Dr. Francis J. Beckwith's new book is simply the best, most comprehensive, most logically sound examination of abortion & the meaning of personhood available in print today. Excellent summaries of the book are available elsewhere, so let me focus on some unique features.
First, Dr. Beckwith argues for a definition & moral value to humanity that provides a defense for innocent humans in a wide variety of circumstances, not just those who are tiny & preborn. The general philosophical arguments used here are helpful for evaluating human value among those in undeveloped, famine plagued regions of the world; among populations of hardened, committed career criminals; among those yet to be conceived several generations after our pollution-promoting public policies; & those who are physically and/or mentally disabled, etc.
Second, Dr. Beckwith treats abortion rights advocates with respect & honesty, not merely fairly representing their views & arguments, but even improving their arguments when he can & yet showing that even the best abortion rights arguments fatally undermine basic human rights based on the nature of humanity. A number of years ago, I role-played an abortion rights advocate in a public debate with Dr. Beckwith. He was concerned that his opponent be formidable & insightful, but he couldn't find an available true advocate he thought would do a credible enough job. I gave it my best shot (& Dr. Beckwith kindly said I was his toughest opponent to date), but Dr. Beckwith's arguments remained compelling & invincible. That generous respect & yet actual superiority is reflected in this book.
Third, Dr. Beckwith's sharp wit makes this book a serendipitous pleasure to read as well. Without demeaning his opponents or trivializing the issues, he is able to broach illustrations packed with humor & allude to cultural comedy to make telling points. As Dr. Beckwith's students at Baylor University will attest, he is nothing like the typical boring philosophy professor.
Fourth, this book provides such a wide spectrum of issues, arguments, & approaches that if you only have one book on the subject in your library, you should have this one -- even (or especially) if you are an abortion rights advocate.
Dr. Beckwith's own website & blog is a fascinating resource also.
Regardless of your familiarity with the subject or other volumes you might possess, you can't afford to miss getting & studying your own copy of Defending Life.
I hope the subtitle to this extremely valuable defense of biblical truth is changed soon -- otherwise its own popularity might wane with that of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. While Brown's popularity is huge, it is not likely to last long in terms of classical publishing, not least because it's poorly crafted fiction with sloppy, inaccurate background research. This book, on the other hand, can stand the test of time for its careful argumentation, precise focus, extremely up-to-date research, & comprehensive scope regarding biblical integrity. If I could recommend only one book on biblical reliability, it would be this book from 3 of Dallas Theological Seminary's finest. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be bad to change the title while generalizing the subtitle. Although one would think the book was primarily about the person & work of Christ, instead it is a treasure trove of information about the origin, authenticity, accuracy, transmission, & preservation of the biblical text, specifically the New Testament. Divided into 5 main parts, the book deals with (1) Oral History, (2) Textual Criticism, (3) Canonicity, (4) the Authenticity of the Text's Assertion of the Deity of Christ, & (5) the Uniqueness of the New Testament Message.
The first section contains 3 chapters dealing with ancient classical oral history. I prefer the term "oral history" to "oral tradition," because, as the authors point out, with a post-Reformation dislike of "tradition," & a 21st century dependence on the written word, when we hear "oral tradition," we are more apt to think of garbled gossip than of precise, carefully preserved history. The authors carefully define the "gospel" -- it is "good news," not merely "warm & fuzzy ideas," or "weird beliefs." They then explain & document the methods of ancient classical teaching, memorization, & oral history & show how its evidence is everywhere behind the written text we now call our New Testaments. Finally, they examine the message & person of Christ as displayed in the New Testament & how unlikely it would be to have such an extraordinary, unpredicted character composed after the fact by public relations conscious religion builders. I especially appreciate the authors' acknowledgement that there is good evidence to suppose that the entire New Testament was completed before AD 70, a view that is gaining ever greater respectability among those who work the most closely with the text either scientifically (such as the papyrologists) or critically (those who analyze the text).
The second section contains 5 chapters explaining how & when the New Tesatment books were written & then copied & preserved through the centuries. As with each chapter in the book, the chapters in this section begin by repeating the myriad of skeptical questions lay people have been told undermine the Bible's authority. In Chapter 4, those questions include, "what if the copies were corrupted?," "what if they were copied so poorly we can't ascertain the original?," & "hasn't the text been copied & recopied, translated & retranslated so many times that we can't know what was original?" By carefully explaining & demonstrating by example, the authors make an overwhelmingly convincing case that the text of the New Testament that we have today, represented in any standard reputable translation, is virtually exactly what was originally written. An important feature of this section is the authors' careful attention to the few places in the text where we do have some doubt. Those places are well known, carefully examined, all reasonable alternatives are considered, & none of them overturn any central biblical teaching or fact. This book is also a handy source for a current listing of the numbers of manuscripts, portions of manuscripts, & versions (translations) of the New Testament documents. We have more than 5,700 Greek texts, 10,000 Latin, & more than a million citations from others writers of passages from the New Testament. Chapter 6 is appropriately titled "An Embarrassment of Riches."
The third section contains 3 chapters focusing on how the contents of the New Testament were determined. In other words, why do we have the 27 books we do, & not any others? How did these 27 get included, & any or all others excluded? One of the most helpful points in this section is the authors' call to abandon "generational snobbery," or the idea that anyone before my time was stupid, gullible, dishonest, & unscientific. The authors cite from a wide range of ancient Christian writers & even some non-Christian observers to show that ancient people were at least as intelligent, skeptical, honest, & critical in their approaches to the important issues of life as are we today. (In my opinion, they were much more so then than now. Dan Brown would never have gained an audience in any of the early centuries of Christianity -- not because they were narrow-minded, but because they were far better at & dedicated to finding & exposing charlatans than are we.) In this section as well as the others, I especially appreciate that they cite the most popularly known & vocal critics. If you have watched any pseudo-documentary on "lost" gospels or read any popular recreation of the Jesus story, you will find the arguments & names familiar.
The fourth section consists of 4 chapters focusing on the authentic person & work of Christ. The favorite re-identifications of the Jesus Seminary, skeptics such as Earl Doherty or Robert Price are truly laughable once one reads the careful investigation, documentation, & analysis of the evidence provided in this book. Chapter 14 on the evidence for Jesus outside the New Testament is worth the price of the book.
The fifth & final section of the book is comprised of 3 chapters dismantling claims that the stories of the New Testament, specifically of the life of Christ in the gospels, are derivative of contemporary mystery religion beliefs & stories & are no more unique than any other silly fables & myths of the ancient world. One chapter is on pagan religions in general, & one chapter each is devoted to the supposed parallels between Jesus & Alexander the Great & Jesus & Osiris (with Frankenstein thrown in for good measure). This is the most comprehensive treatment of this subject I have seen in print, & is a great expansion of the basic evidence presented by scholar Edwin Yamauchi in his Jesus, Zoraster, Buddha, Socrates & Muhammad and Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?.
The authors are fully capable of delivering the quality of scholarship & ease of understanding that pervades this book. Ed Komoszewski is founder & director of Christian Nexus & served as director of research for Josh McDowell Ministries. He is also the director at large for Reclaiming the Mind Ministries. James Sawyer is professor of theology & church history at Western Seminary (Northern California Campus) & serves as an instructor & advisor for Reclaiming the Mind. Dan Wallace is one of the world's leading Greek scholars, the mind behind the NET Bible. He is professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Seminary, director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, & advisor & instructor for Reclaiming the Mind.
If you care at all about the authenticity of the New Testament, this book must be part of your library. If you dialog with anyone who doubts the authenticity, integrity, & truthfulness of the New Testament, you need multiple copies to give to them. If a skeptic considers the evidence & arguments of this book seriously, he will be compelled to abandon his doubts about the New Testament.
The first in four stories by premier mystery writer Dick Francis to feature ex-jockey turned private investigator Sid Halley, Odds Against is a masterful blend of exciting mystery, the fascinating world of British horse racing, & personal destruction & renewal for which Francis is famous. One of the reasons Dick Francis is my favorite all-time mystery writer is that his main characters are a lot like the quintessential biblical heroes. No, not like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, but more like David stumbling through adultery, pleading with God for forgiveness, & then humbly carrying on. Or like Peter bragging of his loyalty to Christ, becoming horrified at his own betrayal, & then gratefully yielding to the renewal of the Spirit, not realizing that his surrender paradoxically makes him a victor. In many ways, a Dick Francis main character is like Frodo or Sam, hobbits who are the last to think themselves fearless heroes, but who humbly keep moving forward, depending not on their own strength, but something Beyond them that is both Good & Invincible. Sid Halley, in Odds Against, is like this.
The story is certainly not told from a Christian point of view. I have no information that Francis is at all religious, & religion rarely plays any obvious part in his stories. Nevertheless, the eternal Story (fall, loss, sacrifice, & redemption) is the core of every Francis story. Each story also includes a theme tangential to that core. In this book, the theme is that clinging to the past in the midst of the reality of the present is an insidious form of idolatry that, in the end, forever ruins the past & destroys the future.
Halley is a champion steeple chase jockey whose brilliant career is abruptly ended when a fall during a race results in the complete mutilation of his left hand. The story opens 3 years after the accident, as Halley recuperates from a gunshot wound suffered during a stakeout at his employer's security agency. Halley is convinced that his useful life is over. He can no longer participate in the only life he has ever loved, & he is a no-good cripple being tolerated by his employer only as a favor to an old friend, who is Halley's soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law & last true friend. Failure at racing, failure at marriage, failure at detecting, & failure at life has left Halley not really caring whether he recovers or not. When his father-in-law invites him for a weekend of company in the country, he is further humiliated by his father-in-law's deliberately cruel actions throughout the weekend in front of his wealthy, sophisticated, successful, & thoroughly despicable houseguests. Once the houseguests leave, Halley finds out that his father-in-law has not turned on him but instead expects him to determine how one of the houseguests is sabotaging a local race course so that he can succeed at a hostile takeover bid & sell the land for development at a huge profit. The father-in-law figures Halley will slip under the bad guy's radar if he's only perceived as a loser.
The intricate & thoroughly believable plot centers around the who, why, & how, but I was captivated by the equally fascinating story of Halley's spiritual death & rebirth as he struggles at least as much with internal fears & dangers as he does the external ones of fists, threats, & explosions. He finally realizes the gospel paradox of he who loses all gains all, observing to himself, "A fortnight ago I couldn't let go of the past. I was clinging to too many ruins, the ruins of my marriage and my racing career and my useless hand. They were gone for good now, all of them. There was nothing left to cling to. And every tangible memory of my life had blown away with a plastic bomb. I was rootless and homeless: and liberated" (275).
Odds Against was written more than 40 years ago, but its story remains credible & compelling. Francis recently released his 4th Sid Halley story, Under Orders & a reading (or, in may case, yet another re-reading) of the previous stories in order provides a complete feast of good story & good moral. Following Odds Against came Whip Hand (1979) & Come to Grief (1995). As do many series characters, Francis' Halley transitions seamlessly from Beatles' era 60s through transistorized 70s, media-dominated 90s, & micro-electronic 21st century while only aging a few years.
Who knows how many truly valuable authors are under-valued & little-known? Especially in the world of non-fiction, academic, religious literature, it is possible that many outstanding scholars & authors never achieve the recognition or influence the quality of their work should -- but often doesn't -- dictate. This is even more the case for authors who are known in one part of the world (in this case, Europe) and not another (in our case, the US). The late Carston Peter Thiede is one of these authors, & this book, published just a year before his untimely death, is a good example of a treasure trove of valuable New Testament information not often discussed in more well-known books.
The theme of Dr. Theide's book is that Jesus, his disciples, & first-century Israel were far more "cosmopolitan" & far less "provincial" than many assume; and that this false assumption causes us to underestimate the knowledge, sophistication, & worldly expertise clearly demonstrated by Christ & the first Christians in the New Testament.
Thiede was Professor of New Testament History (with Archaeology & Papyrology) in Basel, Switzerland. His expertise in papyrology gave him the opportunity to work with the Dead Sea Scrolls, including lecturing at the Ben Gurion University the Negev in Israel and directing damage detection research on the Scrolls. He worked closely with the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Some of the technological innovations he produced have increased the precision & capabilities of papyrological research tremendously. Thiede had a brief moment in the spotlight with the publication of a book he co-authored with journalist Matthew D'Ancona, The Jesus Papyrus (previously titled Eyewitness to Jesus), which chronicled Thiede's scientific re-dating of some manuscript fragments of Matthew to the first half of the first century, nearly 2 centuries earlier than they had once been dated. While his conclusions were debated by many scholars, especially liberals who assumed the gospels could not have been written by eyewitnesses within the lifetime of Jesus's followers, none were able to overturn his meticulous papyrological testing & its startling results. Thiede was among a growing group of New Testament scholars from a variety of related disciplines who are arguing for earlier & earlier dates for the composition of the books of the New Testament. Despite his brief notoriety, for the most part Thiede's work & publications have missed the general New Testament market in the United States. This is tragic, especially since his contributions to understanding & affirming the authenticity of the New Testament documents is significant.
In this book, Thiede weaves another theme common to most of his books: that scholars from a variety of disciplines in biblical studies should cross-communicate their theories & findings to enhance the reliability of everyone's work. When a literary scholar dates a manuscript from the spelling & vocabulary to a particular time period, but a papyrologist dates it differently because of the composition of the writing materials (paper, ink, etc.), and an archaeologist gives it yet another date because of the strata of material in which it was found, there is no way to ascertain the true date of the manuscript without comparing the 3 approaches, testing their hypotheses, & integrating the best from each. Thiede argues that in most cases, such collaborative effort produces convincing evidence that the New Testament documents are older, more authentically first century, & more accurately reflect the actual state of affairs described therein than skeptics would like.
Beside the 2 themes of cosmopolitanism among the New Testament peope & the need for cross-pollinization among New Testament academic disciplines, this book provides fascinating insights into the world of the New Testament. Chapter One discusses events in the Roman Empire outside of Israel that were contemporaneous with the birth, life, death, & resurrection of Jesus Christ. This provides an enlightening framework for the events familiar to Bible readers who may know the names "Augustus," "Herod," and "Tiberius" only as they are cited in the New Testament. Chapter Two gives a concise & yet comprehensive summary of the obvious relationship between the village of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up with his mother & step-father, & Sepphoris, only 4 miles away & a prospering metropolis rebuilt by Herod the Great & his family beginning in 4 BC. Thiede explains that the term for Jesus & Joseph's occupation, translated "carpenter" in most Bibles, actually means "contractor" or "builder," and then provides evidence & arguments that Jesus & Joseph almost certainly worked in construction in Sepphoris, giving Jesus a significant exposure to Greek language, culture, arts, & literature.
The remaining chapters are as insightful as the first two. Chapter Three compares the ministry, miracles, & claims of Jesus with those of other Jewish & non-Jewish religious leaders & luminaries contemporary with him, showing that Jesus was unique among a plethora of pretenders. Chapter Four focuses on Jesus' ministry to non-Jews, arguing convincingly that Paul's later apostleship to the Gentiles was the fulfillment of Christ's ministry, not a replacement for it. Chapter Five focuses on life after death & resurrection, explaining in some detail the ambivalent dabbling in a variety of beliefs & practices by first century Jews, but the consistent scriptural focus on bodily resurrection culminating in Jesus's resurrection. Chapter Six is one of the best short summaries of the composition & transmission of the New Testament manuscripts I've seen, including the reliability of ancient oral history, the specificity of first century note-taking & mentoring, and the customs related to manuscript identification & copying. The concluding chapter, Seven, takes the events of Jesus' trial & illuminates features that are lost to readers who do not have Thiede's breadth & depth of knowledge of first century cosmopolitan life. The endnotes & publications referenced in them are worth the price of the book.
This book is out of print, as are most of Thiede's titles, but it is well worth the search & price to add it to your library. You will find yourself turning to it again & again to broaden your understanding of the New Testament, strengthen your confidence in the authenticity & accuracy of the text, & increase your appreciation for the power of the Gospel.
George Sada was a general in the Iraqi Air Force & an advisor to Saddam Hussein. The book is partly a memoir & partly a history of Iraq. Unlike the majority of Iraqis, General Sada is neither Arab nor Muslim. He is of the minority Assyrian ethnic group (whose presence in the area predates that of the Arabs) & is a Christian. Saddam apparently trusted him because he was not a “yes” man. While defying Saddam did not cost General Sada his head, it did sometimes cost him his job or promotion.
The book intertwines General Sada’s life & career with the events that were taking place in & to Iraq during the decades before, during, & after Saddam’s reign of terror. It is interesting that among the rampant corruption & posturing of those who were in Saddam’s highest positions both militarily & politically, Saddam turned to the general at strategic points because he knew that the general faithfully followed his Christian ethical system & would not lie even if it was not in his best interests or would anger Saddam. In some ways, General Sada was to Saddam what Daniel was to the Babylonian & Assyrian dictators in their days in the same region. Both men showed that it was possible to serve in a corrupt governmental system without compromising one’s faithfulness to God. In the same way, although General Sada is grateful that America & coalition forces removed Saddam from power & are rebuilding the country, he is also bold enough to be open when he disagrees with certain actions or policies as well. For example, he criticizes the coalition forces for completely disbanding the Iraqi military & allowing its members to keep their weapons. He explains how the military threat should have been handled differently & what serious consequences have resulted from the policy that was followed.
General Sada asserts that Saddam did have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) & that the United Nations (UN) failed to detect & destroy them. He also asserts that the Iraqis moved the WMDs to Syria. General Tommy Franks in his memoir American Soldier wondered why the news media stated that no WMDs were found when a booby trap made with a sarin gas artillery shell was found. I also remember reading a letter to one newsletter asking why the news media is saying there were no WMDs when soldiers have lost their lives trying to disarm these weapons. In addition a UN report cited in Sada’s book confirmed the existence of WMDs. So, General Sada is not alone in asserting that there were WMDs. When different sources say similar things, it is time to take notice. One should also notice that the Democrats who now oppose the war at one time stated Saddam had WMDs as late as 2003. Perhaps these people have a case of amnesia.
Instead of risking the lives of our precious soldiers, why not use the Art Buchwald test? Buchwald, a liberal humorist, once suggested putting conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater out in a rowboat & firing a missile at Goldwater, since Goldwater said our missiles were no good. Well why not put all those people who said there were no WMDs in a rowboat & unleash on these people the weapons found in Iraq by coalition forces? If nothing happens, then we can say Bush lied. If the weapons work, these people will have to admit that Bush was telling the truth.
I guess one lesson I learned from Georges Sada’s book is that sometimes one has to use military force. Diplomacy & sanctions failed to weaken Saddam. Unlike the Serbian leader Milosevic, Saddam had plenty of oil to bribe UN officials to make a mockery of the sanctions. The only people who suffered as a result of the sanctions were the ordinary Iraqis. Saddam, by contrast, enriched himself & continued to amass weapons. There was even an attempt to buy nuclear weapons directly from China. Since the solution of the “anti war” crowd is to look the other way while people get killed, why don’t they volunteer to be killed? Perhaps the so called anti-war crowd would prefer to bury its head in the sand & pretend that the threat posed by Saddam would go away. But history has shown that appeasement does not always work. And if memory serves me correctly, this so-called anti-war crowd called for intervention in former Yugoslavia & was noticeably silent when Clinton bombed the living daylights out of the Serbs. Surely the war in Yugoslavia is also proof that diplomacy alone is not adequate.
General Sada is retired from the Iraqi military & serves as the director of the Iraqi Institute for Peace. He also serves as spokesman for the newly elected prime minister of Iraq. He is a recipient of the prestigious International Prize for Peace & Reconciliation presented by the bishop of Coventry, England. He is president of the National Presbyterian Church in Baghdad & chairman of the Assembly of Evangelical Presbyterian Churches – Iraq. He has been called by coalition forces & Iraqi interests to serve in many capacities as Iraq is being rebuilt as a democratic country.
Strobel, Lee & Garry Poole. Exploring the Da Vinci Code. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2006.
Witherington, Ben III. The Gospel Code. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
Inclusion of books in this list does not mean that they represent the views of Answers In Action or its director, Gretchen Passantino. They are provided for further informaiton only.
Note: listing of these sites does not mean that Answers In Action and/or Director Gretchen Passantino endorse or agree with any or all of the sites or the postings on those sites. This list is meant for further research only.
One of the silliest and most egregious claims in Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code is his contention that "virtually all the elements" of Christianity were "taken directly from earlier pagan religions."
Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet this run-away best-seller & its companion movie, predicted to be a block-buster from Director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks, is having an enormous impact on how people view Jesus Christ, the Bible, and Christianity. If the assertion were true, all of Christianity, its gospel, and its God would be overturned. That it is not true means that thousands of people are dismissing the gospel because of fabrication.
The overwhelming conclusion of the major scholars in the original texts and artifacts of the ancient pagan mystery cults is that early Christianity, including the primary message of the gospels and other New Testament books, is remarkably different than the mystery cults, and that the seeming similarities often cited by those who have not actually investigated the primary sources derive from misunderstandings of the texts, not true similarities or common sources at all.
A summary review of the work in this area of five of the most respected religious historians quickly dispels the careless remarks of Brown and other religious dilettantes who wrongly associate Christianity with ancient pagan mystery religions.
In 1958 religious historian and commentator Mircea Eliade published in Patterns of Initiation a series of lectures he had given at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1956. In one of those lectures Eliade said recent research did not support the theories that the origin of Christianity was influenced by pagan mystery cults. "There is no reason to suppose that primitive Christianity was influenced by the Hellenistic mysteries," says Eliade (Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 118-119). In fact, the reverse may actually be true, he adds. Eliade says that the pagan mystery cults "reinterpreted their religious rites in the light of. . . Christianity” (115, n34). Eliade then says, as the pagan mystery cults borrowed from Christianity, then Christians began using the new formulations of the pagan mystery cults in order to explain their religion to pagans and other people.
Decades before Eliade wrote, the great Christian scholar J. Gresham Machen also refuted the theory that the origin of Christian was influenced by the pagan mystery cults.
In 1925 Machen published a seminal work, The Origin of Paul's Religion. Like Eliade, he shows that, except for the cult of Dionysus, the pagan mystery cults developed after Christianity, not before. Also, the cult of Dionysus died out long before Jesus Christ and the Christian apostles, who came from a Jewish background, were born.
Machen also notes that, unlike the pagan mystery rituals, a Christian's redemption and salvation is not contingent upon the Lord's Supper, or any other Christian ritual. Thus, a Christian is saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ and His Gospel, including Christ's death and resurrection. First, however, the Christian has to turn away from his inherent disobedience, or sin, against God's moral laws. Unlike Christianity, the pagan mystery cults had no consciousness of sin. A consciousness of angering the gods or needing to placate the gods is not the same as the Christian concept of sin against God's holy standard with the necessity for justice & judgment.
Historian of ancient religions Walter Burkert confirms these points made by Eliade and Machen in Burkert's book Ancient Mystery Cults, as does scholar Ronald H. Nash in Christianity and the Hellenistic World. Like Machen, Burkert says there is "hardly any evidence for baptism in pagan mysteries” (101). Burkert adds that the ancient pagan mystery cults never created strong religious communities as did Judaism or Christian. The Early Christians also denounced such immoral acts as homosexuality and the exposure of children and had a strong sense of family, all features notably absent or even reversed in the mystery cults.
Furthermore, Burkert, Nash, Machen, and anthropologist Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard debunk the theory that the pagans before Christianity believed in a dying God who rose from the dead. Many primitive and pagan cultures don't even have bloody sacrifices, Evans-Pritchard adds, and among those that do, the sacrifice is not considered a communion. None of the alleged pagan savior-gods died for someone else, much less the whole human race, says Nash. Also, Jesus Christ only needed to die once for our sins, not many times. Furthermore, unlike any pagan god, Jesus died voluntarily. Furthermore, Jesus Christ's death on the cross was also a triumph, as was His resurrection. As Dr. Nash writes, “The New Testament’s mood of exaltation contrasts sharply with that of the [pagan] religions, whose followers wept and mourned for the terrible fate that overtook their gods” (171-172).
Finally, Dan Brown falsely claims that there are missing “gospels” of Jesus Christ that pre-date the New Testament documents, or were written near the same time. First, the preponderance of the evidence indicates that virtually all, if not all, the New Testament documents were completed before A.D. 70. Second, the factual evidence strongly indicates that all of the alleged “other gospels” were not written until after A.D. 125, well after the completion of the New Testament and well after the first Christians established the basic “rule of faith” taught to them by Jesus Christ and His apostles in person and in the New Testament documents.
Thus, like many other anti-Christian bigots before him, Dan Brown has had to completely distort the historical record with lies and false innuendoes. His claims are not just a matter of interpretation – they are a matter of Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil.
Although this book is more than twenty-five years old, its classic focus on the core of Christian theology and faith is unbeatable. This Christian classic will give you a renewed appreciation of the God we worship and his awesome plan of redemption, by which we receive forgiveness of sins and fellowship with the Father through Christ's death on the cross.
If you've been confused by terms like justification, regeneration, adoption, sanctification, glorification, conversion, assurance, and faith, this book untangles the confusion and gives you a clear understanding of what your salvation means. The book takes terms that are common to soteriological discussions, defines them, and explains them simply with full Bible citation support. This will help a Christian sort out the different terms and what they mean to him regarding his own salvation.
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The Lord's Servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will give them a change of heart leading to a knowledge of the truth
II Timothy 2:24-26
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