The Growing Assault on Physical Resurrection

One of the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith that is quietly under assault both in scholarly and popular opinion is the doctrine of the physical resurrection of the body. This is a distinguishing doctrine of orthodox Christian faith. 

Unfortunately, much of popular entertainment draws more from neo-platonic and neo-gnostic views of the afterlife than they do from the Bible. Even many believers speak of the afterlife as if our souls float off to heaven where they live forever in disembodied bliss. Or they talk as though separation from our material bodies is itself a form of spiritual liberation. I recently read that 55% of those who identify as Christian are either unsure of or outright deny physical resurrection. This erosion of confidence in physical resurrection is not only resulting from popular culture. It is also taking root among the teachers of the Church.

Not too long ago I wrote a series of posts to deal with this issue in response to a couple of local Bible Study teachers who were enamored with preterist interpretations. These teachers were particularly influenced by James Stuart Russell's preterist arguments in his book The Parousia published in  1878. Russell is a convincing writer and clearly an intelligent man but unfortunately his interpretive paradigm led to heretical conclusions. Even orthodox teachers such as R.C. Sproul have felt it necessary to address Russell's work (Sproul tried to acknowledge some of Russell's points while offering an orthodox alternative to his conclusion). In the age of the internet this type of material is resurfacing at an accelerated rate forcing the Church to re-address arguments it has long-ago resolved.

The assault on resurrection, however, is not only coming from preterists or the "people in the pews". Some scholars have also rejected the historical doctrine. The latest scholar to do so is David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian who is no stranger to marginal theological opinions. I wasn't planning to mention his arguments because Hart isn't likely to be much of an influence in the thinking of many people in churches I know. Essentially, Hart argues that our modern assumptions prevent us from properly understanding what ancient people would have understood by the language of resurrection. That is a common tactic lately of those who wish to instantly establish their own novel positions against traditional interpretations. He then argues for his own unique view of what resurrection means.

I had no plans to ever mention Hart or his views but today I read a response to Hart by theologian Brian Mattson that I thought was excellent. I thought Mattson was effective in using very basic observations to punch a Volkswagen sized hole in Hart's assumptions. He does a very good job of showing that physical resurrection has been the doctrine of the Church since the beginning. 

If you are interested in the topic it is worth the read: https://calvinistinternational.com/2018/08/09/ancients-resurrection-david-bentley-hart/

Fragments of Truth (Re)Released!

Ultimately, the Christian faith stands or falls based upon the reliability of Bible. If the message of the Scripture is not true then we have no basis for Christianity. The truth claims of the faith are inseparably linked to the text of the Bible. This is why the enemy of men’s souls exerts so much energy attacking it. From the very beginning Satan has aimed to cast doubt on the Word of God thus cutting at the very root of faith. The very first words of the enemy that are recorded are “did God actually say...” (Genesis 3:1 ESV)

His tactics have not changed. The enemies of the Gospel do not always need to directly attack the message, sometimes they can be very effective simply by casting doubt upon whether we actually even possess the message. Nearly every believer has or will eventually run into several common attacks upon the reliability of the New Testament.

We hear nonsense about how we can’t trust what it says because translation is like some sort of giant game of “telephone”. People who know virtually nothing about Church history will confidently repeat the gross untruth that the Emperor Constantine chose books that only supported his view to be included in the Bible at the Council of Nicaea. We hear that the early Christians transformed the stories about Jesus the rabbi into stories about Jesus claiming to be God. Some will simply claim that the early copyists were uneducated and sloppy so our copies are unreliable.

Most of the popular distortions are so lazy and riddled with obvious mischaracterizations that they have little impact other than to reinforce the misconceptions of people who already agree with them. There are, however, more well thought out and sophisticated questions about the integrity of the biblical text. There are scholarly and better-argued positions from which these popular tropes devolve. So then, how strong are the skeptical arguments? Did God really say what our modern Bibles record?

For those who want to learn more about the texts from which our current Bibles are translated I highly recommend this faithlifeTV video. It was a single showing release several months ago and I missed it. I was happy to see that it was re-released this week. You can buy it to stream on FaithlifeTV or you can buy it as a DVD. If you are curious about what is behind the text of your Bible or want to know more about the manuscripts used in textual criticism and analysis you will find this worth the time. The video covers several aspects of important New Testament manuscripts including how they were produced, how they are dated, the extent to which they agree with one another, etc.

The video does a good job of showing the remarkable story of the transmission of God’s Word. As a Christian, it was a great reminder of how absolutely unique this Book is in every way. Not only its contents, but its history as well. No other ancient book can come close to the stability the New Testament text. God has spoken... and quite clearly.

Using Interlinear Bibles

Over the past 30 years the combination of the growth of the internet, cell phones, and the development of Christians as a distinct end market for publishers has led to an overwhelming flood of Bible study materials. Although general Bible knowledge is decreasing, those who are interested can now freely access materials that would have been available only to scholars and specialists (if at all) only a generation ago. One of the tools that have increased in popularity are interlinear Bibles. They can be a very useful tool when used properly, but can also create confusion when they are not.

Interlinear Bibles have the Greek and/or Hebrew text of the Bible with additional information appearing in between the lines of original language text (thus the name interlinear). The amount of additional information varies but there is a standard format that is typically used. Also, these tools are now increasingly used by people who do not have any training in Greek or Hebrew but knowing a few basic things about the translation process is needed to get the most out of the tool.

I have been asked a few times through the years if I could explain why a translation differs from what is in the interlinear. Recently, I was asked if I could help someone explain why English Bibles show John 1:1 as

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

While the interlinear says:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.”

Obviously, these two are vastly different in meaning and implication. So, what is going on in this verse?

The first thing we need to understand is that interlinear Bibles are not translations. Many include a translation but the “interlinear” data that causes confusion are usually not the translations. Let’s look at our example from the second half of John 1:1. It probably looks something like the following in your interlinear although it might be arranged in a slightly different order.

Line 1:     καὶ		θεὸς		ἦν		ὁ		λόγος
Line 2:      καί		θεός		εἰμί		ὁ		λόγος
Line 3:      CLN		NNSM		VIAI3S		DNSM		NNSM
Line 4:      kai Line 5:      and		theos God		eimi to be		ho the		logos word
Line 6:      and		God4		was3		the1		word2
Line 7:      89.92		12.1		58.67		92.24		33.100

Let’s walk through what we have here…

Line 1: This is the actual Greek text of John 1:1b

Line 2:  This is the “lemma” or dictionary form of the Greek words. Since Greek words change

depending upon how they are used, adding this lexical form allows the reader to quickly locate them in a Greek lexicon or other reference tools.

Line 3:  This line provides codes that explain the part of speech and grammatical

function of the word. The “CLN” under the first word (the Greek word for “and”) tells us that it is a Conjunction-Logical-coNnective. Interlinear’s that includes this kind of information will have a key that explains what the codes mean.

Line 4:  This line is a transliteration of the Lemma or dictionary form. This is simply changing the

 lexical/dictionary form of the word from the Greek alphabet to the English alphabet.

Line 5:  This line is the lexical value of the dictionary form found in line 2. It is not a

translation of the verse. It is just providing an English equivalent for the dictionary form of the word. Notice, for example, that the verb “to be” appears in the present tense whereas John used the past tense in the actual Greek text.

Line 6:  This is where the trouble usually starts. This line is often referred to as a “word for

word” translation so people assume that this is somehow more accurate than their English translation. This is really only a translation in that it gives an English rendering of each word in the Greek text but it is not a completed translation and is not more accurate than what you have in any good English Bible. Since Greek functions differently than English you cannot simply translate the words themselves. If you look closely, you will notice there are small numbers below several of the words in this line. Those numbers indicate the order the words need to be in for it to convey in English the same meaning that is in the Greek. If you are using the interlinear properly you will see that it is actually telling you the same thing as the English translation. There is no conflict whatsoever.

Line 7: This line includes cross references. In this case, it is to the Louw-Nida Greek-English

lexicon. You will often see Strong’s numbers or cross references to other well-known lexicons and translation tools.

Your interlinear may have more or less information but what we have looked at here is typical of what you are likely to see. An interlinear is a very helpful tool once you understand how they work. If not used properly, however, they can lead to confusion. In English we use word order to convey meaning. For example; we know that the sentence “Jack gave the teacher an apple” is not the same as “the teacher gave Jack an apple” even though the same words are used. In Greek, however, the word order does not determine who is doing what to whom. In Greek, you could say “an apple the teacher Jack gave”, “gave Jack an apple the teacher”, or any other variation. Rather than word order Greek uses changes to the form of the words themselves and the use of other indicators such as the article to show the reader their function in the sentence.

In our example from John 1:1b even though the word order in Greek is “and God was the Word”, that sentence does not communicate what we would mean by the same word order in English. When we look at the way John wrote this sentence we know for certain that a Greek speaker would understand the sentence to mean “and the Word was God”. In this case the words God (θεὸς) and word (λόγος) are both written in the form they would have if they were the subject (nominative case). You can also see this indicated in the interlinear by the “NN” indicating they are nouns in the nominative case. Even though this is the case, we know that God is not the subject because of the way John uses the Greek article (ὁ). The fact that the word for “God” does not have the article but the word for “Word” does tells us right away that the subject of the sentence is “Word” rather than “God”. To express this in English we have to change the order and put “Word” before the verb in the sentence.

Just like any other tool an interlinear can be very helpful if used properly. If you plan to use an interlinear in your studies be sure to read the introduction and “how to use” sections so you can get the most out of them. Growing in knowledge of the original languages can be very beneficial for picking up on emphasis and nuance in the text but the greatest Bible study tool for the vast majority of people is going to be a good translation of the Bible into whatever language they can read most fluently because there is no substitute for time in the Word.