Doubts Aloud Podcast

Resurrection interview with Mathew Hartke

Episode 53– Show Notes
We start with an argument from our series on 50 Arguments for God’s Existence. This time
“The Argument from Degrees of Perfection” by Catholic philosopher Peter Freeft. The following link gives a summary.
https://peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#4
We try our best to do the argument justice while discussing how it doesn’t work for us.
Somehow we drifted into mentioning the recent debate “Theism vs Atheism” between Jonathan McLatchie and Alex O’Connor. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnIQFI1pYLM

This idea of God’s Perfection led us on to this pair of questions:
1) Would a perfect God create a perfect world?
2) Is this world perfect?

It opened up what the Bible says on God being perfect, which is not just Jesus’s words in Matthew 5v48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The Old Testament Yahweh doesn’t come across as perfect. We enjoyed the anger management in Exodus 33v3
The classic Christian response to why our world isn’t perfect while God is perfect is the Fall and Adam and Eve. We go back there again (sorry).


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Episode 52– Show Notes

Andrew’s daughter, Jahannah, has a YouTube channel and she takes seriously the possibility of Atlantis being more than a myth. They held a debate together on her channel which Andrew needed to prepare for with a heap of research and reading.

The parallels with research into ancient history of relevance to Hebrew and Christian beliefs made this exercise a great window onto the issues our podcast covers, and so we get stuck in. This drifts in eventually to a brief chat about the ‘curse tablet’ that may be a significant find to add evidence for an early date for the name Yahweh.

Jahannah’s channel is FunnyOldWorld:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN2Z_nuG5XtVnE998unA3PA
And their debate is called “Dad Debates Atlantis Part 1” (with the 2nd one coming later):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaVl1CORQDY

The Premier Christianity article on the ‘curse tablet’ which gives both sides:
https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/is-this-biblical-curse-tablet-the-most-significant-discovery-in-recent-history/12803.article

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Episode 51 – Show Notes

We’re delighted to have a British District Judge as our guest. Not any District Judge but Graeme Smith who is a Christian and has written a book on the evidence for the resurrection, which he considers is excellent. We each enjoy a collegiate discussion with Graeme on various aspects of the book and how he concludes as he does.

The book is “Was the Tomb Empty: A Lawyer Weighs The Evidence For The Resurrection” Feb. 2014

Here’s a purchase link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Was-Tomb-Empty-Evidence-Resurrection/dp/0857215280


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Episode 50– Show Notes

We celebrate our 50th episode by getting down and muddy in the issue of divine practical advice. Christians celebrate it when ancient advice or OT Law tallies well with modern health advice, but they don’t see the massive misses that there are in the Bible. We spend most of the time diving deep into the example of hand washing with soap, which is simple, within the technology of Bible times and has a massive impact on child mortality rates. Can we expect a loving God to help by giving this advice, especially when He visits earth in the incarnation?

Some of the references and links we mentioned:
Leviticus 13 & 14 for boils and mould. Chapter 15 for “an unusual bodily discharge” where there is lots of references to washing things and the only reference (v11) to anything remotely like hand washing in the community connected to health or food or sanitation or anything useful.

The Christian podcaster excited about God’s blessing in the Leviticus mould advice (we played this from 8min40s on):
https://www.wholewordpodcast.com/790475/8617765-leviticus-14-mold-abatement-3500-years-before-science

The key New Testament passage on Jesus’ response to the Jews developing handwashing traditions around food is Mark 7:1-23. Ed made a meal from verses 8-9 and also 18-19.

The link for these Jewish handwashing traditions around food:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwashing_in_Judaism

Links for handwashing in general, when there is no clean water available and on soap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_washing
https://globalhandwashing.org/about-handwashing/faqs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap

Finally the where Ed got objections using the Unbelievable Facebook discussion group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/unbelievablejb/posts/3926152774151876/




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Text for DA Podcast Ep 49

Episode 49– Show Notes
We were delighted to welcome back friend-of-the-show Steve Tomkins to tell us all about the theological debates in late Tudor England which were conducted using, at one extreme, burnings at the stake and, at the other extreme, scurrilous publications akin to a 16thC Private Eye. Much of the material that Steve shared is in his recent book:
The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom (2020)

If you want to know anything about Church history or really anything that matters, please see Steve’s other books:

A Short History of Christianity (Lion Histories) 2005
The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce's Circle Transformed Britain 2010
William Wilberforce: A biography 2007
David Livingstone: The Unexplored Story 2013
My Ministry Manual by Rev.Gerald Ambulance 2003
Jesus and His World - Paul and His World (Steve wrote the Paul part) 2019
John Wesley: A Biography 2003

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Episode 48– Show Notes

This month we discuss Open Theism which is based on the idea that God doesn’t know the future choices that free agents will make. It is a relatively new idea within the history of Christianity and it has received increasing attention in recent years with thinkers such as Greg Boyd promoting it. The narratives in the Old Testament tend to indicate this view of God’s knowledge as God is a more human type of character when compared to the ‘omni’ God of classical Theism which follows from classical Greek philosophy such as Aristotle. We discuss the implications on issues such as prayer and changing God’s mind, prophecy which requires God to know the future and the Problem of Evil. We end with a quick discussion of how Islam and Judaism fit in with this.

Links:
We mentioned a few links and sources:

Dr William Hasker being interviewed on Open Theism
https://youtu.be/csGWj1pgrxE

The Unbelievable Show episode on this from May 2016 with James White & John Sanders
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Is-Open-Theism-a-heresy-James-White-vs-John-Sanders

The extract from John Sanders that Andrew played was this (from another debate with James White):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQBECHTVCDM&t=1751

Andrew suggested Greg Boyd’s website as a good place to get the case for Open Theism:
Visit https://reknew.org/ and put ‘Open Theism’ in the ‘Search the Site’ facility

A key 20thC theologian on Open Theism was Clark Pinnock, eg see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Pinnock

We mentioned several Bible passages, most were easily found stories, but the one we looked at as a possible counter-text for Open Theism is Isaiah 46 v9-11.

Finally we briefly discussed ‘God’s Body’ as rather more than an artistic metaphor in the early texts. This podcast will explain more:
The Bible For Normal People - Episode 147: Benjamin D. Sommer - Does God Have a Body?
Find it here (or via your podcast app):
https://peteenns.com/podcast/


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Episode 47 – Show Notes

It is a delight to welcome back John Nelson to the show after his time with us back in Episode 3. We got to know John in the London Unbelievable Discussion Group when he was an undergraduate at Nottingham studying theology. He has since moved on to post doctoral research at Oxford University and now Edinburgh. He has tended to concentrate mostly on the gospels, a topic of enduring interest to us. We chat about research into the historical Jesus, the genre of the gospels and - partly due to the season .

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Episode 46– Show Notes

We start with the Gospel of Thomas as it the next chapter in our 50 Arguments for God book. Why do people talk about it? What is it? What is its history? What do we learn from it? This all raises the issue of lost early Christian documents - the surviving ones are the ‘winning’ ones, those which scribes chose to copy and keep preserved.

Thomas also raises the issues of Orthodoxy, Heresy and Diversity of Beliefs. We continue that discussion for the rest of the show. The towering figure here is German scholar Walter Bauer who changed the way academics think about this with his book published in the 1930s. “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity”. A great way for podcast fans to learn more on him and his legacy is episode 26 of the podcast “The NT Review”

Walter Bauer covered the 2ndC AD and we move on to discuss the 1stC where we have even less material outside those preserved in the New Testament. We look at those documents, along with the Didache which most date in the 1stC, and see both
1. The various factions, disputes and diversity of beliefs being addressed in the letters, Acts and even the gospels.
2. The diversity of beliefs regarding core Christian doctrines, such as Salvation.

Links:
Andrew mentioned a 2ndC book pretending to be by some of Jesus’ disciples and it was speaking against Paul. …..

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Episode 45– Show Notes
We discuss the New Testament Book of Revelation using Andrew’s research and knowledge, as we did for Daniel last month. Things are more complex than for Daniel and we leave things a bit more open. The issues of when it was written and by whom are more straightforward perhaps, but what the author is trying to achieve with all the strange imagery and use of apocalyptic genre is not clear. We discuss that along with the massive use of the Old Testament in Revelation, the way the author invites us to expect near immediate fulfilment, the invitation in the text to do decoding, whether this is a crafted text or reporting of amazing dreams/visions and of course the violence - human suffering from God’s wrath - that is described.

Links:
We mentioned the Naked Bible podcast by an evangelical scholar, Dr Michael Heiser, which introduces the book of Revelation, it is episode 352.
https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/podcast/naked-bible-352-introducing-the-old-testament-in-the-book-of-revelation/

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