Writing
Theological Writing
Select a category from the drop down menu, or browse the latest articles below.
Did Jesus Exist? A Critical Appraisal of Richard Carrier’s Interpretation of the Pauline Corpus
Richard Carrier is an ancient historian who has risen to prominence as the lead advocate of Jesus Mythicism, a school of thought that entertains the idea that Jesus of Nazareth may never have existed at all.
Hard Evidence the Book of Acts Was Written by an Eyewitness? A Reply to Bart Ehrman
All of the contradictions Ehrman alleges between Acts and Paul’s letters are the result of over-readings, tendentious interpretations, and arguments from silence. The forcefulness that Ehrman ascribes to those, combined with his dismissal of the difficult details Luke gets right concerning geography and other matters as “completely irrelevant” is astounding, and really reveals his unscholarly bias against the New Testament.
The Resurrection of Jesus: The Evidential Contribution of Luke-Acts
Any discussion of the evidence for the resurrection must first ascertain what the original apostolic witnesses claimed and whether those claims are best explained by the resurrection, or by some alternative hypothesis.
Book Review: Why Four Gospels? The Historical Origins of the Gospels (Second Edition), by David Alan Black
Black argues that the testimony of the patristics (which supports Matthean priority) is often not factored in to the scholarly assessment of the synoptic problem. Indeed, he observes, “Today the academic guild, both in Europe and North America, assumes that the patristic evidence is basically legendary and unreliable,” (p. 32).
Defending Inter-Synoptic Undesigned Coincidences: A Response to Kurt Jaros
Jaros does not seem to appreciate the value of casualness. He fails to understand how an undesigned coincidence can occur in the same document, or how a writer might provide information that unintentionally corroborates (in a manner that can be detected) some fact that the said author is also aware of.
Can a Christian Lose Their Salvation? An Analysis of the Warning Passages in Hebrews
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Biblical evidence on whether a professing Christian who walks away from the faith forfeits their salvation, with a particular focus on the book of Hebrews.
Finding Contradictions Where There Is None: A Review of Jesus, Interrupted (Part 3)
Since it is a fair assumption that Ehrman has chosen his best and, to his mind, most convincing examples of alleged contradictions in the gospels and Acts, the abject failure of Ehrman’s proposed contradictions should give us renewed confidence in the substantial trustworthiness of the Biblical accounts.
Unexplained Allusions and the Credibility of the Gospel Accounts
An unexplained allusion refers to when a source mentions superfluous details that are not relevant to the story. Typically, when inventing a story, one would want to minimize unnecessary details, especially if those unnecessary details are subject to investigation.
Artless Similarities: Another Category of Evidence for the Reliability of the Gospels
This category of evidence, though seldom discussed in contemporary apologetics literature, contributes to the cumulative case for the substantial trustworthiness of the gospel accounts.