Question Answer XI
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An Undeceptions Podcast.

That's a clip from a production of Samuel Beckett's acclaimed existential comedy Waiting for Godot, performed at the Road Theatre in Los Angeles way back in 2015. Now, Lucky's monologue is one of the most theatrical and nonsensical monologues of all time. Lucky doesn't say much else in the play. In fact, I think he only gets two more lines. But

But then comes this 700-word absurdist monolith. I resume! I resume! In spite of the tennis, the backs are there! On, on, the beard, the blade, the tears, the stones! All back!

On the skull! The skull! The skull! The skull! He cut him there in spite of the tennis! The facts are there in spite of the tennis! On, on the labors abandoned, left unfinished! Alas, alon, a boat of stones who can doubt an iron soon! Alas, alas, abandoned and finished! The stones can art! So gone the stones! Don't call tennis! Hush!

There's a reason this speech often gets a huge round of applause in theatres. Learning that much text is a huge feat of memory. At least it is in the modern world. The human capacity to commit large blocks of material to memory is a very ancient one. Most communication throughout human history has been oral, word of mouth.

It's only been in the last, say, 500 years or so, particularly since the invention of the printing press, that large numbers of regular people in society were able to read. So learning information up until pretty recently involved mostly hearing and committing to memory.

Let's try remember that when we come to our first question in today's episode. We've made it to this season's Q&A ep, and up first is the really important question. Why didn't Jesus write down his own message instead of leaving it to others to do so years later?

That's just one of more than an hour of questions we've got coming up. Even longer if you're a Plus subscriber. So, let's get into it. I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions Q&A 11. Undeceptions

This season of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic. Get discounts on master lectures, video courses, and exclusive samples of their books at zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions. Each episode, we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, science, culture, or ethics that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. We're

With the help of people who know what they're talking about, we're trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out. Hey, it's Producer Kayleigh. Here's our first question from Tom in the United States. Why did Jesus never write down his teachings or anything else himself? I'm thinking maybe because he had his disciples to do it for him, just as God had other humans write the Old Testament. But I'm interested to hear your thoughts if you get a chance.

Thanks, Tom. The simple answer is yes.

For short distance communication, oral tradition was far more popular and effective than writing things down. So in a culture where only 10% or so of people could read and write in the first place, writing things down just wasn't your first instinct. It was in fact a very limiting way to pass on stuff because so few people would have access to it. For many centuries,

Mediterranean and Eastern cultures employed what scholars call oral tradition. That's how they maintained their most important ideas. Now, to be clear, oral tradition isn't simple storytelling in hope that someone would retell the story accurately 10, 20 years later. Oral tradition began with the speaker crafting the message in memorable ways and

and then repeating the message over and over so that the students, and remember, that's what the word disciple means, student, would receive and rehearse the teachings a little bit like a singer learns a new song. Now, we have analogies for this from the Jewish world. This is why we know it's not just a sort of piece of apologetics that Christians throw up to preserve the gospel stories.

In the Jewish world, rabbis fashioned their sayings into pithy, rhythmic form, and then their students would rehearse the sayings over and over. In fact, the second holy book of Orthodox Judaism is called the Mishnah.

Now, Mishnah, the word, actually means repetition, gives you an idea of how it came together. It's the written down version of the repeated oral traditions of about 150 rabbis from the period 100 BC to AD 200. It includes not just legal rulings and moral teachings, but also stories about the various rabbis.

Here's a good example I'll read to you. It's both a saying and a story preserved in the Mishnah, which was rehearsed as oral tradition for years before being written down. Now, it's about a rabbi from Galilee who was the same vintage agnostic.

as Jesus. His name was Hanina Bendoza, and he was in Galilee when Jesus was in Galilee. It's just that Hanina lived right through till about AD 70. He had a reputation for praying for people's healing. And here's what the oral tradition, later written down in the Mishnah, says. When he would pray for the sick, he would say, "'This one shall live,' or, "'This one shall die.'"

They said to him, How do you know? He said to them, If my prayer is fluent, then I know that it is accepted by God, and the person will live. But if not, I know that it is rejected, and the person will die.

This is not just a remembered ritual or legal ruling, it's an actual oral tradition about a conversation with a famous rabbi. Sounds a lot like the stories of Jesus, which include both sayings and deeds. The early Christians though had it much easier than Jewish students because they just had to remember one rabbi, not 150.

Now, the cool thing is, and perhaps this is getting too nerdy for just the opening answer in a Q&A episode, but we have perfect analogies from the Greek and Roman worlds of the same time.

I think I might have mentioned before on the show that the school of Epicurus, the founder of the Epicurean philosophy, preserved in the memory a massive amount of the teachings of Epicurus. I'm going to read you just the first four of the 40 sayings that every Epicurean, no matter what educational class, was obliged to learn by heart. Ready? One.

A blessed and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being. Hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness. 2. Death is nothing to us, for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing to us.

3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain, either of body or of mind or of both together. 4. Continuous pain does not last long in the flesh. On the contrary, pain, if extreme, is present a very short time. And even that degree of pain which barely outweighs pleasure in the flesh does not last for many days together.

Illnesses of long duration even permit of an excess of pleasure over pain in the flesh.

That is just the first four. There are 36 other statements like this, and it was all eventually written down. But my point is, we have excellent evidence, even from critics of the Epicurean philosophy, that every student in this particular school had to learn all 40 statements by heart, as an absolute minimum.

All of this is to make the very simple point, Tom, that in both the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts of the first Christians, memorizing material was the first instinct. And it was also the most trusted method of transmission and preservation of important teachings. Jesus and his students used this typical method to pass on the sacred traditions.

The real question is, why did the early Christians start writing down their material at such an early date? Remember, we have letters of Paul within 20 years of Jesus, and the Gospels were all written within 30 to 60 years of Jesus. For ancient times, for this sort of material, that is a very early writing process.

And the reason is simple. While oral tradition was an excellent method for preserving important material in close proximity between teacher and student, writing things down was the best method of transmitting things at great distance. In a letter, Paul could transmit his teachings thousands of kilometers away to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, the Romans.

And the same is true of the Gospels. Mark, for example, could write down his Gospel in Rome and through multiple transported copies, he could get his message anywhere in the Roman world.

In other words, in the first stage of Christianity, when Jesus traveled within the small territory of Galilee and Judea, oral tradition was the best method of transmission and preservation. He didn't think to write stuff down. But once Christianity started to spread throughout the Roman world after Jesus, writing became much more conducive, even necessary.

Alright, JD, we're sticking with Jesus for our next question, from Chad. I've been a Christian for a long time, but have been struggling with an idea lately. I keep hearing in sermons that Jesus, quote, took my place on the cross. I totally understand that I've sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but prolonged torture on a cross? Do we really deserve that?

When I look at my wife, my parents, or any of the other by worldly standards decent people I know, I recognise that they're sinners and like me, deserve separation from God. But prolonged torture? It makes a lot of sense to me that Jesus took our place on the cross collectively. He paid an extreme price to save a large group of people, collectively. Forgive the irreverent sounding analogy, but it would be like paying a higher price at the store to buy things in bulk.

But I really struggle to accept that prolonged physical torture, as opposed to just death and separation from God, is something that I and others deserve individually. And thus, it's hard for me to accept the idea that he took our places individually. Am I off base here? Hey, Chad, thanks for this. I get your point. And I have a couple of thoughts. I don't know how helpful they're going to be. There isn't really a mathematical equation here.

where Jesus experienced precisely what each individual wrongdoer deserves.

It isn't the case that God thinks the appropriate punishment for my, let's say, pride or neglect of the poor would be to be stripped naked and scourged with a Roman leather strap embedded with metal and pottery and then crucified over several hours. This is not the sense in which I think of Jesus dying individually for me.

Rather, I think of my judgment being included in his total experience. The punishment he experienced was collective, but my individual case is included in the collective. More than that, the focus doesn't seem to be on the physical torture anyway. It's interesting the way the Gospels don't emphasize the physical dimension.

If this were a novel from the ancient world, you can bet there'd be far more blood and guts, but the Gospels just don't do that. The real pain Jesus experienced was less to do with iron nails through his hands and feet than the heavy weight of his infinite goodness and purity bearing the alien force of sin.

The Apostle Paul put it really dramatically when he said in 2 Corinthians 5, God made him who had no sin, Jesus, to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. It's an amazing statement, and I can hardly fathom its inner meaning, that Jesus became sin, though he was personally without sin.

All of this is to say, it's best not to think of Jesus bearing our judgment only in the physical, torturous sense. Instead, we should imagine Jesus having such an intimate experience of our individual wrongdoing that he became, in some mysterious sense, sin. But you know what? I think there might be more to say than just this. I wonder if for most of human history,

The brutality implicit, if not explicit, in the passion narrative made a whole lot of sense given the brutality and tyranny of so much of people's experiences through the centuries. Our private, sanitized sins perhaps deceive us from the truly ugly capacity of human evil.

The cross tells us that God has stepped into that brutality to bear into himself the extremity of injustice, betrayal, torture, bloodshed, and so on. The person who put this thought in my head most powerfully was Fleming Rutledge, whom we interviewed a year ago in episode 93 for the one on the crucifixion.

So I don't think I can do any better than ask producer Kayleigh to find the tape where she answered my question to her, which was very similar to your question, Chad, to me. I would say that in a sense, the overarching theme of the book is why crucifixion specifically. And in one way or another, in these 600 pages, I...

focus on this question, I think, I hope, from first one angle and then another. Is this just an accident? Is it an accident that Jesus was incarnate in the time of the Romans? Or was that actually part of God's foreseen plan that he would be crucified? A Roman method, a method of doing away with a person that

dehumanized him and cast him out of the human race altogether. I'm fond of saying, and I keep thinking someone will contradict me, that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, we would never have heard of him. Principal reason being that we've never heard of anybody else who was crucified prior to Jesus himself, prior to Jesus Christ.

The whole purpose of crucifixion was to erase the person's being from the human record and throw them to the dogs. Execute them publicly in the most public place possible. Expose them to the most contempt possible. Invite dehumanizing curses and actions from the part of the passing crowds and then take him down from the cross and throw him on the dump heap.

It was a very common sight to see people crucified, but their names are lost, their identities are lost. Jesus is remembered, and I would argue He is remembered because God raised Him from the dead. I'll leave it at that. I think that's a staggering thing to say, and it's not something to say lightly. God raised a crucified man from the dead, and thereby came into being a whole body of people

who were willing to go out in public and proclaim that they worshipped as Lord and God a man who had been crucified. And we just say that as if it's nothing, because we don't know crucifixes. We haven't seen any. We don't understand what it was. We don't understand how dehumanizing it was. We don't understand that this was a way of eliminating a person's being and name and remembrance.

from the human record permanently. And when you think about that and think about how we are 2,000 years later worshipping this victim of crucifixion, it ought to stagger our imagination. Hi, Director Mark here. Our next question is anonymous, but it raises some really interesting ideas. And remember, you can always send us anonymous questions. Anyway, here it is.

If people weren't indoctrinated with the concepts that God is just or that God is love as presupposed assumed unarguable truths, would we conclude this from reading the Bible? Dear Anonymous, what a poignant question. I imagine there's a lot of experience and probably some uncomfortable Bible reading behind that question. So thanks for sharing it.

I have a few thoughts, and I don't know how satisfying they can be. First, if we were reading this Bible as an ancient pagan, there's no doubt in my mind that we would be seeing this strange God of the Bible as loving and just. Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and so on, were used to thinking of the universe as the capricious playground of violent and unpredictable gods.

The story they told of origins underlined that disorder is basic to the universe, that humans are an afterthought, and that life is to be lived in slavery to the gods. An ancient pagan who opened up the first pages of Genesis would be confronted immediately by a radically different universe, a different vision of God, a different view of creation, a different idea of the human being.

There's no violence or disorder in that opening chapter. In fact, Genesis makes the point that God is like an artist bringing beauty and order to the physical creation. And the climactic scene of the creation is the fashioning of human beings who are not said to be slaves of the gods, as the Babylonian creation story said, but rather they are made in the very image of God.

This expression, image of God, indicates a family connection. Parents call their children their image and likeness. So from the opening page of the Bible, we're introduced to a God of order who sees human beings as his children.

As the opening statement of the whole Bible, this is surely the controlling thought for the rest of the Bible, including the bumpy bits where we might find ourselves confused about God's justice and love. Secondly, there are so many explicit statements of God's love and justice.

Not just the New Testament statements like, for God so loved the world, or God is love, as 1 John 4 puts it. But the Old Testament also has some of the most extreme statements about God's love. I honestly think the clearest explicit statements about God's love are in the Old Testament, not the New Testament.

You see it especially in the books of the prophets. I'm thinking of Hosea in particular. In that book, God describes himself as the wounded lover whose beloved Israel had abandoned him.

and yet whose enduring love won't allow him to give up on even this adulterous people. There's this line in Isaiah 11 that says, How can I give you up, Ephraim? This is God speaking, like a wounded lover. How can I hand you over, Israel? It then says, My heart is changed within me. All my compassion is aroused. Thirdly, and most importantly,

The whole narrative of the Bible points forward to the cross. This becomes the interpretative key to the whole story. This means that whatever disappointing stories and laws and statements we find in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, we have to interpret them in light of the cross. We don't look at the cross through the lenses of, say, the violent destruction of the Canaanite children.

No, we read those awful stories through the lens of the God who would rather sacrifice himself than see any of us fall under his judgment. So what does this practically mean? Here's a thought I usually only share in private because it's so easily open to misunderstanding, but I'll share it just with you, Anonymous, and I'll beg everyone else's latitude here.

When I read a story like the killing of the Canaanite children in the book of Joshua, I can see how it seems completely at odds with the God revealed in Christ, the God who loves us so much he would enter into the world and suffer unjustly for our salvation. So what do I do? I run a thought experiment.

Now, a thought experiment isn't meant to be an actual theoretical, let alone a theological explanation. It's a hypothetical intended to open up possibilities, even if the hypothetical itself isn't one of those possibilities. So when I read of the killing of the Canaanite children or any of the other really difficult stories, I stop and I find myself saying, Lord, what happened to those kids?

What were you thinking about those kids? And here's one thought experiment that provides some comfort, some alignment with the God of love. I imagine those children experiencing limited distress and then going straight into the eternal hands of the loving God.

So that if they saw me fretting at this story of their destruction, they would cry out to me, John, don't weep for us. We entered straight into the loving embrace of the God of the universe. And here's where I need your latitude. My point isn't that I believe that this is exactly what happened to those Canaanite children. I'm not a universalist. I don't believe everyone's going to be saved.

I believe in the doctrine of hell, just as Jesus taught it. But this imaginary scenario fits better with the God who would rather be crucified than see people lost. And this is what I mean by reading through the lens of the cross.

I'm perfectly willing to accept that this hypothetical isn't what actually happened to those children. But the crucial intellectual and emotional point is that if I, with my puny logic and imagination, can fantasize about a scenario that helps me cope with reading this Old Testament story, surely the truth of the matter, whatever it is, will be even more satisfying, more consistent with the God whose love is revealed in the cross.

That is the central thing I'm trying to say. Once God has revealed himself climactically in the death and resurrection of Jesus, I feel a freedom. Actually, I feel a necessity to interpret everything I read through the prism or the lens of the crucified God.

This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today.

And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.

Mere Christian Hermeneutics also offers insights that are valuable to anyone who's interested in literature, philosophy, or history. Kevin doesn't just write about faith, he's also there to hone your interpretative skills. And if you're eager to engage with the Bible, whether as a believer or as a doubter, this might be essential reading.

You can pre-order your copy of Mere Christian Hermeneutics now at Amazon, or you can head to zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions to find out more. Don't forget, zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions. So you're asking me to cut it off? Yeah, quick question. Why? Totally, totally. Yeah, so it'll be a sign of our covenant.

Isn't that neat? So neat. Yeah. No, so neat. Yeah, I'm just having a hard time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's up? Good talk. Yeah. How could it be a sign when no one can see it? No, yeah. No, I'm with you. I'm just trying to think of logic here. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. When I think of a sign, I think of like a stop sign. Right. Or like the Hollywood sign. Yeah. Not like...

Oh my me, you know, that's not it. You're saying you're not gonna do it for me? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. That's a skit from TikToker Liv Pearsall. She's got over 4 million followers on TikTok, by the way. She's acting out a conversation between God and Abraham, the first time Abraham hears God explain what circumcision is. There's a whole series called Bible Stories with Liv that sort of reenact a scene from the Bible using modern lingo and jokes.

To be honest, I don't get how these are so popular, but they are, and researcher Al, our resident 20-something, has put a link in the show notes. But I wonder if it's one of the things our next listener, Grace, has seen which prompted her to ask this question. Thanks, Grace. Hi, John. I've been seeing a lot of memes on the internet lately about circumcision.

Generally, people are just pointing out how strange it seems that God chose that to be a sign of his covenant. And the more of these memes I see, the more I start to agree that it is pretty weird. So I'm wondering, why did God choose such a seemingly bizarre sign? And also, why did he choose a sign that only men could participate in? Thanks.

Thanks, Grace. What a cool name, by the way. The first thing I feel like saying, and I hope I'm not being naughty, is that surely you women would be thrilled that this covenant sign only applied to men. The great thing is that women in Israel were every bit as much a part of the covenant story, part of the laws, the promises and so on, as any of the circumcised men. But they didn't have to undergo this physical distress.

Okay, but that doesn't actually explain the weirdness of the sign. I think there's a very simple answer. It's implied at the very point at which circumcision is introduced in the biblical narrative. It's a mark on the male sex organ that signifies that fruitfulness, descendants, whole nations coming from Abraham's seed will depend on God himself.

So here's the first reference. In Genesis chapter 17, Abraham and his male descendants have to endure this sign of the promise of fruitfulness. His wife Sarah and her female descendants get to experience the blessings with none of that. They get all of the promise and none of the, well, let me read the text. Abram fell face down.

And God said to him, as for me, this is my covenant with you. You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram. Your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful. I will make nations of you.

Every male among you shall be circumcised. It will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come, every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised. As for Sarai, your wife, her name will be Sarah.

I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations. Sarah is part of the covenant, right? She's the mother of the nations that come from her. But only Abraham, the father of the nations, has to receive this dramatic physical sign on his reproductive organ

that God will give them countless descendants. Our next question comes from Arabella and touches on a theme from our episode, Political Jesus, with N.T. Wright. Here it is. Hello, this is Arabella. Just a follow-up question from the last Undeceptions Q&A session. Why does the devil still try to torment and tempt us when he knows that he's lost?

In the Bible, it says that he's read the scriptures and he knows that God is more powerful than him. Why doesn't he repent? And if he did repent, would God forgive him? Well, Arabella, believe it or not, this was a question the ancient Christians pondered too. In the third century, one of the most learned Christian scholars, Origen of Caesarea, wondered out loud whether the devil and his demons could be restored to God in the end.

And his reasoning was that if the devil is a rational creature which had fallen out of relationship with God, there must be a possibility that God, through his refining fire, as it were, could restore even the devil. Here's what Origen wrote.

The whole of this mortal life is full of struggles and trials, caused by the opposition and enmity of those who fell from a better condition without at all looking back, and who are called the devil and his angels, and the other orders of evil which the apostle classed among the opposing powers.

But whether any of these orders who act under the government of the devil will in a future world be converted to righteousness because of their possessing the faculty of freedom of will, or whether the persistent and inveterate wickedness may be changed by the power of habit into nature, is a result which you yourself, reader, may approve of. On First Principles, Book 1, Chapter 6.

So, Arabella, you're in good, smart company wondering out loud whether this is a possibility. One small problem, if you care about the tradition of Christian orthodoxy.

is that this specific view of origins was condemned as heretical at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Specifically, Anathemas 11 and 12, if you want to look them up, they're the ones that denounce origin for this view.

There may have been philosophical rather than biblical reasons for this anathema. Origen believed that all humans and angels were eternal spiritual beings rather than beings created out of nothing. And he seems to have had trouble thinking of something eternal as experiencing an eternal demise. And this whole matrix of thought was condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople.

But there's probably a more basic problem for anyone who thinks the Bible is what establishes the truth of these matters. A few texts suggest that the devil and his crew are certainly heading to hell.

In Revelation 20, we see a final picture of judgment that says, quote, The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

This seems to reflect Jesus' own teaching in the parable of the sheep and the goats, where he speaks of the unjust among us, people who neglect the poor and the needy, will be sent to an eternal fire with the devil. In Matthew 25, Jesus said, Then he, the judge of all the world, will say to those on his left,

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The way Jesus puts this implies that while hell might be an alien place for humans to be thrown, it is a fitting place for the devil and his angels. If anyone's going to hell, and sadly Jesus taught some really are going to hell,

It certainly includes the devil. So even if we think there's a theoretical possibility that the devil might turn to God and experience mercy, the Bible seems to be saying that ain't going to happen.

Alright, here's a question that several of you wrote in about. In our first episode of this season, The Resurrection, that's episode 121, John spoke with Professor Richard Borkham on the difference between so-called apologetics and history. To refresh your memory, here's a little of what he said.

Attempting to establish that the resurrection itself is beyond reasonable doubt is part of what we might call Christian apologetics. Long-time listeners know that I'm not a huge fan of apologetics, of the word or the industry.

I mean, the root word does appear in the New Testament. The Apostle Peter, in his letter to the Christians of Asia Minor, wrote, Always be prepared to give an upper legere, a defense, to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

But there's no way Peter was imagining a whole industry of books and courses designed to amass arguments to prove every part of the Christian faith. And there's no way he would approve of the exaggerations that often appear in Christian apologetics.

I prefer to bring good historical, good scientific, good philosophical arguments to bear on Christianity. At least to give people good reason to consider the Christian faith for themselves. It's one of the key aims of the whole Undeceptions thing, to clear away the bad arguments for and against Christianity.

so that listeners can work out if there are any solid reasons to take a second look at Jesus. Sorry, that's our standard rant. It's also our raison d'etre here at Undeceptions. So that's what JD said, and he's said similar things a few times in other episodes, but this one caught your attention. So here's our next question from Steve.

This is Steve from Canberra in Australia. My question is about your episode on the resurrection and your critique of the apologetics industrial complex. I hear you're concerned that some of the people who write and speak in this space make bad or exaggerated arguments, but it's not all like that. And indeed, you in the rest of that episode go on to make a reasoned defense for the thinkability of the resurrection that kind of felt like a podcasterized version of many apologetic books on the resurrection I've read.

I'm not meaning to be a jerk, but are you being a bit snobbish, John? Like if it's not done in the name checking scholars and laying out the shortcomings of what we can know probabilistically region, then it's just sparkling apologetics. Thanks so much. Funny. You don't sound like a jerk at all, Steve, but I'm going to admit I'm a snob. And that probably does explain part of my aversion to the word apologetics. Not all of it, but part of it.

So much apologetics seems lightweight. It will use any argument, even a bad one, if it promotes Christianity. There are very, very few books on, say, historical apologetics, to offer just the example I know a lot about, that I could give to one of my former colleagues at the Ancient History Department at Macquarie University, or to a professor in Oxford's Classics faculty, where I'll be next week.

They just wouldn't recognize this stuff as expert history. They would just think it was intellectual sounding Christian propaganda.

Now, this isn't to say there aren't famous apologists, especially in America, who are experts in their disciplines. All right. So I'll admit Ed Thieser has written some of the best defenses of the existence of God and best critiques of atheism that you'll find. But he writes as a professional philosopher. He's done the hard yards and he's got a doctorate in that particular discipline.

Philosophers recognize his framework and his arguments as serious philosophy. William Lane Craig is expert in both history and philosophy, and he argues like an expert.

Over the pond, Alistair McGrath from Oxford happily calls himself an apologist. He's written books with the word apologetics in the title. But again, he's taken the time to get doctorates in both science and theology. He's a genuine expert.

The same is absolutely the case with Richard Borkum, whom you mentioned in connection with the resurrection episode. He wouldn't really call himself an apologist. He's one of the most widely revered New Testament historians in the world today. All of his views are informed by the best practice of classicists, historians, and New Testament scholars. And that's why I wanted to interview him on that crucial topic. But that's not the norm in Christian apologetics.

It's the lack of expertise that permeates so much apologetics. That's what troubles me. Instead of doing professional level history or science or philosophy in service of commanding the Christian faith, what apologetics often does is grab any argument from those disciplines that sounds vaguely positive for Christianity, and then we put that in our quiver to shoot at the world when we need it.

So to my mind, man, I'm going to lose friends right now. Apologetics isn't even an academic discipline. It's a craft. It's a craft that involves trawling through the various disciplines to find arguments that might work in Christian persuasion. Let me put it this way.

I feel about much Christian apologetics today exactly what I feel about Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, when it first came out, or Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great. They are not responsible intellectual works.

They are grab bags of arguments from history, science, philosophy, sociology, and so on that have persuasive force for those who don't know the disciplines and next to no credibility for those who do know the disciplines. But even if you're not with me on this critique, Steve, there's a more basic reason I avoid the word apologist, apologism, apologetics, and so on.

When my friends and I established the Centre for Public Christianity in Australia years ago, we thought long and hard about how we would describe what we wanted to do in advocating for the Christian faith in public. Now, we could have called it evangelism, I suppose.

Except that that word really only has special Christian resonance. And strictly speaking, in the New Testament, the word itself, eumelizami, only refers to the explicit announcement of the news of Jesus' life, teaching, death, and resurrection for our salvation. And the center was doing that plus a bit more. So we needed a different word. We thought about the word apologetics. But we quickly worked out

that this is a damaged word in mainstream circles, outside the church I mean. We saw that mostly people didn't even use the word apologetics or apologist, but we also noticed that when they did use the word, it consistently had a negative connotation. It basically was the equivalent of propaganda or propagandist. This is exactly how Richard Dawkins used these words in his famous 2006 book,

I know he's the mirror image of an apologist, but it's his usage of the term that I think is really significant. He'll say things like this. Religious apologists try to claim Einstein as one of their own.

Or some apologists even add the name of Darwin, about whom persistent but demonstrably false rumors of a deathbed conversion continually come around like a bad smell. Or he writes, the efforts of apologists to find genuinely distinguished modern scientists who are religious have an air of desperation.

And on and on these words go. There are 21 similar negative uses of the term apologist in that book, where it means propagandist. Dawkins didn't invent that connotation, of course. It was already in the air, but he sort of cemented it. And I've seen many examples since, even outside of religious context.

where the word apologetics or apologist or whatever is used negatively. So you might read of an apologist for big pharma or an apologist for the oil industry.

The most recent one I spotted comes from the terrific new book Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry. She's not at all religious. It's not a religious book. But at one point, she talks about how some queer theorists like Gail Rubin and Mikkel Foucault even defended pedophilia back in the 1960s and 70s. And she writes this.

If the pedophilia apologism of sexual revolutionaries such as Foucault and Rubin is remembered at all, it is as a brief and embarrassing detour from the progressive path. Apologism. She means apologetics. And if this isn't enough, the Oxford English Dictionary

defines apologist as, quote, a person who offers an argument in defence of something controversial, example, an enthusiastic apologist for fascism in the 1920s. I rest my case. Our next question comes from Paul, and it's a special one for the Undeceptions team. So, John, I've got a question. It's not like deeply theological or anything, but I'm sure you'll be able to answer it.

I'm wondering, could you let producer Mark narrate an episode of Undeceptions? Because we hear all your banter and picking on him. And obviously there's a second half of this in the office every time you create an episode. And I want to hear what Mark's got to say about you. That would be fun. Thanks.

Thanks for that, Paul. It's actually Director Mark, but I've asked him to give you some background. What it's like working for JD, and how did they meet all those years ago? Hi, Paul. Thanks for your question, and all I can say is that I hope the answer lives up to your expectations. Firstly, what's it like to work for John? Well, given I work for John, it's not the easiest question to answer. So I had my legal counsel draw up the following...

This statement serves as a declaration of my utmost joviality and delight in working under the employee of Professor John Dixon. By proceeding to read this document, I acknowledge and understand that any insinuation, overt or covert, of non-fun or non-awesomeness in relation to working conditions under the esteemed leadership of Professor John Dixon is purely fictional and should be taken with a truckload of salt."

It is hereby affirmed that our workplace is akin to a carnival of joy, a festival of laughter and a symphony of delight. Any claims to the contrary, whether muttered under one's breath or conveyed via interpretive dance, are deemed as products of an overactive imagination and should be promptly disregarded.

Yours sincerely, etc., etc.

Now, on to historical fact. How did John and I meet? Well, it was 1989 and I was hosting a radio show in country New South Wales and John came to town with his band In The Silence. I had him on the show to promote one of his gigs and asked him all about his life, which he remembers exactly nothing of. That doesn't surprise me because he came to town again the next year and we did it all over again and he doesn't remember that either.

Our paths didn't cross again until a few years later in a truly sliding doors moment when he and I applied for the same job. I unfortunately got it. I gave up my PhD to work in media and he gave up his media aspirations and pursued his PhD. But God has a sense of humour and we found ourselves working together again a few years later on a documentary called The Christ Files based on an excellent book John had written.

That took us to eight countries together, and we had plenty of time to get to know each other. Since then, we've pretty much been working together on film, television, and online products all over the world, going on for well over 30 years now. And in all that time, I have remained two years younger than him.

But I think that the real reason behind your addressing your question to me, as opposed to the sterling, magical six-person team that makes Undeceptions possible, is because John has something fun to say about me most episodes. We've actually received a number of emails over the years expressing some concern at the way John describes me, I think from very well-intentioned, though probably mistaken people.

If you're one of our non-Australian listeners, then bear with me as this is going to get a bit of a stretch for your imagination. In Australia, if we like someone, we mangle something about them. It could be their name. John Dixon is known as Dicko to many of his mates.

We can do the same with their looks, their personality, their character. I tried to explain this to a Japanese friend of mine once. I said, when an Australian wants to say something funny about a friend, they say the exact opposite of what they mean. A good bloke is a bit of a loser. A real joker bores me to tears. And if you really agree with something someone says about you, you tell them to get stuffed.

My Japanese friend responded, why would you do that? Why indeed? As an Australian, I admit that every joke I've told to my American friends has always fallen flat. So what is John doing when he insists I'm the fan of a science fiction film no one with two cents to their name would consider buying a ticket to?

Well, he's leaning in on those 30 years that came before to give me a poke in the ribs. Maybe the way some guys affectionately punch each other in the arm, right? Though I'll admit John's humor does feel a bit like being hit by a car and backed over several times. But in short, I'm convinced he's saying those things because deep down, deep, deep, deep down, he loves me.

And I think that if you caught him off mic with a glass of Lafroi in his hand, he'd be happy to admit it. Hmm, interesting. Rubbish. 68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.

It pushed his family into financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.

There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Anglican.

Hey, yo. You all right? Yeah, I'm okay, thanks. You know anything? Nah, you know what's going on? Nah, man, I don't know anything. He's crazy. Get back in your car! Remain with your...

What are we doing? It's our way out of here. That dramatic clip comes from the film World War Z, starring Brad Pitt and Mireille Inos. It's one of the many, many, many films to emerge in recent years, toying with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. And what we heard there was the moment zombies suddenly began overrunning Philadelphia and

The scene in question was actually shot in Glasgow and 3,000 people turned up to be used as extras. True story. That scene does a pretty good job of capturing the confusion and terror that people would feel seeing a whole bunch of undead folks roaming the streets. Strangely enough, we actually have a scene in the Gospels that has a hint of zombies about it. It comes just after Matthew's account of Jesus' crucifixion. Have a listen to this.

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. Matthew chapter 27.

Now, to be fair, this passage doesn't read like something from a Walking Dead or 28 Weeks Later script, but it's still pretty weird. It's no surprise then that we've got a question about it. Hi, John and the Undeceptions team. Thank you for all the amazing work that you do in terms of explaining things of science, ethics, history, whatever it might be in a clear and accessible way. I really value the work that you guys do.

In the recent resurrection episode, which was brilliant and timely, thank you so much, you spoke about a general resurrection that the Jewish people believed in back then. My question is about Matthew 27. What do we do with this passage? How do we approach it in light of Jesus' resurrection? Thanks so much. Bye. Thanks, Josh. This is exactly the sort of question or answer that is likely to get me into trouble with some folks.

which is already going to be a problem with this episode, because I hold several views in my head at the same time. And only one of them is it's in the Bible. So I believe it.

At one end of the spectrum is the view of more than a few scholars on us say that Matthew just made this stuff up to signal how important Jesus' death was. It's not a true story, but it was intended to be a true story to amplify Jesus. His death was so powerful it opened the graves of the dead and brought people back to life. That's view one.

View two is similar, but a little less harsh on Matthew. This view says that Matthew was reporting in good faith what people reported to him. Obviously, the story isn't true on this view, but it's not that Matthew was inventing it. It's just a piece of legend that Matthew incorporated into his otherwise okay historical account of Jesus' life. View three is at the other end of the spectrum.

Some see it as straightforward reporting of historical fact. It happened exactly as Matthew tells it. Tombs were opened, dead Jewish believers were raised, and after Jesus' resurrection, they went into Jerusalem and were seen by tons of people.

Now, these first three views all share the opinion that it's meant to be an historical event. Matthew is trying to exaggerate things in the first view. Matthew just reports what he was told in the second view. And Matthew tells it exactly as it happened, the third view. All three approach it as attempting to be some kind of report of what happened.

And there are at least two other views that are worth considering that don't assume Matthew intended this as history. So view four just says that it's an interpolation. It's a little sentence or two added to Matthew's gospel in the second or third centuries.

This is not scholars scratching around for something to say about a weird passage. Everyone who reads Matthew 27 in English, but especially in Greek, notices that the sentence about dead people walking sort of pops out of nowhere. Right up to that point, Matthew's account of the crucifixion looks pretty much like Mark's. And then there's this strange line about multiple resurrections.

This might have been a very late legend, a century or more after Jesus, that some scribe, not Matthew, but some scribe who was copying out the Gospels, decided to insert into this part of the story. That's view four. View five is really different. View five says Matthew did write this. It wasn't an interpolation, but he didn't intend it to be read as historical report.

He added it as what you might call an apocalyptic breakout.

signaling in a non-historical way the future resurrection of all the dead because of Christ's own death and resurrection. There are other apocalyptic lines in Matthew straight from the lips of Jesus. So, for example, in Matthew 24, Jesus said, wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather. The sun will be darkened. The moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken and so on.

Now, it's possible to read these statements as factual prophecies about the collapse of the universe. And I guess some people read it that way. But most of us see this language of Jesus as apocalyptic imagery about judgment and renewal when Christ returns.

So, view five about Matthew 27 says that Matthew is doing something similar. He's using apocalyptic imagery to underline the significance of Jesus' own death and resurrection. On this view, the death and resurrection of Jesus is more than an historical event. It's a cosmic event that guarantees resurrection life for all of God's people when Christ returns.

All right, they're the five views. What do I think? Well, for what it's worth, I couldn't bring myself to think Matthew made this up for effect.

I think the Gospel writers were way more conservative and careful than that. The historian in me thinks the most plausible view on historical grounds alone is view number two, that Matthew innocently included a legend. He wasn't personally in a position to know whether this happened, but he believed those who told him. Now it's important not to misunderstand what I'm saying here,

This is what I suspect is the best historical analysis. It's not actually what I believe, but I understand why many, many scholars look at Matthew 27 and say, Matthew has just included a legend that he thought was true. Now, I can happily believe something is more historically sound than something else without actually believing the former.

And this is because I don't think history has all the answers. For me, reading the Bible is like listening to a friend you've grown to trust over a lifetime of depending on that friend. The friend might tell you something that people think is ridiculous, something that the weight of historical analysis calls into question. But if your friend is sincere, you might choose to believe your friend because it's always seemed wisest to rely on the stuff your friend says.

In a similar way, the Bible is my friend. I find it very difficult to believe that my friend deceives or is deceived. So where does that leave me? Well, I reject views one and two, but I wonder around views three, four, and five. I can happily agree that Matthew 27 is just reporting the facts.

I don't think there's any historical evidence for lots of dead people coming to life and being seen in Jerusalem. The historical evidence is probably against it, but I don't care. History is a very limited discipline because of the paucity of evidence. It would only take one random letter to be discovered in Jerusalem that reports such an event and all the skeptics would change their tune.

But I also think it's possible that this line in Matthew 27, 52 to 53 to be precise, is an interpolation. I can see how it interrupts the flow of Matthew's narration of the crucifixion. It does stick out like a sore thumb. So I give this a 20% chance of being right.

And I remain open to Matthew intending this as apocalyptic imagery, not historical reporting. Some very clever people have argued this. It's a metaphorical picture of the final day of resurrection inserted by Matthew to make a theological point about the

power of Jesus' death and resurrection. And I give this a 20% chance of being right too. So I suppose that leaves me saying I'm 60% confident on personal grounds, not historical grounds, that Matthew is reporting a straightforward fact. But I remain 40% open to these other two possibilities. Hopefully that's clearer than mud.

The next question is the final one for our regular listeners, plus subscribers will get a couple more. This question comes from Bell. I've been wondering how mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and personality disorders fit into the Bible. Is a personality disorder a result of insecurities and falling away from God? Or is it just how some people were made?

The only people I've known with personality disorders are either not Christian in the first place or they fell away, and it seemed to make them more vulnerable to falling away. How does this fit in with God's justice? I love your work, and I'd love your thoughts. Bell. Bell, this is a hard one. It's hard to talk about, hard to understand, and above all, hard to experience for anyone who's going through mental illness.

Theologically, mental disorders are part of the groaning creation we live in. That's how the Apostle Paul put it in Romans 8. In that great passage, he says that the creation was subjected to frustration in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay. And Paul goes on, we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. There is, in other words, an estrangement between creator and creation that longs to be redeemed.

The whole creation and our bodies will be liberated and restored out of the frustration and into wholeness and joy. And that is the fundamental meaning of Christ's resurrection. I know this is hyper-theological, but the thing is, the resurrection is the promise of the redemption of our bodies and of creation itself. And that means that this side of the new creation is

We all experience different levels of decay, whether physical ailments or mental conditions like anxiety or personality disorders. Now, I suppose it's possible that some of these disorders are the result of trauma or other background experiences. Other disorders, though, aren't explained by our experiences. They are just there.

part of the frustrated creation like other incapacities and illnesses, whether blindness or cancer. So first and foremost, this calls for compassion toward anyone who's suffering in this way and toward ourselves if we're suffering in that way. Now you ask specifically about God's justice.

I often fall back on that verse where Abraham cries out to God in Genesis 18, Far be it from you, will not the judge of all the earth do right? You bet. God will take all things into account, including mental illness, when he untangles our journeys in the final kingdom. I think I can do better though.

We ran an episode on mental health. It was way back in episode 38. And we interviewed the wonderful Karen Pang, who experiences sometimes torturous bipolar disorder. And she's also someone who walks with Christ through it all. So let me throw to her. Bless you, Belle. Do you find yourself still praying to be healed of your bipolar? No. Why?

Because I've done so many times. And those many times I've like, you know, I've demanded that he do that. And there's a few times where he says, no, I'm not going to do it. And as my life has continued on, I realize my life is blessed. My life is good because I know I have a good story. And I'm glad he isn't, you know, taking it away.

I mean, I still have my days. I feel quite stable and quite steadfast, you know, as the Bible would put, and quieter. I think quietness and stillness is the essential part of this experience. Because not only is it the opposite, you know, of bipolar, but it is the way that the Bible teaches us as Christians that is the best place. And also on your knees.

Because as he says, you know, bring me the brokenhearted and those, yeah, those who are weak. And I think that for me, being on my knees has been the best place to be.

Prayer also has brought me to my knees to be able to live in this space. Sometimes, you know, of course I raged and I questioned and I hated. I was bitter, you know, and I was upset. But the thing is, I know God says it's okay. I can take this. This is okay. Just keep going. ♪ music playing ♪

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Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, and produced by Kayleigh Payne. And the show is directed by Mark Hadley. Sophie Hawkshaw is on socials and membership. Alistair Belling is a writer and researcher. Siobhan McGuinness is our online librarian. Lindy Leveston remains my wonderful assistant. Santino DiMarco is chief finance and operations consultant. Editing by Richard Humwe. Special thanks to our series sponsor, Zondervan, for making this Undeception possible. Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com.

Letting the truth out. An Undeceptions podcast. So looking at you, my friendly fundamentalist, Mark, do you... That's how I like to know. I actually have a t-shirt. Yeah. So do you... How do you feel about that answer? I'm fine. I'm fine. Because you leave the weight of possibility on scripture being correct. So no trouble. Yeah. Okay. Can I include that?

You're wicked. I don't know. Believe it or not, in the circles in which I move, six-day creationist is a more positive term than fundamentalist. Yeah. Though I must admit, we used to have, there's a newspaper called The Biblical Fundamentalist, which was delivered to our house every Sunday. I'll look that up.

That says all the things. That says all the things. Did he give you a packing list for the rapture? That's not fundamentalism. Even I know what apocalyptic speech is. Gosh. Do you know how I get through this? I remind myself that we are creating a caricature, not the actual person. Anyway. Yeah? Yeah. You know how I get through this? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just, you know, I'm so open-minded. I even happily include Mark Hadley. Nice, nice.