were exiled (again), Rabbinic Judaism developed which leaned on the Rabbi’s interpretations of Moses (the Talmud) in order to encourage the practice of Judaism in the absence of Temple sacrifices and other practices which were no longer possible.  But make no mistake, even this radically reordered form of Judaism awaits the Third Temple, and now most faithful Jews believe it will take the coming of the Messiah to rebuild it.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a “spiritual/metaphorical Temple” in serious Judaism.  The idea of transferring the Temple rites to other places or other ways, was exactly what the people tried to do in early Israelite history.  They decentralized the Temple idea by taking religious rites and sacrifices to local “high places” like the pagans, and God strictly forbade it.  (1 Kings 12:31).  Good kings are judged as good or bad almost solely by whether they tolerated or eliminated such “high places”.  In the Bible, taking the central place of worship away from Jerusalem = bad.

So the Temple is not a metaphor for Jews.  When she says that, she’s just channeling her Christian roots.  That’s not a Jewish way of thinking, that’s a Christian way of thinking.  For Christians understand that all the good things God did in the Temple by making a place for his name, showing that he wanted to be “with” us by placing his literal “habitation” on earth – is all FULFILLED spiritually through Jesus who is “Emmanuel” (God with us) and who comes to dwell inside his Children by his Spirit as spiritual temples. (1 Cor 6:19)  

And most Christians take it as a great sign of God's approval on the new epoch of making "spiritual Temples" through God's perfect "Lamb" (John 1:29), that Jesus perfectly predicted the destruction of the Temple, resulting in the end of sacrifices, which remains a fact to this very day.  Thus, there is no true or original Judaism today, only 'Judaism Interrupted'.

I’m not sure what part of this she thinks could possibly be inaccurate.  

• The idea that a real temple ever existed?  
• The idea that it was the mandated center of Jewish worship for centuries?  
• The idea that Herod’s 2nd Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and devastated the Jewish people?  
• The idea that the dispersed Jews had to radically reorder their whole religion in the 2nd century to account for an absence of a Temple? 

These are all well-established historical facts.  Or does she mean that the importance of the Temple as Moses and the Prophets spell is out is inaccurate?  Well, in that case, she doesn’t have to think that Moses and the Prophets speak accurately for God, what's in question is whether Jews believe that Moses and the Prophets speak accurately for God.

And regarding the transmitters of this message being "mere men", both Jews and Christians believe a writer can convey a message accurately for God, even of that person is "just a man" IE, fallible and sinful.  Or does she think that the only thing that she would ever consider “accurate” is if God bypassed people totally and took up a pen himself and wrote something?  But now were onto the very different subject of inspiration.  And even if God wrote about the Temple himself, it would be people who would be responsible to copy that and pass the instruction along.  So basically by her logic nothing could be considered trustworthy as revelation.  In fact, by this logic you couldn’t trust any history, not just revelation, because we get all our knowledge of history from…. men!

Maybe you can help her reason backwards from the certain to the less certain.  That there was a Temple is certain (accurate).  That this Temple matters to true Judaism is also certain.  Whether true Judaism is “accurate” in that it expresses God’s actual will for mankind is what she has to decide.  But waving her hand and saying “Temple Judaism is inaccurate because fallible people probably made it up” is just sloppy thinking. 

Meanwhile, based on Jesus, we Christians believe Temple Judaism is not inaccurate, it’s just Part I missing its Sequel.

Is the Doxology From the Lord's Prayer Authentic?

QUESTION:  In an AC3 small group we were discussing the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer and noting that modern translations put it in the footnotes.  Three problems I have with this.  I checked out a site defending the KJV and they think the phrase is authentic.  Could you comment on that?  Also, I’ve had instances of saying the Lord’s Prayer during a time I sensed dark spiritual forces and when I got to the doxology God unleashed real spiritual power and a stronghold was broken.  Third, I’ve heard the early Roman Catholics were super controlling and might have twisted the Word to their liking for religious purposes.

http://www.kjvtoday.com/home/is-the-doxology-to-the-lords-prayer-in-matthew-613-a-late-addition

RESPONSE: Thanks for your question and I appreciate the sentimental attachment to the whole prayer as you memorized it and used it throughout your Christian life. 

This dispute about the doxology (Matthew 6:13) is about whether it was original with Matthew or added later by a scribe or copyist.  Scribes and copyists of the Biblical writings did, in fact, make errors (we have no promise that these would all be inspired as the original authors were!).

• Some were intentional errors, where they took a phrase from another gospel (for example) and inserted it into the one they were copying because it was a parallel passage.  (Like one copyist inserted Matt 6:13b into Luke 11:4 so that the two accounts of the Lord’s Prayer would match better.)
• Sometimes the errors were simply mistakes, slips of the pen, omissions of whole lines or spelling errors (in fact this is the vast majority of them).
• Other times they are honorific, and therefore “pious errors” like when the copyist adds titles to Jesus (Lord or Christ) or God when just a simple name was in the original (Eph 3:14).
• Other times a note is made in a margin of a copy which functioned as a clarification or commentary, but a later copyist would see fit to insert the non-inspired note into the main body (1 John 5:7).

But you might ask, how do we know which reading to consider original if there is more than one reading?  This can be very difficult with all the variants.  But because there are so many hundreds of copies, they can also be cross referenced thoroughly and checked against each other (one of the benefits of having so many copies!).  Inauthentic readings show themselves by this kind of document cross referencing.  If you have a 100 renderings of a text and 90 agree, you have a clue that the other 10 probably follow a scribal error.

But there are two other textual principles that help us discern the original reading.

• One is age of the copy.  

The older is usually preferred as more reliable.  Why?  Basically, the telephone game idea is applied.  The longer a chain of communication goes along in an informal matter (and remember there’s no printing press, it’s all hand transcribed copying for most of Church history) the larger the chance of message degradation.  Thankfully, the Bible has the oldest copies compared to time of writing of ANY ancient work!

• The second principle is brevity.  

Although this article makes the case that lines are often omitted by pure oversight, generally if there’s intentional changes, an editor is going to add material, not take material away.  Why?  Because the received tradition was considered so sacred.  That’s why pious errors almost always add – the scribe is not evil, trying to destroy the message, he is devout and trying to make the message clearer.  Thus, the kinds of errors I mentioned above are common – adding titles, adding verses to harmonize similar accounts etc.

What this means is that we should prefer the older and the shorter renditions of the text as more authentic.  Are these principles foolproof?  No.  But in principle and in many other contexts, these filters, "earlier" and "shorter" have proven to be sound ways of weeding through multiple accounts that have discrepancies to find the original reading.

The article you cite, defending the doxology, admits that it is not found in the earliest two manuscripts.  So they have to argue against the commonly accepted textual principles of Earlier and Shorter.  Their theory is that the doxology was simply skipped by the copyists of the two oldest manuscripts we have.  While it’s true, whole lines are sometimes skipped, when this happens scholars can see it is usually inadvertent.  Usually because two lines look similar, beginning or ending with the same word, and so as a scribe moves from original to copy, he mistakenly skips a whole line in between.  The context usually shows such inadvertent omissions for what they are: Oversight.

To maintain that the doxology is original, you have to believe that it was omitted by accident.  Since there’s nothing theologically interesting that hangs on the doxology, no theological agenda can be inferred for leaving it out.  But there’s also no parallel structure in the lines of the text that suggests why a scribe could conceivably overlook the line by mistake.  And it’s hard to imagine the exact same omission happening to two independent manuscripts that also happen to be the oldest ones.  And it’s hard to imagine why, if it’s original, that most of the earliest Church Fathers do not include it when they quote the passage.

This is why we shouldn’t put any stock in suggesting intentional corruption from church leadership. If the image of the Catholic Church as big powerful institution, ready and able to change the Word for its own purpose ever reflected reality, it most certainly does not apply in this time period.  When the oldest copies of Matthew were being written, the Church was mostly underground and decentralized.  There was no conspiracy possible, because too many copies were being written, and no means of control over them.  That's partly why they vary so much!

So, I think it’s unwise to jettison the sound principles of Earlier and Shorter simply to defend a version of the Bible translated in the 1600’s.  I love the KJV’s simplicity and beauty, but Christians who love the truth more, should want to know what Matthew actually wrote and defend that, not any version of that, no matter how cherished for sentimental reasons.

The website you cited is committed to defending the whole the King James Bible, every one of its renderings.  But this bias to protect King James’ translation at all costs and at every point, compromises objective scholarship.  For example, the doxology is just one instance of the KJV relying on documents that break the earlier/shorter rules.  The most highly disputed reading in the KJV is 1 John 5:7.  The so called “Johannine Comma” is basically a direct reference to the Trinity.  Which would be cool, but it’s not in any manuscript of 1st John made before the 12th century.

This is such a late variant that almost no scholars, believing or skeptical, think John wrote that phrase.  To defend this late addition as authentic proves that their bias for a specific version of the Bible has overruled their love for the Bible.  And that gives us reason to question why they’re arguing against accepted principles (Earlier and Shorter) anywhere else, like with the doxology in Matt 6.

Their blanket policy of defending the KJV begins to equate the King James Version of the Bible with Holy Spirit inspiration, which is very dangerous indeed.  In other words, it puts the level of authority for King James and his translation team on par with the Apostle Paul or Peter himself!  Why then cannot I claim this same level of authority to pick and choose the copies I deem favorable, and come up with RST – Rick’s Standard Translation?!  No, we need objective, logically sound, common principles that apply to textual criticism regardless of our rooting interest for this or that translation.

Of course, no one faults the KJV for passing on some non-authentic additions to the text.  They were working with the best text they had.  And not a single case of interpolation that the KJV passes on, affects Christian doctrine.  The Lord’s Prayer for example, teaches nothing different with or without the doxology.  It simply adds force to the call to honor the Father when we pray, which the prayer already included with “Our Father... hallowed be thy name…”

Also, using the doxology in public is not heretical or anything like that, so long as we know it was likely not original with Jesus – and yet using it can unite us, not so much with Jesus, but with the millions of Christians in the Church over the centuries who prayed Jesus prayer and from early on (from the 5^th century) often added this line to express our wonder and praise in response to his instruction.

As for your personal sense of spiritual power in the doxology, you may have discerned spiritual power for all sorts of reasons.  First, is your faith in Jesus. The spiritual power inside of communion and baptism, for example, is not the magic of the rite, but the faith the person brings to the rite which God responds to in grace and power. Remember, Jesus just warned us in the sermon (Matthew 6:7) about praying repetitive phrases thinking they somehow make you heard or blessed by the magic or amount of words.

Second, the phrase itself is actually scripture, even if it wasn't part of Jesus teaching here originally. See, the doxology sounds allot like a prayer from David: 

“Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.  Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.  Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.  Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name". 1 Chronicles 29:10-13

Sound familiar?  Read the bolded phrases in reverse order.  You are praying scripture, when you pray the doxology, it's just probably not what Jesus originally taught in Matthew 6. Like I said earlier, the scribes were devout Christians and many of their errors were inserting other scripture into scripture.

So the bare facts about the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer are these:  the oldest copies do not have it and neither do the oldest church fathers who comment on the passage. But if it feels right and powerful, that’s probably because it is a rough summary of David's beautiful and powerful prayer from another part of God's powerful Word.

What Your Opinion of Artificial Intelligence? (Siri etc)

Thanks for your question. 

My opinion of A.I. is that it will become more and more powerful and bring computing power to a very high level to more and more people.  But I don't believe it can ever become sentient as many people fear (Like Elon Musk for example).

Also, I think SIRI and Alexa are currently laughably far away from anything remotely resembling real intelligence or sentience.  Though such programs may get much closer to "feeling" like real people, I don't believe they ever could be.

As far as potential dangers involved in A.I., I believe they mostly involve prematurely entrusting too many processes, or life or social functions to the dictates of a program, no matter how sophisticated.  

The only reason we might launch ourselves into such a dangerous future is because A.I. will probably create increasing credibility in areas where we specifically take control out of the hands of people with greater and greater success.  For example:  with self driving cars.  Or in flight controls.  In some applications, the amount of data that a human operator has to sort through in a moment is just too great, and our machines can and will do a better job of it.  

The Boeing Osprey one example - a hybrid helicopter/plane, the idea was brilliant, but it crashed a lot early on for various reasons, but often because no pilot could manage the changing flight characteristics between rotary and winged flight, especially in difficult conditions.  The Osprey was about to be trashed before engineers developed an A.I. to manage flight control and now the aircraft is viable again.

However, we shouldn't forget what a computer is.  It runs algorithms.  An algorithm is a program, a set of rules that intelligent agents provide, followed by problem solving operations.  A computer is a really complex "if this, then this" machine.  When attached to all sorts of inputs, like images, temperature, air speed, language, musical notes, math laws, or sound waves, programs can crunch numbers a lot faster and enhance many human functions that approximate intelligence or even personhood.  

But a computer just runs programs, it doesn't think for itself.  Or, if you insist that future computers could have "thoughts" it never can have thoughts about its thoughts.  If you fear a computer could somehow become conscious, imagine a computer inside a room, then ask yourself where its mind is located.  You can't do it.  What will forever separate Mind from "A.I."?  Free will, and creativity.  Innovation.  There is an autonomy in real intelligence that A.I. can't imitate.

Part of the fears of A.I. come from people buying into a materialistic worldview ideologically.  Because I don't believe consciousness is an emergent property of matter, I don't believe it can be an emergent property of A.I.  If you believe that all there is, is matter then you must believe that mind emerged from matter over long millennia.  That's just an article of faith - since no observation or science says it can.  And if you buy that, as many do, then you will believe much more easily that the collated matter inside computers could spontaneously evolve into minds as well.

The glaring problem with this is that we become super confident in materialism at preciously the point where it's the weakest.  Evolution can tell us how genomes change over time due to shifting frequencies of certain genes due to survival differences in offspring.  That's it.  Meanwhile, the facts show the gene itself is a book, it's data!  The gene is written in a 4 letter chemical alphabet, but it's "meaning" transcends the chemical components it's written on.  That's what information is.  And right now, we don't have a clue how information could arise spontaneously from non-living, random chemicals. 

Nevertheless, if you are told enough times that information can come from random bits, and that free thinking entities came from non-living matter, we become susceptible to the idea that mind and consciousness could come from a Turing Machine! 

Not possible.

We see this exact same assumption-set in our overblown fears about the Alien question.  At preciously the point in the theory of evolution where it's the weakest (a self-reproducing cell arising spontaneously from non-living chemicals), we imagine that this unsupported theory is in operation all over the universe producing life randomly.  We don't have any working model for how it happened here yet, but that doesn't stop of us from postulating that it has to be happening all over the place.  Come up with a viable way non-living chemicals self-assembling into self-replicating complex biological machines could happen here first, then I'll believe the same process is making little green men all over the galaxy.

Science is now pointing to the fact that Mind underlays the universe, from its finely tuned laws to its irreducibly complex machines, to its code at the center of life.  Atheist Thomas Nagel surprisingly makes this very point in his book, Mind and Cosmos.  So it seems, Mind is fundamental, matter an emergent property of mind.  To turn all that observation around and begin to think matter could generate mind is not logical.  

I believe A.I. could kill us only if we prematurely entrust too much responsibility to our machines, but make no mistake, A.I. is just a machine.  Machines that enhance preexisting human intelligence and abilities, using human language, bound by rules given by human developers and having all its goals set by free thinking, creative humans.  The result is an obedient machine - like a car or a calculator - a really complex awesome machine, but a machine nevertheless.  You can't get a person out of these machines, even if they can produce music (which they can) or can outwit a Jeopardy champion (which they can).

The Discovery Institute challenges the prospect of "strong A.I." here: https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/robert-marks-on-the-lovelace-test/ and  here: https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/is-aivas-genesis-genius/

Why Is Moses' Life Saved by His Wife Circumcising His Son?

QUESTION: Why is Moses saved by Zipporah circumcising his son in Ex 4:24-26?

On the trip, at an overnight campsite, it happened that the Lord confronted him and sought to put him to death. 25 So Zipporah took a flint, cut off her son’s foreskin, and threw it at Moses’ feet. Then she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So He let him alone. At that time she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood,” referring to the circumcision. (HB)

ANSWER: No matter how you slice it, this passage is a little strange!  We seem to be plunged into some kind of weird spat that lacks any description of prior context, and without detail of important preceding action that might tell us what this is all about.  So even the best scholars are left with a fair amount of speculation to fill in those blanks.  This answer will therefore have plenty of speculation, but a core lesson is still very clear.

We begin to make sense of it, if we consider a few of the bare facts of the story:  Moses has had two sons.  They are clearly several years old by this point, and yet they have never been circumcised.  Why not?  This is a critical question but it's never answered in the text.

Moses is a Hebrew, and circumcision is what they do – it was a command given to their forefather Abraham and all his descendants (Gen 17:9).  Some have speculated that the Jews, living under Egyptian oppression, weren't allowed to for hundreds of year, so Moses also didn't do it.  But this cannot be true since there is no mention of a society wide neglect of this sign of the Abrahamic covenant for hundreds of years.  In fact, we do know the Hebrews neglected this rite when the freed slaves lived through the desert wanderings for forty years (Joshua 5:5).  But that very verse also notes that the previous generation that first came out of slavery were all circumcised.

So it might have come from family pressures, from Zipporah and/or Jethro (his father-in-law).  They were Midianites and thus probably ‘outsiders’ to circumcision.  Zipporah`s harsh reaction in 4:25 seems to indicate that the whole thing is arcane, disgusting, strange or unnecessary to her.  But Moses is not an outsider to circumcision; he must know it's a required sign of his participation in the Abrahamic covenant with Yahweh – the God his mother no doubt taught him about, the God he met personally in Midian at the burning bush.

Therefore, there is an implicit disobedience being exposed in this story.  And that begins to explain the seeming blindside God gives Moses as he travels from Midian to Egypt to challenge Pharaoh.  What if this is no blind side at all?  What if this is the culmination of a long standing tension between Moses and God and perhaps also between Moses and his in-laws?  What if Moses has not circumcised his sons, to please his in-laws ahead of pleasing God?  A God whose character and laws he is going to represent to the world in very short order!  And yet he, the law giver, hasn’t obeyed the first, most simple law!?

It’s like a preacher getting ready to go on a church planting tour and he’s never been baptized himself!  Or he’s never explained the gospel to his own family! 

Now, the weird thing is, Zipporah knows God is about to take his life for this offense.  So Moses' predicament can’t be a private revelation known only to himself.  Somehow, Zipporah knows that Moses is on death’s door.  And she also seems to know immediately what will turn away the curse.  This is interesting because it probably mitigates the horror we feel that God "sought to kill" the very man he, moments ago, chose graciously to be his instrument of liberation.  We should ask, how does she know Moses life is in danger?  How does she know it's God who is threatening that life?  And how does she know what to do about it?

I would suggest, all this implies that God had not made a verbal confrontation with Moses (as he had at the burning bush), but that perhaps Moses had become deathly ill on the journey.  The English says "God confronted him" which sounds like a harsh, physical fight, or a private threat.  But the Hebrew word simply means "came in contact with" - pagash.  So "confront" is not a bad translation, but I think we can put out of mind any kind of physical fight like the one between Jacob and the Angel.  There's no record of any words spoken in this confrontation.

Instead, a circumstance like a deathly illness would clearly be interpreted by them both as the hand of God and not some random event - especially since they were on such a great mission directly from God.  So perhaps Zipporah might have asked Moses why God was seemingly against them.  It might have been that Moses might then have confessed the problem:  “I haven’t done the simplest act of obedience to the Lord and his hand is against me.”

There's a subtle but important difference if we view the events unfolding like this.  To read that God sought to kill Moses, seems like God would off him for what we think of as a minor misdemeanor, meanwhile jeopardizing the much more important mission of liberating the Israelites without a care for either.  But what if the situation was more like Jonah?  The storm is a threat and directly allowed by God, and it was potentially deadly.  And Jonah knows it's deadliness is directed at him (Jonah 1:5).  It looks to Jonah and the men of the boat that God has come to kill the negligent prophet.  But no matter what it looks like in the short term lens, we know God has great plans for Jonah and the deadly storm will not end in death, and killing Jonah was never the point.

So likewise, here in Exodus, if circumstances came about which were potentially deadly, and were interpreted as discipline from God, the ancient author might look at the potential end (death) and speak of it as the end God was seeking.  But in reality it merely would be the threat of death which God wanted, in order to bring about change in Moses, before his great calling could come to pass.  The end of the story proves the threat of death was God's true aim, not to actually kill the man he has just commissioned.

So, if you are Zipporah and the threat of the death of your husband is before you, and he, (or you by some revelation) are told that disobedience in circumcision is the cause, you might feel manipulated!  Especially if it's your resistance to the rite which you know is the reason Moses hasn't performed it on his sons.  "You're going to die unless we do this repulsive thing?  Great!"  But now, what choice does she have?  So in anger she does the deed – is none too happy about it judging by her comment in verse 25!

You might ask why, if Moses knows the problem, can’t he fix it himself?  Well, this is another reason to presume a deathly illness has fallen on him that they interpret as God's death threat: if he’s literally on death's door, he can't do it himself… so she has to.  Then, she brings the evidence and throws it at his feet with her comment about him being a "bridegroom of blood".  In other words, “you have become a husband who required of me a strange, bloody sacrifice to keep you alive.”  The threatening plague (or whatever it was) lifts, Moses is healed, and off he goes to his greater mission, having finally (by force!) taken care of business at home – his first mission.

Now, regarding her phrase, “bridegroom of blood…” one scholar I read had a much softer and more romantic interpretation.  He also speculates that Moses has somehow come under a curse, an illness perhaps… but he says that it is Zipporah alone who is given insight from God as to the reason for this plague or curse of imminent death.  She is therefore heartbroken at the potential of losing her husband, and also that there is a standing offense against God in their home!

So, resolutely, she circumcises their son, and she touches Moses feet with the foreskin to associate the act with the father.  Not in spite or anger (the more natural reading), but rather as a request to God to graciously accept it as coming from Moses whose responsibility it should have been to do it.   All of this is an act of servanthood and love on her part.

But what about her comment, “Bridegroom of blood”?  This interpreter said it was a way of saying, “you were on death’s door, you were lost to me, but now, by this blood, its like you were given to me all over again, my ‘bridegroom of blood’.”  In other words, it's a reference to her gratitude in getting Moses back from the dead, "From Blood (Death), a Groom!".  Or yet another way: her marriage was threatened with termination but it's renewed through blood and she’s relieved and happy to have her husband back.

This second view is a much nicer way to read Zipporah’s attitude, certainly!  She’s a loving wife who hears God, takes action, and saves the day and is thrilled with her husband’s recovery vs. begrudging rescuer not at all thrilled with her man.

But either way, the passage has this to say:  Moses has clearly been disobedient about 'first things first'.  So you can see that this strange little story contains a profound lesson for ministers of the gospel needing to attend to their first ministry before they ever seek to venture into their larger Kingdom callings.  As Paul says to Timothy, when examining potential elders – make sure their "house is in order" first.

Isn't Science Better than Faith?

QUESTION:  I'm leaning toward atheism, because I think it offers a much richer description of the world than a faith perspective does.  All my Christian friends seem to shut their eyes when I challenge their understandings which they get from the Bible.  Science is a more elegant and authentic perspective on everything.  Isn't that a nobler path than religion which has entrenched ignorance and denied science?

RESPONSE: I really empathize with your frustration with Christians who shut down conversations about the nature of things, with the phrase, "the Bible says".  No end of damage has been done to civil discourse and a true understanding of the Christian faith by perpetuating a science versus faith war.

I understand what your Christian friends are thinking - they are probably a bit scared that some bit of scientific discovery refutes a particular biblical claim and thus the Christian faith looks vulnerable.  They don't want to entertain that.  And I understand what this looks like from your perspective:  that Christianity itself is constantly in retreat, being pushed back by science at every turn. It may seem to you that this is a reason to embrace atheism.

But i would suggest this is only a good reason to embrace science and not atheism.  And I would further suggest that the reason science is even a thing and the reason why it is "elegant" rests entirely on premises that only make sense inside a Christian worldview.   In other words, science depends deeply on spiritual/religious and specifically Christian ways of thinking about the world.  So a more reasonable and noble way to go would be to embrace both.

In his book “Stealing from God” Frank Turek makes the claim that all of science’s descriptions and even it’s very impulse borrows everything it has from the Christian worldview. The great scientific claim (by that I mean the primary hypothesis on which all other scientific hypothesis’ were ever built) is basically this threefold assumption:

the world is ordered and lawful, 

we can understand this, 

it is good to understand it. 

All science rests on those assumptions.  You won't do science unless this hypothesis makes some kind of sense, or you have some reason to accept these as starting premises.  Therefore, it is the grandest of all scientific hypothesis'.

But think about it, there is no reason, on atheism, why anyone would ever make those assumptions about the world. They are faith leaps, a priori “givens” that one either feels about the universe or does not. And on atheism, there is no inherent or logical reason anyone would go there.

Why, if there is no ordering Principle, no Mind, no Logos behind the world, would one think that at bottom, it would be ordered?  That is, layered with regular patterns, “obedient”, as it were, to invisible demands that are constant and unchanging? Wouldn’t the more natural assumption on atheism be that at bottom it would be disordered and chaotic?  Unstructured?  Un-mind-like? Unreasonable?  Un-math-like?

And even if it was ordered, on atheism, what confidence would one have that a human mind, a result of pure, unguided processes could understand any of this? (Darwin himself struggled with that notion mightily as he confesses openly in Decent of Man…). 

And even if you could assume we can understand it, on atheism, why would it be good to try to do so?  What's the point?  What is "noble" after all, on atheism?  It's a subjective feeling of a worthy enterprise, which is objectively meaningless.

Only Christianity provided the fertile ground to propose and explore the great scientific hypothesis, believing the world was a result of Mind, therefore it had inherent order, and therefore, we, made in the image of that Being, could have minds which correspond to the world made by that Great Mind, and therefore, it was good to understand it, as we were worshiping and glorifying the Maker by better knowing what he had made.

All pagan ages, and even pre-Christian atheistic thinkers (like some Greek philosophers) never thought that the world was understandable.  It was often specifically seen as the work of forces of chaos.  How could it be understood?  There was no benevolence or order to it, only mystery and fear-inducing arbitrariness.

There is a reason science was launched (only) in the Christian West – it wasn’t dumb luck. 

So now that Christians found out that all three assumptions behind Science were reasonable and supported by the evidence, atheists are happy to take those assumptions for granted and keep the study of the world going – but very few of them realize that every discovery they make about the world is actually confirming the spiritual premises on which all of science is built.  

There is a reason why only the atheists who live after the scientific revolution think that science is cool.  They stand on the shoulders of Christian giants, like Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Copernicus, Galileo etc.  Rodney Stark makes the bald point in Victory of Reason, that all the early scientists were not scientists in spite of their Christian worldview, but because of  it.  They were very explicit.  The idea that faith is a science blocker stands refuted on the inarguable historical fact that science was invented by Christians of deep faith.

So, no true scientific discovery ever refutes Christianity, but rather is another brick in the edifice of the worldview Christianity presents:  The world is a machine, a book, and it can be read and even reverse engineered.  For all our best designs come from looking at nature.

Now, I admit freely, it may refute some superficial understanding of the world we had which we thought was taught in the Bible.  Those are the places where the atheist loves to camp out and talk about faith losing the war with science.  

But they usually don’t realize that every time real science dispels an area of ignorance they are helping the larger cause of making a spiritual/ordered/Word-like/intelligible world a given, and that world does not make sense without God.

Did God Accept Jephthah's Sacrifice of His Daughter?

QUESTION: In the story of Jephthah, chapters 11-12 in Judges, Jephthah vows to God that if God allows him to win the war against the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first thing to walk through his door to greet him when he comes home as a burnt offering. God does not object, but accepts all of this, never once intervenes to tell Jephthah what a fool he was to make such a promise, he doesn’t spare the girl. He happily accepts the human sacrifice, and she is burnt to death as an offering to God.  Why is this?

ANSWER: Thanks for your question.  First, I should mention that many people believe Jephthah did not actually sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering.  Instead, they believe that Jephthah gave his daughter in service to the Lord as a lifelong virgin.  This view notes how the text stresses that she remained a virgin, not that she died.  This is possibly what happened, but it relies a bit too heavily on a unique rendering of the Hebrew and is contrary to a straightforward reading of the text.  For a good example of this approach look here.

Rejecting that, we're left with Jephthah actually sacrificing his daughter, tragic and horrifying as that is.  Every time I’ve read this, my heart revolts.  But then I remember that this is in fact, what you are supposed to think as you read the entire book of Judges.  Truly!

The theme verse of Judges is “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (17:6, 21:25).  During this, post-Moses, pre-King period, the nation of Israel is a loose federation of tribes.  Their religious identity doesn't have a strong unifying tradition and without that, everyone is just acting according to their own lights, doing whatever seems best to them.

So the entire culture of Israel is not really seeking God, not looking to his moral instruction, doesn't yet have a robust priestly tradition or king to enforce that instruction, and so they're just assimilating to the culture's values around them.  Look at the backstory of Jephthah and you see this clearly:  he was a son of a prostitute, from a polygamous home that rejected him and drove him away from the family inheritance, where he became a mob boss!  Which part of this situation looks like it was guided by any of the 10 commandments?

So the real message of Judges is that everyone was doing it their own way, including (in some ways), the Judges!  For more evidence, just keep reading to the story of Sampson.  Sampson was also a Judge, and yet also a liar and fornicator and extremely foolish in trusting wicked people, and he marries outside of Israel - something God explicitly forbade (Deut 7:1-4).  This doesn't discount that he was used by God to protect and save his people, as with Jephthah.

There are many more examples in Judges, but the writer is clearly wanting you to get a feel for the depravity of that time where there is no king, no overarching authority in the land, and while God was supposed to be the King, people had installed themselves as King in God’s place.  This is what is being taught. And that gets to a very important rule for correct bible interpretation:  you must discern the difference between what is being PREscribed, and what is being DEscribed.  

Do you actually think God is prescribing child sacrifice in this story? It's OK to kill your kid 'if you promised to' - do you really think that the Jews took that as the lesson?  So perhaps the problem is simply that God doesn’t say explicitly to Jephthah, “hey dude, if you sacrifice 'whoever comes out of your house', it might be, like, a human, and I uh, believe I was very clear about the whole, don't kill people thing..."  We all want God to step in and be more clear with Jephthah that it's wrong to kill your children... but how could God have been any clearer than this:

Lev 18:21-22: “You are not to make any of your children pass through the fire to Molech. Do not profane the name of your God; I am the Lord.” ?

If you think God should have repeated himself, there's this:

Deut 12:31-32: “You must not do the same to the Lord your God, because they practice for their gods every detestable thing the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.” 

Jephthah knows all this, since he seems to be very familiar with Mosaic history (Judges 11:12-28).  Yet he still kills his own grown child to fulfill a very foolish vow he made.  You have to dig a little to realize just how foolish it was.  Even if you assume Jephthah assumed an animal would come greet him, what if it was an unclean animal?  It would have been unacceptable!  Also, God says that one should never make a vow that will violate our conscience to carry it out (Prov 20:25).  He says never make an impulsive vow (Eccl 5:2-5).  Also, if Jephthah was so grieved by his vow, he should have known Moses allowed for a sin offering if a man had to void a impulsive oath (Lev 5:4,5).  It's no wonder there's no mention of God instigating this vow, there's nothing godly about it.

So here's how you should understand this:  Jephthah had heard the laws, probably knew them, but was influenced by the Canaanites (for whom child sacrifice was normal) and so felt more obligated by his vow, no matter how immoral or rash, than by the explicit law of God.

This ought to change the assumptions you've made about how God feels about Jephthah.  You assume, “God accepts this”, you even say “God happily accepts all this.”  What in the text gives you the impression that God happily accepts all this?  If you read the entire book (and remember no Bible author assumed people read only cut out verses without getting the whole picture), you see the author is saying the exact opposite.

Now, you might push back on that and say, but Jephthah is “anointed by the Spirit of the Lord”, so shouldn't we understand that everything he does has the sanction of God?  Actually, no.  In fact, back to Sampson, the idea of him being God's instrument as a Judge is directly tied to his disobedience to God's Law!!  He takes a wife from the Philistines, something God expressly forbade (Deut 7:3-4) yet this was "from the Lord" (Judges 14:4) as the means God would use to engage the Philistines to throw off their oppressive rule.

We simply have no biblical warrant for assuming that any person said to be used or anointed by God had God's approval for all he/she did.  David was said to be a man led by God’s Spirit, and yet he did several things that were explicitly horrible.  Same with Saul.  The only difference in those accounts is that their sinful actions are specifically condemned by a prophetic voice, which gives the reader God’s explicit feelings on the sinful action.

Yes, we lack such explicit condemnation here, but we would be very presumptuous to argue from that silence that “God happily” accepts child sacrifice – especially when we know very well how God feels about child sacrifice over and over again: Jer 32:35: “I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing. What an incredible evil…”  So much for “happily”.

Furthermore, it is a Jewish writing style to be frustratingly coy about such things.  I’ll give you an example.  Read the entire account of Solomon’s greatness in 1 Kings 4-11.  At first you are led to think, this author believes Solomon can do no wrong!  But if you know the backdrop of Moses (and all the writings of the Old Testament should be read with that knowledge), you realize that the author is not, in fact, praising Solomon, but condemning him!  For in acquiring all his wealth and power and foreign alliances and women, Solomon is breaking almost every single command Moses had laid out for kings in Deuteronomy 17!  

This is how the ancient Jews wrote.  They assumed you, the reader, knew some things; like, God’s hatred for child sacrifice, for example.  If you get that, then you know the author could not be whitewashing a Judge, he’s showing how bad it is that even the Judges had fallen to Canaanite practices.  The community wide sorrow at the end of the story does nothing to diminish this impression.

Now that anguish felt by Jephthah and his daughter is expected given the tragedy, but it also shows how they both seem to think that fulfilling the vow is the only viable moral course of action.  Basically his daughter says, "you have to do it" (Judges 11:36).  What an interestingly lopsided moral development – to believe God would value honoring of a vow (no matter how foolish) over the value of a human life.  As mistaken as he is, it does show a stunning commitment to promise keeping!  And that is what is behind all lopsided moral developments.  They are usually not driven by purely amoral lawlessness.  No, they are driven by putting one good value (in this case, honor) over all others (the sanctity of life, love, compassion etc).  And based on what?  What is "right in our own eyes".

So, speaking of lopsided moral developments, perhaps we've done the opposite today.  Our culture puts the value of honor so extremely low that, rather than put up with great personal cost to fulfill our responsibilities, we would prefer to treat literally millions of babies as badly as this one man did his grown daughter.  Is our moral moment, when people today also do “whatever is right in their own eyes” any better; We who dismember the bodies of fetuses who have done no wrong?  I think not.  If we were to write the moral history of our time, just the last 100 years or so, when the peoples in charge have explicitly rejected the ways of Israel’s God to do what is right in their own eyes, it would be a ghastlier read than Judges, by a landslide.