CADRE Comments

Hebrews, Epistle to the.-I Canonical authority. Was it received and transmitted as canonical by the immediate successors of the apostles? The most important witness among these, Clement (A.D. 70 or 95), refers to this Epistle in the same way as, and more frequently than, to any other canonical book. Little stress can be laid upon the few possible allusions to it in Barnabas, Hermas, Polycarp, and Ignatius. It is received as canonical by Justin Martyr, and by the compilers of the Peshito version of the New Testament. Basilides and Marcion are recorded as distinctly rejecting the Epistle. But at the close of that period, in the North African church, where first the Gospel found utterance in the Latin tongue, orthodox Christianity first doubted the canonical authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews. To the old Latin version of the Scriptures, which was completed probably about A.D. 173, this Epistle seems to have been added as a composition of Barnabas, and as destitute of canonical a...

Proverbs, Book of. The superscriptions which are affixed to several portions of the book, in i. 1, X. 1, xxv. 1, attribute the authorship of those portions to Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. With the exception of the last two chapters, which are distinctly assigned to other authors, it is probable that the statement of the superscriptions is in the main correct, and that the majority of the proverbs contained in the book were uttered or collected by Solomon. Speaking roughly, the book consists of three main divisions, with two appendices. 1. Chaps. i.-ix. form a connected didactic poem, in which Wisdom is praised and the youth exhorted to devote himself to her. This portion is preceded by an introduction and title describing the character and general aim of the book. 2. Chaps. X.-xxiv., with the title, "the Proverbs of Solomon," consist of three parts:-X. l-xxii. 16, a collection of single proverbs, and detached sentences out of the region of moral teaching and wo...

Most people tend to think of God s a big man on a throne. They judge God by human standards. Like Dawkins argument that God would be more complex than his universe and thus less likely to exit. This is based entirely upon the idea that God is a magnified version of humanity. When I point this out atheists  scoff and insist that most people see God this way we Christian apologists have to as well. When I point out that Paul Tillich had this totally different view of God as being itself they insist that this is not a Christian concept. Paul Tillich the great theologian of the 20th century, was most noted for his seemly radical idea that God is "Being itself" or the ground of being, just what that means is very hard to put into words. Essentially it means that God is not a being but the basis of what  being is, being itself. There are no good analogies but the best I've come up with is like the difference between architecture and a single house. It is not a house ...

This came up for me on CARM once,when someone made an argument trying to show God is would have to create brute facts. Ohter atheists chimed in saying God w would be a brute fact. The meaning of the controversy is the difference between Paul Tillich's view of God as being itself, and the atheist understanding that "the universe just is." Tillich said that if we know that being has depth that it's not just "surface only" then we can't be atheists ( Shaking of the Foundations , chapter seven). The atheist understanding has long been their answer to arguments like the cosmological argument. When theists divide up mobes of being into necessary and contingent,the atheist merely says "well what if being just is, it has no meaning or reason for being its' just there?" Of course that's a possibility but it doesn't answer the question, and saying it doesn't make the depth we can see in being go away. What is meant by "depth...

click here Most people tend to think of God s a big man on a throne. They judge God by human standards. Like Dawkins argument that God would be more complex than his universe and thus less likely to exit. This is based entirely upon the idea that God is a magnified version of humanity. When I point this out atheists  scoff and insist that most people see God this way we Christian apologists have to as well. When I point out that Paul Tillich had this totally different view of God as being itself they insist that this is not a Christian concept.

        "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant." (Luke 1:68-69)         What did Zacharias mean when he called the baby in Mary's womb a horn of salvation? In order to answer that question, we must turn to the Old Testament to see how that figurative expression was utilized.         In the Old Testament, horns in many instances carried connotations of strength and honor (Job 16:15; Psalm 75:5-6; 148:14; Lamentations 2:3). God is described as being the horn of salvation in Psalm 18:2. Hence, the psalmist calls Him the mighty savior.         The title given to God in Psalm 18:2 is applied to Jesus Christ by Zacharias. In an indirect fashion, he is calling Christ God. He is the mighty savior of the Jewish people. He is victorious over darkness and sin. He...

The Free Will Defense is offered by Christian apologists as an answer to any sort of atheist argument such as the problem of pain or the problem of evil. The argument runs something like: God values free will because "he" ("she"?) doesn't want robots. The problem with this approach is that it often stops short in analysis as to why free will would be a higher value than anything else. This leaves the atheist in a position of arguing any number of pains and evil deeds and then crying that God had to know these things would happen, thus God must be cruel for creating anything at all knowing the total absolute pain (which usually includes hell in most atheist arguments) would result from creation. The apologists answers usually fail to satisfy the atheist, because in their minds noting can outweigh the actual inflicting of pain. Something atheists evoke omnipotence and play it off against the value of free will, making the assumption that an "all powerfu...

The Shroud of Turin is easy to dismiss as a hoax. It's right up there with Bigfoot. It began as a Medieval relic so how much easier could it be? Barrie Schwortz the photographer for the official scientific investigation team in 1977, the only team to officially study the shroud, said he had remarked that they would just breeze in,find a few brush strokes and go home and they get a free trip to Europe. That was the attitude for many of the team going into the process. They found no brush strokes. no paint., no way to explain the image. Everyone of the team wound up being convinced it;s the authentic   shroud of Jesus of Nazareth. These were all major technicians and scientists working for JPL and other parts of NASSA. They used the most advanced equipment 1978. There is a lot to be said against the shroud. It was dismissed in 1979 as a hoax due to carbon 14 dating which placed the date of the artifact in the middle ages. The problem is when the cloth was subjected to a fire...