Episode 114: Andrew De Loach, esq.
We have apologist extraordinaire Andrew De Loach, esq. of “Take the Stand” sitting in on the famed 3rd microphone. We talking “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” here on the God Whisperers.
Tags: Apologetics
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“Why would a loving God send people to hell?” A counter-question could be, “Why would a just God bring such a miserable person such as me into heaven?” The answer, of course, would be through the merits of Jesus Christ and for His sake.
According to the wikipedia crucifixion article, one survival was noted by Josephus.
“And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.”
http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/autobiog.htm
I realize this is an old episode, but I just heard it today on Pirate Christian Radio. At one point, the statement was made that using historical evidentiary arguments rescues the apologist from circularity (i.e. beginning with a presupposition that the Bible is the Word of God). However, the apologist merely shifts his presupposition towards the reliability of empiricism. So, one uses his historical evidence to show the reliability of the New Testament manuscriputs, but then the apologist must show that using historical evidence in this way is valid. This will continue until the apologist reaches his presupposition. I say this not to discount the use of evidence when discussing the Gospel but to point out that all of us have presuppositions. Furthermore, it is one thing to convince someone that the New Testament has been accurately transmitted from the original autographs,and another to say that it is the inspired Word of God. Obviously, one cannot use historical evidence to prove this claim. At some point, the apologist must appeal to the authority of Scripture itself.
Actually, the initial presupposition of the evidentiary argument is only that the NT record is historically reliable and accurate as documentary evidence of what Jesus said and did. One need not presuppose that the NT texts are privileged as the “Word of God.”