The government in Northern Ireland has banned the word "brainstorming" in some workplaces, insisting it could offend those with epilepsy and other brain disorders. Specifically, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast says it "does not use the term brainstorming ... on the grounds that it may be deemed pejorative." According to London's Guardian newspaper, the department will now use the term "thought-showers" instead.

Pardon me, but do you have any duct tape? I need some for head -- it's GOING TO EXPLODE!

Labels: politics

ERROR NO. 3-- Constantine was the bad guy who suppressed the earlier Gospels and imposed the canonical Gospels and the doctrine of the divinity of Christ on the church. In fact already well before Constantine and before the Gnostic Gospels we not only have the four canonical Gospels circulating together as authoritative sources in the Church (probably as early as 125 A.D since Irenaeus knows of this fact), but in fact we have the Muratorian canon list which lists these Gospels as authoritative in and for the church.

ERROR NO. 6-- The Dead Sea Scrolls along with the Nag Hammadi documents are called the earliest Christian records (p. 245, see also p. 234). This is so false, it is what the British would call a howler. It’s an error that even a student who had only taken an introductory course in the NT would know is false. The Dead Sea Scrolls are purely Jewish documents. There is nothing Christian about them. There is also no evidence any of the Nag Hammadi documents ever existed before the late second century A.D. With the exception of the Gospel of Thomas (early 2nd cent.).

Brown correctly points out that "the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." Indeed, the Bible's composition and consolidation may appear a bit too human for the comfort of some Christians. But Brown overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313.

Sir Leigh Teabing says, ‘To fully understand the Grail, we must first understand the Bible … The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven … [it] is a product of man … not God … and it has evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions. History never had a definitive version of the book. … Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence … his life was recorded by thousands of followers … more than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament … Who chose which gospels to include? … The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine’ (p.231). The plethora of historical fallacies continues unabated but this one-page sample is sufficient to illustrate the point.

The Bible testifies of itself that it is indeed ‘God-breathed’ (2 Timothy 3:16). Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God (2 Peter 1:21), and Jesus said ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’ (Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33). Neither has its meaning been lost or corrupted through ‘countless translations.’ The original languages were Hebrew (OT, with a few sections in Aramaic) and Greek (NT). Modern English versions, for example, are based on meticulously prepared composites of ancient Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, of which thousands are extant. The Dead Sea Scrolls showed that copies of OT books from the first century BC were almost identical to the previously earliest Hebrew manuscripts from a thousand years later, so copying errors have not been a significant problem.

The gathering of the New Testament documents began within the first century. Paul referred to Luke’s Gospel as ‘scripture’—graphè (1 Tim 5:18 cites both Deut. 25:4 and Luke 10:7 as such). Peter recognized that Paul’s writings were ‘scripture’—in 2 Peter 3:15–17 he refers to them as authoritative and then refers to ‘the other scriptures,’ and he warns his readers to beware of those who twist the meanings to their own destruction.

This process of recognizing the true and separating it from the false gained momentum in the second century when the heretic Marcion produced his own, very reduced, list of authorized books. Since the caricature always comes after the original, this implies that the main features of the NT collection were in place at that time. By the time of the Council of Nicea in AD 325 (which Constantine convened, but it was the gathering of 318 bishops that made the decisions) the issue was not even debated. The deliberations of the Council focused on the deity of Christ, and the authority of the four gospels on that subject was taken for granted by all the bishops present. The final statements regarding formal recognition of the 27 books of the New Testament that we have today (what we call the Canon) were made at African synods (at Hippo and Carthage) in AD 393 and 397.

It’s important to note that the Canon was decided by God and merely recognized by man. Leading NT scholar F.F. Bruce put it well:

‘The NT books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, …. [Church] councils [did] not impose something new upon the Christian communities but codif[ied] what was already the general practice of those communities.’

One of the world’s greatest authorities on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger, pointed out:

‘You have to understand that the canon was not the result of a series of contests involving church politics. … . You see, the canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These documents didn't derive their authority from being selected; each one was authoritative before anyone gathered them together.’

For the more knowledgeable, the story really falls apart when Brown claims the Gospel of Mary Magdalene to be an ‘unaltered’ (p.248) and therefore true account of these events (yet even the words he quotes from it betray its fraudulence). However, this Gnostic ‘gospel’ is known only from three fragmentary manuscripts, and dates from the middle of the second century at the earliest. Before this or any other Gnostic ‘gospel’ was written, the church far and wide recognized the authority of the four canonical gospels. But a less knowledgeable soul might easily be duped.

The Will to Win

Monday, June 27, 2005
By Neil Cavuto

I wonder what would have happened if there were television crews at Valley Forge when Washington's troops were freezing and the British were winning. Or when Union troops were getting their butts kicked in battle after battle, month after month, in the early days of the Civil War.

Or in the many months after Pearl Harbor was attacked and the Japanese were scoring one victory after another in the Pacific.

What if cameras were there and the relentless headlines were everywhere?

What would we make of the casualty counts, the losing battles and the hopeless reports? What would we have done?

Would we second-guess Washington? Or Lincoln? Or Roosevelt?

Probably. I don't know. But this much I do know: History would be very different.

Maybe the public appetite for bad news at the time would have trumped the record of good news that came after that time.

Maybe we would have quit, stopped, put down our arms and moved on.

I suspect we'd still be under British rule, or a divided nation after a Civil War, or a losing nation after a World War.

Thank God we were patient then. I wonder if we're patient now.

Then we didn't have the luxury of journalists second-guessing soldiers. Now I wonder whether our soldiers worry we're second-guessing something else: their mission.

I have no doubt we can win this war. I have serious doubts whether some in the media even want us to.

There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to Jesus’ time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was divine. In his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes that “the all but universal Christian conviction in the [centuries prior to the Council of Nicaea] had been that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human. The most primitive confession had been ‘Jesus is Lord’ [Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11], and its import had been elaborated and deepened in the apostolic age."

The Council of Nicea did not define that Jesus, the Son of God, was divine (since that was accepted by all Christians) but addressed the issue of the exact relationship between the Son and the Father: Are they equal? One in substance? Two Persons? The Council specifically addressed and condemned the popular heresy of that time, called Arianism, which insisted that the Son was a lesser god, created by the Father at some point in time and not eternally existent.

In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief, termed the "Rule" or "Canon" of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ."

The term used here—Lord, Kyrios—deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for "Jahweh," the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself was kyrios.

The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord.

ERROR NO. 2-- Jesus was portrayed as simply a man or a great prophet in the earliest historical sources, but was later divinized at the Council of Nicea. (pp. 231-34) This is patently false. Jesus is called THEOS some seven times in the NT including in the Gospel of John, and he is called Lord in the divine sense numerous times as well. No historian I know of argues that these texts postdate the Nicean council. It is the documents written in the first century about Jesus and his movement that suggest he was the divine Son of God. The Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon merely formalized these beliefs.

“Whether we like it or not, Postmodernism is here.” These were words that echoed through my head at a recent Emerging Church convention I attended. No matter how much we like or dislike that statement, the obvious effects of postmodernity is being felt everywhere in American culture - in our arts, schools, churches and politics. Most experts would agree that we are living in a time of transition, a time in which modern thought still exists and still influences while it is being nudged off the map by postmodernism.

One of the byproducts of this transition in American religion has been pluralism, a belief which states that all religions are equal. In fact, we have no right to even critique or challenge the validity of another person’s faith. As Christians in America, we dare not even suggest that Jesus is the only way.

Dr. Marcus Borg, whose books can be purchased at any Lifeway Christian store or Barnes & Noble, is an advocate of this Philosophy. He writes:

“Religious pluralism is a fact of life in North America, and in the world. To absolutize one's own religion as the only way means that one sees all of the other religious traditions of the world as wrong, and dialogue, genuine dialogue, becomes impossible. Conversion can be the only goal.”

Dr. Borg, goes on to describe how all the “major religions of the world are valid and legitimate,” and “to be Christian in this kind of context means to be deeply committed to one's own tradition, even as one recognizes the validity of other traditions.” In essence, Borg’s argument is that we are simply Christian because we have been born in America just as if we were born in Iran we would be Muslim. There is some truth to that argument; there is no denying that our culture has a strong influence on ones faith.

But does that necessarily validate all world religions as equal? Is Allah really the same as Yahweh? Can there really be many paths to God?

So, my question is this, how do evangelicals respond? How do we respond in a world where truth is believed to be subjective? In a world, where Scripture is no longer viewed as the Word of God, but mans best attempt to describe a religious experience? Lastly, how do we respond to American spirituality that is so pluralized, that it is not uncommon to practice Kabbalah, quote the Koran and have your baby baptized in the Roman Catholic Church?

PS - Is conversion such a bad goal? After all, we get the word conversion from the Latin convertere “to turn around;” which is a close cousin of the Greek and English forms of repent. Of course, if we use that type of language, than there has to be some sort of acknowledgment of guilt or wrong. In addition, it would imply the turning away from one thing and turning toward another.

On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Who is Richer?
For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Phil. 1:21)

One verse of Charles Wesley's hymn "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" begins with a remarkable thought:

Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in Thee I find.

Wesley continues by speaking of how Christ can raise the fallen, cheer the faint, heal the sick, and lead the blind. He seems to be saying that the answer to any human need is in Christ. Whatever I need to have done for me or to me, He can do.

The opening lines seem, though, to speak of something else. They speak of neither God's gifts nor His acts. They speak of Christ himself, that He is better than anything He can do for us or give to us. Wesley seems to be saying that Christ himself is enough. We need no more.

It is fair to ask whether a person who has everything plus God is really richer than a person who has only God. A person, if we could find one, who has only God is certainly not in poverty; he is as rich as the person who has everything plus God. God is enough.

Perhaps this is some of what Paul is saying when from prison he tells his Philippian friends that for him to live is Christ, and that therefore he has learned to be content in any state (Phil. 1:21; 4:11). It is certainly what Jesus is saying when He tells the rich young ruler to sell all that he has and follow Him. Jesus is not calling the young man to less. He is calling him to more, to himself, and He is enough. Have you found Him so?