Was I nervous? Yes, absolutely. Of course, this wasn't my ordinary speaking event. On April 5, about 170 people packed a room at Weber State University, to watch my formal debate with professor of philosophy Dr. Richard Greene. The question: Can there be objective moral values and obligations without God? Each debater had 20 minutes for opening arguments, a 10-minute rebuttal, about 40 minutes of joint Q & A from the audience, and a 5-minute conclusion.

Dr. Greene had home field advantage. He has been teaching classes at Weber State for about eight years and a number of his students came out for the debate. About 65% of the attendees indicated on a pre-debate survey that they held Dr. Greene’s view, that morality is best explained without God.

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The Bible says that God is Spirit (John 4:24) and that no one has ever seen him and lived (Exodus 33:20). So then how can we, being human and not spirit, ever know what he is like?

While it is true that God is hidden from us in many ways, he has still to a great extent revealed himself to us. He has revealed himself in all of creation. When we see the world around us we get a glimpse of God’s creative nature, his infinity of tastes, and his incomprehensible immenseness.

God has also revealed himself to us in Scripture. Through the reliable written Word of God we get deep insights into:

his infinite characteristics

his relational heart

his holy nature

And because he has revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ we see God with skin on.

Students need space to share their doubts.  We all do.  If serious questions about Christianity and uncertainty toward God are not recognized and explored, they remain in the heart and mind, only to surface farther down the road and often with greater force.  Simplistic Christian responses will not suffice.  “Do extra devotions” or “just have faith” don’t do justice to a student’s real struggle with doubt. 

I encounter student doubt all the time.  My work actually helps to surface doubts, as I raise challenges to Christianity and then explore answers in my talks.  I remember when Helia, a freshman at a Christian college in Southern California, approached me after the talk I gave at a Summit Ministries student conference this past summer and shared her struggle with doubt.  I was glad for her honest questions and told her as much.  Why?  I want students to get their doubts on the table while they’re with me.  So I always allow space for questions, the starting point for dealing with doubt. 

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Here's a challenge posed at Infidels.org, a big online resource for the skeptical community:  

"Can God know what it is like to learn? If God is omniscient (all-knowing), then it seems that he would have to know what it is like to learn. However, in order to know what it is like to learn, one must have learned something, which involves moving from a state of not-knowing to a state of knowing. This entails that at one time we were in a state of not-knowing a thing that was learned, then experienced what it is like to learn. But if God is essentially omniscient, he always is and has been omniscient, so was never in a state of not-knowing. Because being in a state of not-knowing is necessary to know what it is like to learn, we would seem to have to say that God does not know what it is like to learn. But this contradicts the original claim that he does know this based on his omniscience. Thus, it seems that God's omniscience generates a contradiction. Consequently an omniscient God cannot exist."

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I don’t want students to merely believe true things.  That’s a start, but it’s not enough.  I want students to know true things.  So what’s the difference?

What would you think if I said I know it’s raining outside, but I didn’t believe it was raining outside?  You’d be puzzled.  It doesn’t make sense to say I know something that at the same time I don’t actually believe.  All the facts we think we know are also facts we believe, so knowledge includes belief. 

What if I said I know it’s raining outside, but it’s not true that it’s raining outside?  Again, you’d be confused and wonder, “How can you know something that’s not true?”  You can’t.  A belief is true if it matches reality and it’s false if it doesn’t.  So to say someone’s belief is false means they don’t know.  Therefore, knowledge not only includes belief, but truth as well. 

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You don’t have to know much about the “birds and the bees” to know that virgins don’t have children by remaining virgins. Human reproduction requires that a female’s ovum (egg) be fertilized by a male’s gamete (sperm) to achieve human conception. There simply is no other option short of a miracle. So what proof is there that Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin?

Those who don’t believe in miracles of course dismiss the virgin birth. In fact, Mary, Jesus’ mother, questioned the whole concept herself when the angel Gabriel announced it to her. “Mary asked the angel, ‘But how can this happen? I am a virgin’ ” (Luke 1:34). The angel explained that the conception would happen by the Holy Spirit, “so the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The angel acknowledged that all this was miraculous and added, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). God does perform miracles, and in this case he caused Mary’s pregnancy.

A Mistranslation?

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David Capes, one of the scholars and writers for The Voice, a new Bible translation that reads like a story with all of the truth and wisdom of God's Word, answered a question about Bible verses and chapters. Are they inspired?

We recently had a fan of The Voice Bible email us to say that we had left out a verse.  He told us to look at Acts 19 and see that there was no verse 7.  My first thought was, “that’s impossible.” You see we had about a dozen people checking and rechecking those kinds of things.  At one point I counted 14 levels of review from start to finish.  My second thought was, “I better check this out!”

Well, I have slept several times since we finished Acts and couldn’t remember exactly what we had done.  Frank Couch and I looked at the text—we were together at the Justice Conference in Portland at the time.  As I turned to Acts 19, it became clear to me what we had done.  We combined Acts 19:1 and 19:7 because there is a single detail in what is traditionally known as verse 7 which makes better narrative sense early in the story. Note too that we put a footnote at the bottom of the page to indicate why we made that editorial decision.

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David Capes is the Thomas Nelson Research Professor at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of numerous publications and is one of the top scholars and writers for The Voice, a new Bible translation that reads like a story with all of the truth and wisdom of God's Word. Recently Dr. Capes was asked why the translators of The Voice used masculine pronouns to refer to God?

When it comes to pronouns, English provides three options: masculine, feminine, and neuter.  Think of it this way.  It is either God…He or God…She or God…It.

Well, you can rule out the 3^rd option because “it” is used with impersonal antecedents. We don’t use “it” to refer to persons; we use “it” to refer to things. Remember too our theme is built around the idea of “the voice” that has been and continues to speak. Things might make a sound but they don’t have a voice. Only a person has a voice and the Christian Scriptures are clear that God is not an impersonal force or thing; God is a person.

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Drinking.  Premarital sex.  Abortion.  Homosexuality.  Same-sex marriage.  Christians have so many hang-ups with the behavior of non-Christians, don’t they?  It all seems so judgmental.  Christians have enough problems of their own, so why worry about others?  And even Jesus warned against this.  “Do not judge so that you will not be judged” (Matthew 7:1).  Who are Christians to judge others?

This common objection to Christianity packs some punch.  But why?  First, we’re swimming in a sea of moral relativism that prohibits any moral judgments (that is, if you want to be a consistent moral relativist).  Against this relativistic backdrop, to identify some behavior as morally wrong is itself wrong.  Hopefully you see the self-contradictory nature of this claim, but sadly, many do not as the muddled thinking of relativism blinds its adherents.

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The death of Jesus on the cross on behalf and in place of sinful humankind has been the centerpiece of Christianity for two thousand years. Of course, without the resurrection, the cross would be a waste, but without the cross, there would be no resurrection. Jesus had to die before he could come back to life. Even more, to get to the reason for the cross, Jesus had to die so that we might live.

This view that Jesus died so we don't have to is called "substitutionary atonement," and it's best expressed in Scripture in Isaiah 53:4-6. Substitutionary atonement troubles some believers, in particular young adults who are troubled by "religiously motivated violence." On a personal level, they struggle with a God who would subject his own son to the violence and horror of the cross, something Tony Jones refers to as "divine child abuse."

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