Priority of The Inner Life With God

Most contemporary people base their inner life on their outward circumstances. Their inner life on their outward circumstances. Their inner peace is based on other people's valuation of them, and in their social status, prosperity, and performance. Christians do this as much as anyone. Paul teaches that, for believers, it should he the other way around. Otherwise we will be whiplashed by how things are going in the world. If Christians do not base their lives on God's steadfast love, then they will have "to accept as success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness, even their own selves, at the quotation of the day. They tremble, with reasons, before their fate." #TimothyKeller #Prayer

Textus Receptus vs modern critical text

I was recently asked why I don't read the KJV. I personally feel that that not many people even know how we got the KJV, or any of the other modern translations.

Believing sincerely that they were improving the New Testament text, Westcott and Hort rejected a number of familiar readings in preference for what they thought were more accurate readings. Since 1881 the majority of English translations of the New Testament - including the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version, the Revised English Bible, and the New Revised Standard Version - have used a text that is much closer to the one published by Westcott and Hort than the one issued by Erasmus. The main exception to this is the New King James Version, which is based on the Textus Receptus. Major differences between the Textus Receptus and a modern critical text include the following: (1) the omission or addition of substantial passages (Matt. 16:2b, 3; Mark 16:9-20; Luke 22:19b, 20, 43, 44; John 7:53-8:11; 1 John 5:7, 8); (2) the omission or addition of shorter passages (Matt. 6:13; 17:21; 18:11; 21:44; Mark 9:44, 46; Luke 9:56; Acts 8:37; Rom. 16:24); (3) the substitution of a word (or words) for another (1 Timothy 3:16; Rev. 22:14); and (4) the omission or addition of a single word or group of words (Matt. 6:4, 6; Cor. 6:20; 11:24; 1 John 3:1).

In the twentieth century the New Testament in Greek has been edited by both Protestant and Roman Catholics scholars. The most widely used forms of the text are the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (26th ed.) and the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (4th ed.). Other scholars, arguing that the text underlying the King James Version is closest to the originals, have edited The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text (1982). The differences between these various Greek texts are often significant, and cab be seen in the marginal notes provided in the standard English translations.

The Problem of Evil and Suffering

If God existed, he would be all-powerful and morally perfect. An all-powerful and morally perfect being would not allow evil to exist. But we observe evil. Hence, God does not exist.

I often times here such statements by skeptics claiming that if God truly existed would not allow so much evil in this world. Isn't God powerful enough to end the evil of ISIS? Isn't God powerful enough and all-loving to just end the epidemic disease of Ebola?

I believe we can add many problems we face on a daily basis, we often question the existence of God, "Why Lord, if you are real, do you allow this... or that...?"

There are many ways to understand the phrase "the problem of evil." I understand this phrase as a label for a certain purely intellectual problem - as opposed to an emotional, spiritual, pastoral, or theological problem (and as opposed to a good many other possible categories of problem as well). The fact that there is much evil in the world (that is to say, the fact that many bad things happen) can be the basis for an argument for the nonexistence of God (that is, of an omnipotent and morally perfect God. But I take these qualifications to be redundant: I take the phrases "a less than omnipotent God" and "a God who sometimes does wrong" to be self-contradictory, like "round square" or "a perfectly transparent object that casts a shadow."

That God is omnipotent means that he can do anything - provided his doing it doesn't involve an intrinsic impossibility. (Thus, even an omnipotent being can't draw a round square. And God, although he is omnipotent, is unable to lie, for his lying is as much a intrinsic impossibility as a round square.) To say that God is morally perfect is to say that he never does anything morally wrong - that he could not possibly do anything morally wrong. If omnipotence and moral perfection are nonnegotiable components if the idea of God, this fact has the following two logical consequences.

(1) If the universe was made by an intelligent being, and if that being is less than omnipotent (and if there's no other being who is omnipotent), the atheists are right: God does not exist.

(2) If the universe was made by an omnipotent being, and if that being has done even one morally wrong thing (and if there isn't another omnipotent being, one who never does any anything morally wrong), the atheists are right: God does not exist. If, therefore, the Creator of the universe lacked either omnipotence or moral perfection and if he claimed to be God, he would be either an imposter (if he claimed to be omnipotent and morally perfect) or confused (if he admitted that he was less than omnipotent or less than morally perfect and still claimed to be God).

One premise of the simple version of the argument set above - that an all-powerful and morally perfect being would not allow evil to exist - might well be false if the all-powerful and wholly good being were ignorant, and not culpably ignorant, of the the existence of evil. But this is not a difficulty for the proponent of the simple argument, for God, if he exists, is omniscient. The proponent if the simple argument could, in fact, defend his premise by an appeal to far weaker these about the extent of God's knowledge than "God is omniscient." If the simple argument presents an effective prima facie case for the conclusion that there is no omnipotent and morally perfect being who is omniscient, it presents an equally effective prima facie case for the conclusion that there is no omnipotent and morally perfect being who has even as much knowledge of what goes on in the world as we human beings have. The full panoply of omniscience, so to speak, does not really enter into the initial stages of a presentation and discussion of an argument from evil. Omniscience, omniscience in the full sense of the word, will become important only when we come to examine responses to the argument from evil that involve free will.

Faith in Training

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and from, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

The first step is to recognize the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

#CSLewis

When Worlds Collide

The word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses.... In the first it means simply Belief - accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people - at least it used to puzzle me - is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue - what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad.....

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then - and a good many people do not see still - was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down in the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason in one side and emotion and imagination in the other.

The Rule of Love

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to shoe him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his 'gratitude', you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.

- from Mere Christianity 1905 George MacDonald, whose writings greatly influenced Lewis, dies at age eighty. 

1956 Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is published by Geoffrey Bles, London 

#CSLewis 

Decision Making

Decision making is an art, which requires the decision maker to combine experience and education to act.

Learning as a Necessary Weapon

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now - not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground - would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local error of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

- from "Learning in War-Time " (The Weight of Glory)

1947 Lewis appears on the cover of Time magazine, with the caption "Oxford's C.S. Lewis, His Heresy: Christianity"

1958 Reflection on the Psalms is published by Geoffrey Bles, London.

#CSLewis

Learning as Vocation

A man's upbringing, his talents, his circumstances, are usually a tolerable index of his vocation. If our parents have sent us to Oxford, if our country allows us to remain there, this is prima facie evidence that the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life. By leading that life to the glory of God I do not, of course, mean any attempt to make our intellectual inquiries work out to edifying conclusions. That would be, as Bacon says, to offer to the author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie. I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God's sake. An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain. We can therefore pursue knowledge as such, beauty as such, in the sure confidence that by doing we are either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others to do so. Humility, no less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God. That relevance may not be intended for us but for our betters - for men who come after and find the spiritual significance of what we dug out in blind and humble obedience to out vocation...The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be a the appointed for us.

- from "Learning in War-Time" (The Weight of Glory) #CSLewis

The Claims of Religion: Do All to the Glory of God

It is for a very different reason that religion cannot occupy the whole of life in the sense of excluding all our natural activities. For, of course, in some sense, it must occupy the whole of life. There is no question of a compromise between the claims of God and the claims of culture, or politics, or anything else. God's claim is infinite and inexorable. You can refuse it, or you can begin to try to grant it. There is no middle way. Yet in spite of this it is clear that Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. He even assumes that Christians may go to dinner parties, and, what is more, dinner parties given by pagans. Our Lord attends a wedding and provides miraculous wine. Under the aegis of His Church, and in the most Christians ages, learning and the arts flourish. The solution of this paradox is, of course, well known to you. "Whether ye eat or drink or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

All of our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful I'd they are not. Christianity, does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one; it is rather a new organisation which exploits, so its own supernatural ends, these natural materials.

- from "Learning in War-Time" (The Weight of Glory) #CSLewis

Gunfight Rule #1

Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns
 Bring all your friends who have guns.

17 August 1942

Just prior to dawn, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion under Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson landed on Makin island from the submarines NAUTILUS and ARGONAUT. The next day the Marines left the island after destroying a seaplane base, two radio stations, a supply warehouse, and killing about 100 Japanese soldiers.

Marine Corps Special Operators Renamed | Military.com

Marine Corps Special Operators Renamed | Military.com

9 August 1942

With the Guadalcanal airstrip secure after heavy fighting with the Japanese, the 1st Engineer Battalion commenced work on the runaway using captured equipment.

Something to consider

Muslims who say that differences in the Gospels are evidence of their unreliability rarely ever consider that the Qur'an contains parallel accounts of the same event that differ in detail, order, and content.

What did Lot say to the people of Sodom? Well that depends on which Surah we read:

Surah 7:80 - Will you commit foulness such as no creature ever did before you? For you come with lust to men instead of women; you are indeed a transgressing people!

26:165-166 - What! Of all creatures do you come unto the males? And leave the wives your Lord created for you? No, but you are people who transgress.

27:54 - Will you commit abomination knowingly? Must you practice lust with men instead of women? No, you are but a people that are ignorant.

29:28-29 - You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you. Do you come unto men, and rob on the highway, and practice wickedness in your meetings?

The literary nature of our primary translation, The Majestic Qur'an, means that the same Arabic terms sometimes are translated by English synonyms. The nature of the one word fahishat, rendered as "foulness," "abomination," and "obscenity," is defined here as "come unto the males," i.e., homosexual behavior. Buy in Surat 7 and 27 the Qur'an uses an interrogative, "Will you commit?" and in 29 add a reference to the sin's uniqueness, "as no creature did before you," yet one uses the decorative and the other the interrogative.

Surah 27 adds "knowingly" (literally, "while you see"); 29 includes further sins (robbery and wickedness). Surah 7 records the condemnation as "you are a transgressing (mus'rifuna) people"; 26 says you are a people who transgress" using a different term, aduna. Surah 27 moves further from both by saying they are ignoring (tajhaluna).

With the Gospels, we can see for instance why Matthew or Mark would use different terminology, as they drew from a common oral translation and sought to reach differing audiences in differing contexts. But how, in the Islamic view, can those three Qur'anic statements be harmonized? Did Lot say this three times?

On a simple literary level, these texts are very similar, yet we are looking at the Qur'an and specifically at the belief that these are the very words of Allah without human intermediation. The less conservative Muslim could suggest Muhammad used different terms and cadence and phraseology to produce a pleasing poetic form for his recitations. But Muslim orthodoxy has concluded that none of this can enter into the analysis of these parallel texts.

The heavenly Qur'an has nothing to do with Muhammad's thoughts, knowledge, or even means of expression. So why would Allah recite Lot's words in different ways? Did Lot speak of other sins, as in Surah 29, or not? Did he say "knowingly," as in Surah 27, or not? Islamic orthodoxy's demands as to the nature of the Qur'an revelation require answers to these questions.

What did the people of Sodom say to Lot?

7:82 - Drive them out of your city! They are people who keep themselves pure!

26:167 - If you cease not, O Lot, you will soon be of the outcast.

27:56 - Expel the house hold of Lot from your city, for they are people who purify themselves!

29:29 - Bring Allah's torment upon us if you are truthful!

There is wide variation as to the people of Sodom's response among these four accounts, all narrated, we are told, by Muhammad. It is easier to note the connections than the differences (with Surah 29 being even more "different" than the other three) Surat 7 and 27 refer to Lot and his people as those who "keep themselves pure" or "purify themselves" and include a command to expel or drive them out (with only a slight difference in forms). One could easily assume that each text gives a selection of many shouted-out replies borne of anger against Lot, but this does not mesh with the Islamic belief in the nature of the Qur'anic revelation.

How did Allah punish the City of Sodom?

7:84 - And We rained a rain upon them. See how was the end of the criminals!

26:173 - And We rained on them a rain. Zsnf dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

27:28 - And We rained a rain upon them. Dreadful is the rain if those who have been warned.

29:31 - We are about to bring down upon the people of this city punishment from the sky because of their corruption. And We have left a clear sign for people who understand.

In the fifth parallel account, Surah 11, that final judgment is styled, "So when Our commandment came to pass, We overthrew [that city], and rained down on them stones of baked clay, one after another." This provides a parallel with Surat 29 leaving 7, 27, and 26 closely parallel, again with slight differences in wording and phraseology. Surah 7 directs people to "see" how their end came about, while 29 refers to this judgment as a "clear sign people who understand," and 26 also speaks of if as a sign, yet which did not bring belief.

Note here the precisely identical Arabic text of Surat 26 and 27 in phraseology. Why is this significant? Because it shows the author could provide exact duplicate narration if he wished. In the majority of the parallels we can identify in the text, he does not. Though thus raises the question of why, the orthodox Islamic view of inspiration and revelation does not allow us to pursue the matter, for it denies that the author's intentions can be discerned-the author is not Muhammad or a later reactor, but Allah himself.

Can One Justifiably Infer Jesus' Resurrection on the Basis of Empirical Evidence?

1. If it cannot be established that Jesus transformed into a supernatural body after He rose from the dead, then the Resurrection cannot be established. 
2. If cannot be established that Jesus transformed into a supernatural body after He rose from the dead. 
3. Therefore, the Resurrection cannot be established. 

It seems to say that even if Jesus somehow survived, there is no evidence whatever that He rose in an immortal/indestructible body. Therefore, the argument grants a resurrection of sorts, but not the supernatural kind the New Testament describes. Thus, the divine claims of Christ cannot be established by resurrection evidence. 

This argument seems to assume that one must establish proof of Jesus' resurrection by proving He had a supernatural body after He was raised. This really isn't an argument against Jesus' resurrection. Rather it's an attempt to prove that you can't justifiably infer Jesus' resurrection on the basis of empirical evidence. It's an attempt, not to refute the resurrection of Jesus, but to undercut a historical argument for Jesus' resurrection.

Borrowing From the Tanakh and Jewish Mythology

Compared to what very little knowledge the Qur'an author had with even the basic stories of the Gospels, let alone anything else in the Christian Scriptures, he shows a significantly greater familiarity with the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures. Numerous stories well known to Jews and Christians appear in the text (at times in oddly edited forms). However, as noted above in reference to Christian sources both historical and legendary, the Qur'an seems to make no differentiation between legendary Jewish tradition and what actually appears in the Hebrew Scriptures. We are struck with the strong contrast between the New Testament's immersion in their actual text and the Qur'an sharp disconnection from and ignorance of the same (even though, once more, familiar with oral stories and myths drawn from it).

The most oft-cited example of the Qur'an reliance upon Jewish traditions and myths is Surah 5:30-32:

30. The spiteful soul of the other [Cain] led him to the killing of his brother, so he slew him and became one of the losers. Then Allah sent a raven scratching up the ground, to show him how to hide his brother's naked corpse. He said: "Woe is me! Am I not able to be as this raven and so hide my brother's naked body corpse?" And he became repentant. For that cause We ordained for the Children of Israel that whosoever kills a human being for other than [the crimes of] manslaughter or corruption in the earth, shall be as if he had killed all mankind; and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our Messengers came to them of old with clear signs, but afterwards many of them became committed to excesses in the earth. 

Jews and Christians familiar with Genesis 4 know well what happened when murder entered into the experience of the nascent human family. But where did the bird scratching on the ground come from? God sent a raven to teach a murder how to hide his victim's corpse? This is a strange addition. 

However, the Jews of Muhammad's day would not have been surprised, for once again again, in the sources containing the stories that were being told, we find a similar tale. A number of Jewish sources record tradition, dating to the second to third centuries AD, narrating an event that took place after the murder of Abel. While Adam and sat next to his corpse, a raven came up, scratched in the earth, and buried another bird. Adam and Eve take a lesson from it and bury Abel's body. In the Qur'anic version, Cain does the burying, buy in both a raven inspires the human family in the instance if its first death. 

How certain are we that this is Qur'an's source? Surety is increased greatly in that another extra-biblical Jewish tradition is referenced in this same section. The key text on mankind's unity, on the killing of one as the killing of all, is found almost word for work in the Jewish Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5: 

F In the case of a trial for property cases, a person pays money and achieves atonement for himself. In capital cases [the accused's] blood and the blood of all those who were destined to be born from him [who was wrongfully convicted] are held against him [who testifies falsely] to the end of time. 

G For so we find in the case of Cain who slew his brother, as it is said, The bloods of your brother cry (Gen. 4:10). 

H It does not say, "The blood of your brother," but, "The bloods of your brother" - his blood and the blood of all those who were destined to be born from him.

I Another matter: The bloods of your brother - for his blood was spattered on trees and stones. 

J Therefore man was created alone to teach you that who ever destroys a single Israelite soul is deemed by Scripture as if he had destroyed a whole world.

K And whoever saves a single Israelite soul is deemed by Scripture as if he had saved a whole world. 

So in the matter of only a few sentences, we find the Qur'an drawing from Jewish traditions that date from the second through the fifth centuries prior to its writing. The story of the raven is hardly found in the Mishnah, is one of the central theological affirmations in Islamic theology. That we can identify a preexisting source if such a vital section is extremely important. 

The next text often pointed to is the story of Abraham in Surah 21. Abraham refuses to worship the gods of his people. Upon destroying some of their idols, Abraham testifies that there is only one God. We pick up in ayah 68:

They said: "Burn him and help your gods, if you will!" We said: "O fire! Be coolness and peace for Abraham!" They wished to snare him, but We made then Losers.

There is no reference to such an incident, of course,  in the Hebrew Scriptures. But again, in the Jewish stories and traditions that existed in the centuries prior to the Qur'an's writing, we find a reference to Abraham, the destruction of idols, and a fiery pit. The second-century Midrash Rabbah has a strikingly similar story: Abraham smashes idols, and then is taken to the king, who, upon tiring of arguing with him, has him cast into a fiery furnace, and God saves him from the fire. The same pattern emerges: An ahistorical Jewish tradition is taken by the Qur'an's author to be historical and seemingly on the same level and authority as as the actual text of the Hebrew Scriptures. 

The Qur'an and the Cross

Nothing in the Qur'an suggests its author had even the slightest knowledge of the New Testament centrality of God's redeeming act in Christ on the cross. The author knew nothing of Paul's epistle to the Romans or the book of Hebrews and their in-depth case for and teaching about the Messiah's redeeming death. The author seems blissfully unaware of the evidentiary mountain that substantiates the crucifixion. And yet with a fee seconds of oral recitation, the Qur'an places itself, and all who would believe in it, in the direct opposition not only to the Injil (Gospel) but also everything history says on the subject. The question must be asked: Who, truly, is following mere conjecture here? Those who were eyewitnesses on the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem? Or the author of the Qur'an, more than half a millennium later?

Why not the Qur'an

When we encounter unclear and uncertain Qur'anic texts, we often can turn to the hadith for at least the interpretation ascribed to the first few generations after Muhammad. As far as we can tell, for at least two hundred years after Muhammad, no Muslim could  anything he ever said or did that was relevant to Surah 4:157. It has no meaningful presence in the hadith. On other texts where the Qur'an an directly contradicts the Bible, we can find lots of commentary in that literature, but for this key and central ayah we find nothing. It is as if this ayah appeared out of nowhere and plopped itself down in the middle of this Surah and made itself at home.

What about our New Testament? First, the Byzantine text is not that bad, and what we have in medieval MSS in general adds material to what we already have in the Alexandrian witnesses. The autographic wording can still usually be found in it. Further, out of the 400,000 or so variants we have among the Greek witnesses, the standard Byzantine text disagrees with the Nestle text in only 6577 places. Second, although many of the variants here are very important, not one changes any cardinal belief if the Christian faith. Third, we have many early MSS. For example we have three times more NT MSS within the first 200 years than we have in 2000 years for the average classical author. Further, we have more than 100 MSS of the NT within 300 years of its completion, while the average classical author has none within 300 years.

Isolation

A second position, extremely popular among theologians and scientists for much of the twentieth century, conceives of the proper (if not actual) relationship of science to religion as one of isolation. According to this view, science and religion never conflict so long as each is properly conducted. Of course, any conception of science and religion that effectively makes conflict impossible will in all likelihood preclude fruitful interaction as well, hence the appropriateness of the term "isolation" as a name for this view.

Fitting into the Pattern

It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. If I knock out my pipe I alter the position of great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmonises it in a twinkling with all other events. It is one more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to, and they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cataract if events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all other events. If God annihilated or creates or deflects this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. We see every day physical nature is not in the least incommodes by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary process of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern #CSLewis

Dunford Picked As Next Marine Commandant | Military.com

Dunford Picked As Next Marine Commandant | Military.com

The Glory of God

The glory of God also means his supreme importance. The Hebrew word for "glory" is kabad, which means "weight" - literally God's weightiness. Fortunately, we have an English word that has the same way - it is word matter. Matter means "as opposed to the immaterial, something solid, something substantial," but it can also mean "importance." And therefore, when the Bible says that God is glorious, more than anything else or anyone else. And if anything matters to you more than God, you are not acknowledging his glory. You are giving glory to something else.

All Good Masters Are Servants

The question we want to ask about Man's 'central' position in this drama is really on a level with the disciples' question, ' Which of them was the greatest?' It is the sort of question which God does not answer. If from Man's point of view the re-creation of non-human and even inanimate Nature appears a mere by-product of his own redemption, then equally from remote, non-human point of view Man's redemption may seem merely the preliminary to this more widely diffused springtime, and the very permission of Man's fall may be supposed to have had that larger end in view. Both attitudes will be right if they will consent to drop the words mere and merely. Where a God who is totally purposive and totally foreseeing acts upon a Nature which is totally interlocked, there can be no accidents or loose ends, nothing whatever of which we can safely use the word merely. Nothing is 'merely a by-product' of anything else. All results are intended from the first. What is subservient from one point if view is the main purpose from another. No thing or event us first ir highest in a sense which forbids it to be also last and lowest. The partner who bows to Man in one movement of the dance receives Man's references in another. To be high or central means to abdicate continually: to be low means to be raised: all good masters are servants: God washes the feet of men.

Unifying Awareness

Situational awareness is almost a Marine Corps training tenet. Attention to detail is probably the first situational awareness concept that a Marine learns. From that point on each Marine gains tool that permits him or her to execute multiple tasks simultaneously or linearly depending on the specialty training and core competencies taught and learned in the Marine Corps. Some of these interrelated tools used to enhance situation awareness are the skills, concepts, and competencies listed below.

• Estimating the situation - METT-T and METT-TSL
•  Utilizing the OODA Loop 
• Development of paragraph one, situation, of the five paragraph order
• Cognitive skills development and application 
• Effective communications skills using any media and format 
• Combining experience, training, and environmental factors

The combination of these creates a mental awareness that allows the Marine to make better decisions, which is the goal of situational awareness.

OODA Loop Goal

The goal of the OODA Loop is to develop decision-making superiority. Decision-making superiority occurs when leaders and Marines can make decisions faster and more effectively than the opposition. The ability to make simultaneous decisions by exercising the human mind correlates to enhanced performance in every aspect of life and the operating environment.

Elements of Tactical Decision Making - Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to combine observations, experiences, and theoretical solutions into one practical solution. Depending on the depth and breadth of the problem, the solution may have to be multilayered, meaning analyzing and subdividing it into multiple smaller problems which can be solved more simply and easily, and by subordinates, either independently, simultaneously, or in linear fashion to achieve the desired output.

The Boyd Cycle

The Marine Corps' heritage binds the past and future together via commitment to warfighting excellence in the present. A keystone of Marine Corps training and education is the commitment to develop leaders that can out think the opposition.

Colonel John Boyd, USAF (Retired) served as a distinguished fighter pilot in Korea and Southeast Asia. Boyd's theory and experience was a great contribution to the military. Boyd realized that power and speed were not the quantifying factors to air superiority, but merely a conveyance coupled with the most powerful weapon, the human mind.

Warfighting Decision Forces

In warfighting, the Marine making decisions should understand the operational perspective of the Marine Corps and its commanders, and the relationship between doctrine and decision making, which is not normally discussed. The section addresses the interrelationship between warfighting doctrine and its influence on decision making.

Lack of Moral Courage

Decision making requires leaders to make tough decisions in the face of uncertainty and to accept full responsibility for those decisions. Anything less undermines authority and discipline.

Logos

John 1:1 presents Christ by means of the term logos. The Greek term means, "word," "statement," "message," "declaration," or "the act of speech." In John 1 logos has a specialized meaning; it is described as hupostasis (Heb. 1:3): a distinct, personal existence of an actual, real being. John 1:1 shows that "the Word was with God, and the Word was God" are both true at the same time. This means that there has never been a time when the Logos did not exist with the Father.

John then shows that the Word has agency in creation. Genesis 1:1 teaches us that God created the world. John 1:3 lets us know specifically that the Lord Jesus Christ in His preincarnate state actually did the work of creation, carrying out the will and purpose of the Father.

We find also that the Word is where life is found. John 1:4 says, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men." Because Jesus is the location of life, He is the only place where it may obtained. A quality of life is being described here, eternal life. This kind of life is available from God with His life-giving power through the Living Word. We have eternal life only as Christ's life is in us.

The world's misunderstanding of the Logos is hinted at in John 1:5, "The light shines in the darkness, but darkness has not understood it." The passage continues by saying that John the Baptist came as witness to that Light. "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though was made through him, the world did not recognize him" (John 1:9-10). We want to focus our attention on this point. The Creator of the world, the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, was here in the world, but the world did not recognize Him. The next verse gets more specific. "He came to that which was his own [His own place, this earth He had created], but his own [His own people, Israel] did not receive him" (John 1:11).

The heirs of the covenant, the physical descendants of Abraham, did not receive Him. Here we see a very prominent theme that runs through the Gospel of John: the rejection of Jesus. When Jesus preacher, some Jews mocked. When Jesus said, "Your Father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad," the Jews in unbelief said, "You are not yet fifty years old... and you have seen Abraham!" Then Jesus declared, "Before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:56-58). The present tense of the verb "I am" (Gk. eimi) indicates linear being. Before Abraham was, the Son is.

Although many rejected the message, some were born of God. In John 1:12 we read, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." In other words, Jesus was redefining the whole reality of becoming a child of God. Up to that time, one had to be born into or join the specific, called, covenant people, Israel, to have that opportunity. But John emphasizes here that the spiritual message, the powerful gospel, had come and people had received Jesus, the Logos. Receiving Him meant receiving the right or the authority to become children of God. Some of those who received Him were Jews and some were Gentiles. Jesus broke down the dividing wall and opened up salvation to all who would come and receive Him by faith (John 1:13).

The essential truth about the Logos who is being described here is in John 1:14. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." Here we see that the term logos is being pressed into the service of describing Jesus Christ, but that the reality of His person is more than the secular meaning of the concept is able to bear. To the ancient philosophic Greeks, a fleshly logos would be an impossibility. However, to those who will believe in the Son of God, a fleshly logos is the key to understanding the Incarnation. In fact, this is exactly what the Incarnation means: The preexisting Logos took on human flesh and walked among us.

Servant and Prophet

The context of Acts 3:12:26 is the healing of the man at the Beautiful Gate. On the occasion of this miracle, a crowd gathered and Peter preached to them. He began with the fact that God glorified "his servant Jesus" (Acts 3:13) after the Jerusalem Jews killed Him
 They killed Jesus even though He is "the author of life" (Acts 3:15). What a paradox! How do you kill the Author of life? That ought not to have happened and yet it did.

"Servant" (Acts 3:13) is another important title of Jesus. Some versions of the Bible translate "servant" (Gk. pais) in this passage as "child." Pais can mean "child," but it should not be rendered that way in Acts 3 and 4. The child Jesus did not die on the cross; the man Jesus died, bearing the sins of the world. The context here demands the meaning "servant," for in Acts 3 a servant Christology begins to emerge. Starting with Acts 3:18, notice how the Old Testament prophecies vindicate Jesus as the Messiah in ways that for the Jews were very unexpected. The Jews expected the Christ to rule, not suffer.

Furthermore, Peter states that Jesus will return (Acts 3:20-21) - which is not mentioned in Acts 2. Then, after the Second Coming, God will restore everything that was prophesied in the Old Testament. Please notice that we are not now in the time of the restoration of all things. The text here clearly puts that in the future. When it is time for God to restore everything, Jesus will come back in His second coming. The Millennium will begin and the whole reality of the age to come that is shown to us in several books of the Bible will be initiated.

Next, Peter presents Jesus as the Prophet like Moses (Acts 3:22-23). Moses declared, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him" (Deut. 18:15). Naturally, one would say that Joshua fulfilled this. Joshua, the follower of Moses, did come after him and was a great deliverer in his own time. But another Joshua, the came (in the Hebrew language the names Joshua and Jesus are the same). The early Christians recognized Jesus as the final fulfillment of Moses' prophesy.

Then, at the end of this passage (Acts 3:25-26), Peter reminds his audience of the covenant with Abraham, which is very important in understanding Christ. "'You are heirs of the prophets and the covenant God made with your fathers. He said Abraham, "Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed." When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.'" Clearly, Jesus now brings the promised blessing and is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, not just the fulfillment of the Law given through Moses.

A New Testament Understanding of Jesus by David R. Nichols

The titles given in the New Testament help us understand Him in terms that were meaningful in the ancient world He lived in. They also help us understand His uniqueness.

Lord And Christ 

What kind of Christology do we have in Acts 2:22-36? Peter starts out by reminding the Jews of the miracle-working power of Jesus that they all knew about. This was important. Paul's characterization, "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom" (1 Cor. 1:22), is accurate for both peoples. But as in any reasonable proclamation of Jesus, Peter quickly begins talking about the death of Jesus - He was crucified, but God raised Him from the dead! Peter and many others were witnesses to to the fact. Then Peter gives a lengthy explanation of the Resurrection and some Old Testament passages that prophesied it. Using responsible hermeneutics, he proves Psalm 16 cannot be applied only to David, but also surely applies to Jesus (Acts 2:29, 31).

Jesus, now exalted to the right hand of God, has, together with the Father, poured out the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). This explains the speaking in tongues and the proclaiming of the good things of God heard by the Jews from fifteen different nations who were gathered from the Dispersion for the Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem. It was indeed a miraculous sign.

Next, Peter attests to the truth of the Ascension by using Psalm 1101 (see Acts 2:34-35): "The Lord said to my Lord: 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'" This adequately explains the Lord Jesus Christ who was here in the flesh on the earth and then ascended into heaven where He received His present status.

Acts 2:36 clearly declares what we must believe in order to receive the salvation of God's Messiah. '"Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.'" Notice the continuity expressed here. This exalted Jesus is the same Jesus who was crucified. The exalted Jesus is the same Jesus who was crucified. The two titles "Lord" and "Christ" are the prime terms in Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost. The tie to Jesus' earthly ministry is significant here, for God the Father's making Jesus Lord and Christ is the ultimate stamp of approval on His life and ministry - His miracles, His signs and wonders, His teaching, His death, His resurrection.

The Issues of Methodology by David R. Nichols

In any responsible study, the methodologies used to analyze the data and produce the conclusions must come under scrutiny. Methods that have been subjected to scrutiny will produce stronger studies than those that have not. The study of Christology suggests at least the following areas as frontier zones for methodology.

The couplet "doing verses being" raises the issues of functional versus ontological Christology. A Christology that primarily defines Jesus what He did is a functional Christology. A Christology that primarily defines Jesus by who He is is an ontological Christology. Traditionally, these two approaches have been aligned with two different kinds of theology. Functional Christology has largely been advanced by biblical theologians and exegetes, and ontological Christology has largely been advanced by systematic theologians. Since functional Christologies stress Jesus' action on the earth as a man, they tend to emphasize Jesus' humanity at the expense of His deity. Ontological Christologies stress the eternal existence of God the Son and tend to emphasize Jesus' deity at the expense of His humanity. Notice that these are tendencies, not absolute positions. Through careful balance of the statements of the Word of God, either approach could present an orthodox position.

One of the most profound mysteries of the Christian faith is the union of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. No subject excited more controversy than this one in the time of the church fathers.

Our study of Christology would not be complete unless we considered the relationship that exists in the New Testament among Christology, salvation, and the prophesied kingdom of God. For the New Testament writers, Christology does not stand alone as an abstract category of knowledge. Their primary concern is God's salvation of humankind through the one Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:19-20; Acts 2:38; Rom. 1:16). Therefore, from the exegetical point of view, the existence of God's salvation on earth creates a need for understanding the One who brought it. Once this fact is acknowledged, it is possible to take the theological point of view, wherein Christology is a discrete subject, worthy of investigation in its own right. Then, because salvation is the starting point in the New Testament's message, the cross of Christ should be taken as the central defining element, since, according to the New Testament writers, that is where our salvation was accomplished. The Cross therefore defines the organic relationship that exists between the doctrine of salvation and Christology, at least at the exegetical level.

There is also the issue of the prophesied kingdom of God in its relationship to Christology and salvation. When Jesus is called Christ (Messiah, "Announced One") we immediately are in the realm of prophesy. This title carried an enormous load of prophetic meaning for the Jews, both from the Old Testament canonincal books and from interestamental apocalyptic writings. The fulfillments of many Old Testament prophecies in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show the inbreaking of the kingdom of God.

The importance of acknowledging prophecy's role here is that it helps us understand how Christianity differs from Judaism. While Judaism expected the Messiah to play a key role in the political deliverance of the nation, Christianity teaches that Jesus is truly God's Messiah, even though He declined political rulership in His first coming. In Christian theology this leads to the necessity of the Second Coming as future reality. Both of these truths are based, of course, on the teachings of Jesus reported in the New Testament. The two comings of Christ are two poles of God's plan, each necessary to the total picture of God's Messiah, Jesus. This split in prophecy is not possible in the theology of Judaism and remains one of the great barriers between these two religious systems.

Learning from our failures

When we fail, we shouldn't adopt the sour grapes attitude of the fox in Aesop's fable. Instead, we should analyze our failure to see what lesson we can learn from it #WilliamLaneCraig

The Lord Jesus Christ

The Lord Jesus Christ is the central figure of all Christian reality; therefore, the truths about Him are central to Christianity. Any theology that deemphasizes Christ by placing humankind in the center cannot ultimately disclose to us the fullness of what the Bible teaches. Jesus is the fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies, and He is the author of the teaching of the New Testament. He is understood by Christians to be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, as well as the coming King (Rev. 13:8; 19:11-16).

Pay Day for the Mullahs | FrontPage Magazine

Pay Day for the Mullahs | FrontPage Magazine

8 March 1965

The 9th Marines Expeditionary Brigade landed at DaNang, Republic of Vietnam as the first U.S. ground combat troops to be committed to conflict. The 3,500 men arrived both across the beach with Battalion Landing Team 3/9, and DaNang Airfield with Battalion Landing Team 1/3 #USMC #usmcquotes #MarineHistory

Is the Islamic Conception of God Morally Inadequate? | Reasonable Faith

Is the Islamic Conception of God Morally Inadequate? | Reasonable Faith

Military Thinking

Military thinking is a hybrid thought process that blends critical thinking skills and warfighting doctrine into a unified and focused solution.

Decision making in a military context is the ability to choose which projections or solutions would be best implemented to accomplish mission success.

The decision-making can be generalized into two categories:

1. Analytical decision-making approach 
2. Intuitive decision-making approach 

Analytical decision making is an approach used to analyze a dilemma and determine the best solution. The problem solver, or team of problem solvers, systematically employ a process that consists of the following actions: 

• Carefully taking a problem apart
• Collecting a testing the information required for the problem or task
• Conducting a comparison of the solutions or options 
• Selecting an alternative, which should preferably be the best solution. 

11 February 1962 - Today in Marine Corps History

Brigadier General John Hughes. Russell was appointed U.S. High Commissioner and personal representative of the President of the government of Haiti. This nine-year assignment placed the future Commandant in supreme command of both the occupying American forces and the Haitian Gendarmerie.

1 February 1967:

Operation Prairie II begun in Quang Ti province by elements of the 3rd Marine Division. During the 46-day search-and-destroy operation which terminated 18 March, 93 Marines and 693 enemy were killed.

29 January 1991 - Today in Marine Corps History

The first serious ground fighting of Operation Desert Storm broke out when Iraqi troops mounted on an attack into Saudi Arabia along a 40-mile front. Iraqi units centered their efforts on Kjafi, a port city six miles south of the border. Saudi and Quatari troops, supported by artillery from the 1st Marine Division and attack helicopters and other allied coalition aircraft, recaptured the town two days later.

On Authority by C.S. Lewis

There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us: baptism, belief, and the mysterious action which different Christians call by different names - Holy Communion, through Mass, the Lord's Supper. At least, those are the three ordinary methods...

I cannot myself see why these things should be conductors of the new life....But though I cannot see why it should be so, I can tell you why I believe it is so. I have explained why I have to believe that Jesus was (and is) God. And it seems plain as a mater of history that He thought His followers that the new life was communicated in this way. In other words, I believe it on His authority. Do not be scar do by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there. Is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority - because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seem the Norman Conquest or the defeat of Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them; in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority on other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.

22 January 1969

Operation Dewey Canyon, perhaps the most successful high-mobility regimental-size action of the Vietnam War, began in the A Shaun/Da Krong Valleys when the 9th Marines, commanded by Colonel Robert H. Barrow, and supporting artillery were lifted from Quang Tri. By 18 March the enemy's base area had been cleared out, 1617 enemy dead had been counted, and more than 500 tons of weapons and ammunition unearthed.

Luke Bryan - If You Ain't Here To Party (ACM Sessions)