Flawed Theology

Guest post by Don Alabaster Let’s talk about God’s name and how it gives us clues about the origins of the Abrahamic faiths. Or maybe we should say his lack of a name.    “God” isn’t a name, it's a job title. You don’t go to work and refer to your boss as “Boss” or “Team Leader”.  Your Mom probably isn’t actually named “Mom”, either. But God does have an actual name! The Hebrew God of the Old Testament is named “Yahweh”, but even then it's not so simple.  Yahweh has many names sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible: YHWH (Yahweh), Adonai, Ehyeh, El, Elohim, El Shaddai, and Tzevaot, among others.  Rabbinic Judaism says that many of these names of God are so holy that they should never be erased.  I feel like I would have a lot of questions for this guy at happy hour Why did the Israelites end up with all of these names in their holy book? Because the Israelites were Canaanites before they were Israelites. The ancient Canaanite religion had an entire pantheon ...

Many are familiar with the story of Jesus riding majestically into Jerusalem on a donkey during the Triumphal Entry. What you MAY not know is that in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus rides into town on TWO DONKEYS.   Count 'em: two.  A mother donkey and her colt. It's unclear how Jesus was able to physically ride on two donkeys at once, especially when they were two different sizes.  Maybe something like this:  The most plausible donkey configuration...another possibility is to ride them like water skis But this little bit of weirdness in Matthew's gospel is overwhelming evidence that the anonymous author of Matthew was INVENTING fiction in order to fulfill Old Testament prophecy--or at least, what he UNDERSTOOD to be OT prophecy. In order for fulfilled prophecy to be actually compelling, it has to be something like this: Prophecy is written down Events actually happen that fulfill the prophecy Documentation is written about the events If Step #2 does not occur, the...

Judas Iscariot is well-known for betraying Jesus in exchange for 30 pieces of silver.  It may come as a surprise to learn that he died in two different ways in the Bible--and the stories are peppered with other contradictions too.   What did Judas do with the silver? In Matthew 27, he throws the silver back at the chief priests in the temple in a fit of remorse.  The counsel then buys a field. Acts 1:18 states that Judas bought a field with the money. Apologetic response: Judas indirectly bought the field via the priests. Counter Apologetic: The apologetic response is not the best explanation of the text.  Matthew clearly states that the priests bought the field, but Acts says "this man acquired a field"...and then goes on to describe his death.  This seems to imply that Judas acquired the field and then died. It also mentions nothing of the priests. Read independently of Matthew, nobody would infer that anyone else bought the field on his behalf....

What would reality look like if God were real? Is this really where God chose to reveal himself? Let's make the following assumptions. The God in question is omnipotent, omnipresent, loving, merciful, and omniscient (the Christian God) The God in question designed and created the entire universe, including humans Which scenario looks more likely? Thanks to Ginna Baker and C.S. for your help with this post! 

One of the common claims about the Bible is that it is inerrant --in other words, it is the divinely inspired word of God and every word of it is true.   This notion is false, and it's actually quite easy to disprove via the thousands of early biblical manuscripts in our possession today.   The ramifications of this are two-fold. If there are errors and mistakes in the Bible, then can we trust it? Would an omnipotent and omniscient God (who is SO powerful that he created the whole cosmos, millions of earth species and the entire human race) not bother to preserve the word that he divinely inspired? Especially if it were a matter of eternal life and death for his beloved children? The Bible was Copied by Hand In antiquity, there were no printing presses or copying machines.  Any material (not just the Bible) obviously had to be copied by hand by scribes.  Comparisons between manuscripts show that scribes made errors all the time--spelling errors, word swit...