Monday, December 18th, 2006

Daily Archive

December 18, 2006

Thomas Got a Bad Rap

Posted by Jason Dulle under Resurrection, Theology
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In the beginning of John’s Gospel John says no one has seen God, but the unique Son has unveiled him and shown the world who he is (1:18). The literary fulfillment of this powerful passage in John’s prologue is not unveiled until the end of John’s Gospel–John 20:28. While the great confession of the synoptics is Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, in John’s Gospel the great confession is that of Thomas: “My lord and my God” (Jn 20:28).


 

While we focus on Thomas’ doubt upon hearing reports of Jesus’ resurrection, he is the hero of John’s gospel. Thomas recognized Jesus as the Word “in the beginning.“ He properly saw Jesus for who He was: God manifest in human existence. It was Thomas who recognizes the unveiled God, and yet all we seem to recognize is Thomas’ initial doubt. Poor Thomas. He got a bad rap.

 

December 18, 2006

Star of Bethlehem: Natural or Supernatural?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Bible Difficulties, Theology
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In Matthew 2 we find the story of the wise men from the East coming to worship the newborn king of the Jews. The text says “the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was” (Mt 2:9b)

 

Was this star a natural or supernatural phenomenon? Both interpretations seem to be problematic. If it was a natural phenomenon, how could it be that the star stood specifically over Bethlehem? A natural celestial star would have naturally stood over every location in Israel, not just a tiny little town five miles from Jerusalem! That lends to the idea that the star was a supernatural phenomenon. But if it were supernatural, how is it that only the wise men picked up on it? Why weren’t the locals fascinated with this star? Why wasn’t anyone else drawn to the birthplace of Jesus through this star? Surely someone besides the wise men would have been drawn to a star that stood over a very specific location.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions for resolving this dilemma?

 

December 18, 2006

SD Court Perpetrates Common Ignorance on Human Life

Posted by Jason Dulle under Abortion, Apologetics, Bioethics, Politics
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It’s said that a lie told over and over eventually becomes the truth. That couldn’t be more true than it is in the abortion debate. Since at least the days of Roe v. Wade it has been popular to inject the “nobody knows when life begins” slogan into the abortion debate. Of course, anyone who knows a thing about embryology knows this common knowledge is really just common ignorance. When human life begins is a biological certainty.

In 2005 the South Dakota legislature passed a law requiring abortion doctors to inform mothers seeking an abortion that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” That was too much for federal district court judge, Karen Scheier, to handle. She slapped a preliminary injunction on the law in June 2005 because “unlike the truthful, non-misleading medical and legal information doctors were required to disclose, the South Dakota statute requires abortion doctors to enunciate the state’s viewpoint on an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue — that is, whether a fetus is a human being.” Nice try. Common ignorance strikes again, resulting in the death of more innocent human beings. Very sad.