Intro:

St. Thomas Aquinas (1224 - 1274) was an Italian Catholic priest and Dominican friar who is arguably one of Christianity’s greatest systematic theologians and philosophers. He joined the Dominicans at Naples in 1245, became a student of Albert the Great at the University of Paris (1245 - 1248) and at the University of Cologne (1248 - 1252), and became a faculty member at the University of Paris in 1252.1 Aquinas is also one of the most prolific writers in church history, and one of his most important works is his Summa Theologiae, which is Latin for “Summary of Theology.” In Summa Theologiae, Aquinas divides his work into three parts: Part I focuses on questions about God and how all of creation comes from Him, Part II focuses on questions of how God’s intelligent creatures will return to him through “human actions, morality and grace, as well as through the virtues,” and Part III focuses on the “theological implications of the Incarnation, including the Church.”2

If you are unfamiliar with the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, here is a brief overview of how his scholastic questions are set up. First there is a question which is more like a general category of what the proceeding articles are going to focus on. The articles are discrete, self-contained discussions of one specific problem under its question’s general umbrella. Each article, then, is a miniature debate, which reflects the style of formal academic disputation common in medieval universities of Aquinas’s day. The title, as it still is today, identifies the issue to be debated and is put in the form of a question that invites a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. The debate then begins with arguments for both answers, which can be seen in the presence of objections at the beginning of the debate. The objections are going to be those arguments that would conclude with an answer of “no” the topic. It is common for Aquinas to set the objections against the position that he wants to defend. The On the Contrary phrase introduces arguments that supports Aquinas’s view, even though Aquinas was known to also reject these arguments at times in case he had a whole new argument that refuted both groups. The preliminary arguments of “on the contrary” often relied upon brief quotes form the Bible or brief references to fellow Christian theologians and/or philosophers. Next, Thomas Aquinas provides his “I answer that” or “Answer” section in which he sets out his own view. Finally, Aquinas ends the miniature debate with “replies” in which he replies to each of the objections that began the debate in the first place. While you may think that the best of Aquinas’s argument would be found in the “Answer” section, it is more often than not that his most powerful arguments are found in his specific replies to each of the initial objections.3

Disclaimer:

What follows is not the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, though Aquinas does answer similar questions regarding the image of God as well as the justice of God. What follows is an assignment that I did earlier this year in my philosophical theology seminar for my doctoral work. The task for this assignment was to take a question and answer it in the same style as Thomas Aquinas, and there were no limits on what the question could cover. For example, one classmate did their scholastic question assignment on whether pineapple is an acceptable topping on pizza! So, while this exercise is typically used for serious and deep scholarly questions and ideas, it can also be a fun exercise for something as frivolous as pizza toppings. Though the content of that particular student’s scholastic question assignment is not the focus of this article, I would like to make clear that I passionately disagree with their conclusion. Pineapple is most definitely an acceptable and a recommended topping for pizza.

However, I was given some good advice at the start of my doctoral work to try to make as much of my course work focused on or related to the subject matter that I hope to write about for my dissertation. With that advice in mind, I approached the connection that exists, at least in my mind, between the innate desire that humanity has for justice and the fact that humanity is created in the image of God or imago dei. In this scholastic question, I am going to contend that because God is simple, which means that He is His attributes and He is not made up of parts, and because one of His attributes is justice, and because He created humanity in His image, then the desire for justice is an innate characteristic within humanity. If you read my previous article, “Justice as Participation in God,” then you will see this exercise as more foundational to the argument that I made in that article. In fact, this scholastic question exercise helped me organize a lot of my thoughts for that philosophical theology paper.

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Article: Whether justice is a necessary attribute of the imago dei within humanity.

Objection 1: It seems that justice is not an attribute of the imago dei within humanity because God does not exist. If God does not exist, then humanity does not possess the imago dei. God does not exist. Therefore, justice is a moral concept created by the evolution of human society and is not a result of humanity being created in the image of God.

Objection 2: It seems that justice is not an attribute of the imago dei within humanity. For if justice was an attribute of the imago dei within humanity, then human society would reflect God’s justice, but evil and injustice exist in the world. Therefore, if the imago dei resides within humanity, justice is not a necessary aspect of it.

Objection 3: It seems that justice is not a necessary attribute of the imago dei within humanity. For the Fall of humanity into sin caused the imago dei within humanity to be distorted. Thus, humanity does not naturally desire or display divine attributes. Therefore, justice is no longer an innate attribute of the imago dei within humanity.

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On the Contrary: Scripture says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). And “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic 6:8). And again, “learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Is 1:17). A necessary attribute is one that must exist as part of one’s essence or substance. In other words, a necessary attribute is an attribute that exists within the foundational nature of a being. Therefore, justice is a necessary attribute of the imago dei within humanity.4

Answer: I answer that justice is a necessary attribute of the imago dei within humanity. Two principles must be established here: first that God is necessarily just. Second, that God created man in His image, which means that man is imbued with an ability to finitely participate in the divine attributes through the imago dei. Therefore, since justice is necessary attribute of God, it follows that man also possesses a necessary attribute which looks like an innate desire for justice, which means that man will naturally desire to participate in God by desiring and working towards enacting justice within society by reason of the imago dei.

For the Scriptures repeatedly say that “the Lord is just in all His ways” (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 11:7; Ps. 92:15; Ps. 145:17; Lam. 1:18; Zeph. 3:5). Aquinas teaches that there are two kinds of justice, but that when Scripture calls God just, it is referring to the type of justice known as distributive justice in which “a ruler or a steward gives to each what his rank deserves.”5 The philosopher, Plato via Socrates, defines justice as being achieved when each person participates in the thing that that person’s soul is best suited or adapted to do.6 God is the Creator of all things which explains the diversity within man to do various things rather than humanity doing just the one thing. However, God is One, therefore, humanity exists for a singular purpose though the individual man may live out that singular purpose in a different fashion. Anselm of Canterbury wrote that there is nothing greater than God that can be imagined, and that God is the only being that exists necessarily because of His greatness.7 Boethius also clarifies that God is the essence or source of all happiness.8

What is more Scripture teaches that God created man in His own Image (Gen. 1:26 – 27), and the Philosopher, Aristotle, wrote that man can only know a truth if its cause is known.9 Since it is known that God is truth (Jn 3:33) and that He is eternal (Col. 1:15 – 17 & Isa 26:4) then it can also be known that God is uncaused and yet the Causer of all things. For what can cause true things to exist and can sustain true things in existence than a Being who is both uncaused, who is Truth, and who is eternal. Genesis 1 also shows that God is, indeed, just because He created all things with a natural order rather than creating the universe without pattern or order.

Therefore, if God is the One greater than whom none can be imagined, and one of the key attributes of justice is the distribution of what is owed to beings based on their merit then God is of infinite merit so that He deserves all praise and glory. For Scripture also tells us that creation exists for God (Col. 1:16 & Rom. 11:36), which means that the singular purpose of creation is to give God praise and glory. For creation, specifically mankind, to give God praise and glory is just since man is made in the image of God. According to Boethius, that the good things that man and creation possess is their possession only by participation in God.10 As image bearers of God, man has creaturely versions of the qualities and desires of God, though because of the Fall these qualities and desires are not a perfect image of God’s perfect holiness. For sin breaks and kills and distorts good things whereas God restores. Therefore, by the restoration of God provided by the atoning death and glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, man is able by God’s grace to participate in the goodness and the justice of God.

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Reply to Objection 1: The linchpin of your objection is centered upon the existence of God, which you cannot prove to not exist, and the fulfillment of your objection is in the belief that justice is man-made. However, justice is a transcendental principle that seems to be known and recognized by all peoples across time and cultures, which means that justice must come from outside of humanity. For if justice is a man-made concept by way of social evolution, then there could be a society in the world that the concept of justice has not evolved. Furthermore, if justice is a result of social evolution then it might account for instances of justice regarding retribution and restitution of certain criminal acts because of this system’s ability to contribute to the survival of its citizens. However, social evolution does not appear to be adequate for advocating for social justice issues regarding equality within a society such as all citizens being able to vote or to pursue happiness as in the United States of America because these social justice issues are not inherently related to survival. Admittedly, though, there have been cases in which the violation of social justice issues has led to the end of life for people, but it is much more likely that justice, given both of these understanding and practical implications of the concept of justice, comes from a singular source external to humanity in which justice is imperfectly reflected and refracted in the image bearers of God. Furthermore, without God’s existence, there is not an objective standard of right and wrong, which means that there would not be a common sense of what justice is. In other words, there would not be a common or consistent understanding of what justice is or looks like across time and culture as it seems to have been for the majority of human history and society. As it is, it seems that there is a common sense of justice though the belief in how to enact it is different due to the result of sin in the world.

Reply to Objection 2: Evil and injustice exist because of man’s bringing sin and death into the world, thus the imago dei has not been deprived of justice but the enactment of justice is now dimly shone and does not reflect God’s light perfectly as it ought (1 Cor. 13:12a). Regardless of the existence of evil and injustice, there is still an evident desire for justice to be in human societies, as evidenced by the existence of a criminal justice system in most, if not all, organized human societies. Therefore, justice must be a necessary attribute of the imago dei.

Reply to Objection 3: It cannot be denied that the Fall had its effects upon the image bearers so that they do not reflect or enact the attributes of the image of God truly as they ought, but the Fall did not change the presence of the attributes of the image of God created within humanity. All the divine attributes that God instilled in humanity are present within humanity by their nature, but because of the Fall, those attributes are enacted, often, in broken and sinful methods. It can be said that perhaps some of the attributes are no longer desired or capable of being experienced because of the Fall, but the inward desires of man still reflect the image of God though, again, man’s obedience to those desires is often not in accordance with God’s desires. If justice were such an attribute that is no longer desired or displayed then no human government or society would have established a justice system meant to punish the wicked and reward the good in accordance with Romans 13. There might have been other forms of justice, such as a Machiavellian view of justice in the mighty using their power to get their way, but these forms of justice would in fact be vessels of injustice rather than justice. Since every human society recorded has had some form of government, and every government has had a method of honoring the good and punishing the wicked, though those methods have not always been in accordance with God’s commands, this shows that justice is still an necessary attribute of the imago dei and is still desired by at least some if not all of humanity.

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Concluding Thoughts:

First, thank you for taking the time to read this exercise in the Aquinas method of philosophical argumentation. I know for some of you this is approach is quite different, and I know for others of you this is a familiar practice. I have included this exercise in my Substack because I want my writing is to make a bridge between the scholar and the layperson. Aquinas’s work is definitely geared toward the scholar, but Aquinas is so important to Christian thought and philosophy that the laity in the pews of our churches need to, at the very least, have an understanding of who he was and how he can help grow them in their faith. A part of Aquinas’s importance is in the method itself. Notice, that Aquinas approaches a question by starting with the views that oppose his own rather than beginning with his views. Aquinas’s approach models Christian humility and grace by considering other views first as well as being gracious enough to address opposing views in an orderly fashion. Aquinas’s approach also models humility in referring to the views of other Christians, who agree with him but also have come before him in the faith. The primary benefit of Aquinas is the depth to which he contemplated God, and how he was able to use the task of philosophy to reason through a great number of questions about God.

Second, I recognize that there are a lot more possible objections out there to the idea that humanity’s desire for justice comes from the fact that humanity is created in the image of God. For this exercise, I focused on the three most common objections that I have heard regarding the origin of human morality as well as the nature of the image of God within humanity since the Fall in Genesis 3. There are likely way more objections to this concept from a non-Christian worldview and even from various convictions within the Christian worldview. There is also a lot more I could have said in response to these objections. However, the content is what I submitted as required for the assignment in that particular seminar. I hope to expand upon what is here later on, especially if I get some positive feedback about this type of project. I also hope to get some helpful pushback so that I can hear different perspectives and learn from any possible oversights in this article.

Finally, it is important to remember that no matter what philosophies get thrown your way, no matter what fancy terms we scholars use to describe the high things of God, and no matter what the world may try to convince you of, our God is greater than all these things. He is the One whom none greater can be imagined. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6). Colossians 1:15 - 16 says, “He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” Jesus is the source of all True things, all Good things, and all Beautiful things. He is the Bread of Life and the Everlasting Spring of Living Water! Even the bad things that happen in your life and in this world, find their ultimate reconciliation and purpose in the glorification of Christ (Romans 8:28 - 29). In a world of constant division and strife, let us hold fast to our confession of faith (Heb. 10:23). No matter what you may think, there is a deep groaning within humanity to be unity with its Creator, which is why everyone, regardless of worldview, seeks after the Good. They may seek it wrongly or in the wrong things, but they seek it nevertheless. Everyone (on some level) seeks love and to be loved. Everyone (on some level) seeks companionship and a life worth living. Everyone (on some level) has a desire to receive justice and to see justice delivered. Don’t believe me? Then perhaps you should ask why True Crime and Police/Crime Dramas are consistently the highest rank genres among documentaries and television shows (50% for T.C. and 76% for P/C. D.). Everyone is looking for justice because our God is a just God, and He has made us in His image!

The following is a book review that was published in the Midwestern Journal of Theology Spring 2026 Vol. 25 No. 1. The Midwestern Journal of Theology is published by Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is located in Kansas City, MO. If you are interested in subscribing to that journal, you should click here, but if you’d like to read the rest of this particular edition, then you should click here

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Alvin Plantinga. By Greg Welty. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2023. 178 pp. $16.00, Paperback. ISBN 978-1-62995-853-8.

Alvin Plantinga has done more for the discipline of Christian philosophy than anyone else in the past sixty years. Due to the number of publications Plantinga has produced in his career, discerning which work to start with or figuring out how all the pieces of his philosophy fit together is a daunting task. However, Greg Welty has done a phenomenal job in synthesizing and critiquing Plantinga’s philosophical arguments. Welty’s Alvin Plantinga, as part of the Great Thinkers series, is a helpful introduction to anyone who is wanting to dip their toes into the world of Christian philosophy and Christian apologetics.

Dr. Greg Welty is professor of philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is the author of Why Is There Evil in the World? as well as coeditor of Calvinism and Middle Knowledge: A Conversation. Welty writes as someone who admires Alvin Plantinga and has been deeply impacted by Plantinga’s work. Welty should be praised for his ability to separate his admiration for Plantinga enough that he can provide some honest evaluations of Plantinga’s work, especially in light of the Reformed tradition of the Christian faith. This is the first book that I have read in the Great Thinker series, which covers other philosophers and theologians from across history such as Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Richard Dawkins, David Hume, Karl Marx, and several others.

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Dr. Bill Davis, a former student of Plantinga, wrote the forward which is followed by Welty’s preface. Welty’s goal in writing Alvin Plantinga is three-fold: to provide a summary and commentary regarding the what and the why of Plantinga’s arguments; to clarify which points of the Calvinist or Reformed tradition that Plantinga adheres to and which points he rejects; and to help the reader learn how to sift the “wheat from the chaff”(p. 15) as far as what is helpful and what is hurtful in Plantinga’s arguments. Welty begins with a profile of who Alvin Plantinga is, where Plantinga has come from, and why he is included with the “Great Thinkers.” In other words, Plantinga’s inclusion in this series of books is explained by covering the significance of his career thus far as well as giving a miniature biography of Plantinga’s life. However, Welty is forthcoming about the limitations of this book in that there was not sufficient space to cover Plantinga’s “considerable and substantive work in metaphysics and in philosophy of mind” (p. xxii).

Welty covers Plantinga’s approaches to faith and reason. Plantinga developed what is known as the faculty-based approach to faith and reason, which basically views faith and reason as two types of knowing. Plantinga’s role as one of the central figures in the Reformed Epistemology movement in 1983 is also discussed in the second chapter. Next, Welty discusses Plantinga’s argument for “warranted Christian belief” (p. 31). In the third chapter, Welty discusses Plantinga’s contributions towards a Christian response to the problem of evil, which usually refers to “any significant case of pain and suffering” (p. 39). Plantinga offers two arguments against the logical problem of evil, and these arguments are what is known as an undercutting defeater and a rebutting defeater (terms that are explained in the chapter). Welty offers an evaluation of these arguments before addressing Plantinga’s responses to the evidential problem of evil.

Subsequently, Welty covers Plantinga’s contributions to arguments in favor of theism. Welty frames Plantinga’s contributions this way, “While Plantinga is a relatively recent contributor to this very old extraordinarily complex discussion, his position is both significant and easily summarized: God’s existence has not been disproved by argument, is rationally permissible to accept, and is supportable by way of argument” (p. 57). Plantinga’s contribution to this area includes his arguments against the problem of evil, but Welty focuses on Plantinga’s rational permissibility argument, the parity argument from other minds, and arguments from natural theology. Welty naturally follows up Plantinga’s theistic arguments with a chapter covering Plantinga’s views on the divine attributes. While there are many divine attributes that could be covered, Welty focuses on the attributes that tend to be more controversial and debated among Christian philosophers- simplicity (God is not made up of parts), omniscience (God is all-knowing), and transcendence (God is eternal or timeless). Plantinga’s views on the supposed conflict between science and religion are discussed next, which entails answering questions like “Does biological evolution undermine the doctrine of divine creation?” (p.92).

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Welty takes a step back from Plantinga’s philosophical arguments and apologetic contributions to discuss Plantinga’s method for participating in Christian philosophy, which is based on the belief that there is no such thing as religious neutrality. Welty discusses Plantinga’s methodological principles and distinct activities of Christian philosophy as well as Plantinga’s “eight ways to approach the truth of distinctive Christian claims” (p. 113). Welty, then, evaluates whether Plantinga’s own Christian philosophy demonstrate his method. In the final chapter of Alvin Plantinga, Welty examines all that he has discussed about Plantinga’s philosophical work in order to provide some clarity as to whether Plantinga can be considered to be reformed or Calvinist in his theology. Welty distinguishes between Reformed beliefs that are essential in order to be considered Reformed and those Reformed beliefs that are not essential to be considered Reformed. The latter are beliefs that are common amongst Calvinists but are not unanimously accepted. In Welty’s examination, he examines which of Plantinga’s arguments that the Reformed believer would have to reject based on the essentials of the Reformed tradition, and he demonstrates how Reformed views could be added to other Plantingan arguments that do not reject Reformed essentials.

Dr. Welty does an excellent job in not only educating his reader about the gem that Alvin Plantinga is and has been to the world of Christian philosophy and apologetics, and Welty also treats Plantinga with the utmost fairness when examining and evaluating his work. Furthermore, Welty really does a service to his readers by demonstrating how to charitably use the arguments and methods of Plantinga that line up with Reformed Theology and leaving out those things that do not line up. Welty demonstrates how not to throw out the Plantingan baby with the bath water. This book would be useful to Christians who have or intend to have meaningful conversations with non-Christians about the truth claims of Christianity. Welty provides the reader with tools so that those who are unfamiliar with philosophical jargon can comprehend Plantinga’s work. I will end this review with Welty’s own words, “We all fall short in various ways, but not all ways of falling short are created equal...Plantinga’s body of work has made significant contributions to mature philosophical reflection...while at the same time being strongly influenced by the Reformed tradition” (p. 147). This quote demonstrates the charity to which all Christians should aspire to when engaging with each other.

Elvis DeFreese

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO

About the Author:

For those of you who are new to my Substack, I’m Elvis DeFreese. I’m a Ph.D. student in Apologetics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. My wife and I are both doctoral students at MBTS, and we are both Louisiana natives. We moved to Kansas City, MO back in 2020 to begin our seminary studies together because of my call to ministry. We are foster parents, and we are also business owners. Essentially, you can say that we stay really busy all the time. I ask that you pray for me and for my family as we continue the complexity of our lives as we seek to serve the Lord through our educational journey, through fostering, through membership in a local church, and through our vocations at the moment both in our business as well as our full-time and part-time jobs. I hope this article has blessed you in some way, and that For Truth & Grace Apologetics will bless you in many other ways as you explore the other articles that I’ve published and will publish.

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The following is my review of Jonathan Menn’s book, Is Christianity True?, as it appears in the Presbyterion, a journal from Covenant Theological Seminary located in St. Louis, MO. To read other book reviews and articles from that publication, click on this link, and search for Spring 2026 Edition, Volume 52 #1. I’m posting this review here as well so that those who do not subscribe to the Presbyterion can have access to it, and I’m also posting this review here because I want to help pass along good books, particularly apologetic books for my brothers and sisters to use as they engage a lost and dying world.

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Is Christianity True?, by JONATHAN MENN. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2024. Pp. 367. ISBN 979-8-3852-2958-1

Before reading Is Christianity True?, I had not heard of Jonathan Menn, but I can tell you that the title alone made me excited to read this book. Jonathan Menn is a former civil trial lawyer, and he approaches the evidence for Christianity like any good attorney would, methodically and thoroughly. Menn did a great job examining the evidence in favor of Christianity as well as engaging common objections and questions. He also provides insights from and rebuttals for opposing viewpoints on each subject that he covers. Menn’s work is by no means exhaustive, but he does cover the gamut of the truth claims regarding Christianity.

Menn divides the book into three main parts: “The Bible and Jesus Christ,” “The Impossibility of the Alternative,” and “The Problem of Evil.” In “The Bible and Jesus Christ,” Menn argues for the reliability of the Bible, for the evidence that Jesus is God, that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah from the Old Testament (OT), and for the historical case that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Menn’s arguments regarding the reliability of the Bible as a whole include points about the uniqueness of the Bible, the canonization of Scripture, and translation concerns. Menn does a great job in this section addressing specific concerns and objections that non-Christians typically have toward the Bible and the historicity of the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was a great place to start seeing how even Scripture claims that if Christ has not been raised then our faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:14–17).

A fair warning though: as interesting as this section of the book is or could be, it is by far the hardest section to get through. What made it so difficult to read is some general formatting issues, or probably just matters of preference from my perspective. For example, on page 29, Menn has a parenthetical reference that takes up two whole lines and a little bit of a third, which means that the reader has to keep track of Menn’s original thought and then connect it to his next thought that is continued in the same sentence three lines down. I do appreciate Menn’s thoroughness in providing all the relevant Scripture references for his point, but if there are that many passages to reference then the flow of the argument would be better served if one moved those references to a footnote, which he does elsewhere in the book. This may seem like knit-picking, but this is the sort of formatting issue that can greatly reduce the readability of a book.

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“The Impossibility of the Alternative” is the second part, and it could just as easily have been titled “Darwin is Dead, but Jesus Isn’t” because it focuses in on refuting Naturalism by providing the scientific evidence that supports Christianity. This part of the book was really well written, and it may be my favorite section of the whole book. Menn’s starting point is showing the historical relationship between Christianity and science. He rightly points out that “Before Charles Darwin published his seminal On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, Christianity and science had been viewed as compatible, a view that lasted well into Darwin’s lifetime” (p. 103). Menn’s use of non-Christian scholars to support his claims is encouraging as it shows that there are non-Christian scientists who acknowledge that scientific evidence supports Christianity over Darwinism.

Menn methodically explains what naturalism is and systematically breaks down and refutes the naturalistic worldview. I learned so much in this portion of the book. What makes this section so educational and useful for both Christians and non-Christians alike is that Menn spends 109 pages providing the scientific evidence that negates Darwin’s theory of evo lution and, simultaneously, supports the case for a Creator. This section will be particularly useful for Christians to use with non-Christians as Menn rarely, if ever, references the Bible during these arguments. Some may not like this approach, but for non-Christians the Bible is not authoritative. Therefore, Menn does Christians a favor by responding to naturalism in a way that mutes a common observation/complaint from non-Christians, which is that Chris tians only ever quote the Bible. Quoting the Bible is important and essential for Christians, but you are no less Christian or spiritual if you also quote from Bertrand Russell or Stephen Hawking, especially when their points support Christianity. Essentially, Menn shows that naturalism/Darwinism is only a scientific religion/worldview that ironically requires more faith to believe in than Christianity.

The final section is focused on “The Problem of Evil,” which was just as enjoyable for me to read as the previous section. Menn begins by mentioning David Hume and the classic form of the problem of evil, which questions God’s ability to prevent evil and God’s willingness to prevent evil. In other words, if God exists and he is both perfectly good and omnipotent, then why does evil exist? Those who object to Christianity because evil exists will wrongly conclude that God does not exist. Menn explores the paradox of someone making a moral judgment in pronouncing something to be evil without there actually being a moral standard by which one can judge goodness and evilness. He goes on to expose the holes in the atheistic arguments regarding the existence of evil, and then explores the various Christian views for the relationship between our good God and the existence of sin and evil.

Overall, Is Christianity True? is a good book that has a lot of useful information for Christians to use to either shore up areas of doubt or to help them prepare for conversations with non-Christian colleagues, friends, and family members. This book is also helpful for non Christian readers who are seeking information about the validity of Christianity’s truth claims, and it is helpful for the seeker who would like to see a Christian author engage with multiple non-Christian scholars, philosophers, and thinkers. Menn’s tone is consistently diplomatic yet honest rather than being mean spirited, which serves both Christians and non-Christians alike.

ELVIS W. DEFREESE

PhD student, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

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Thank you for reading this book review. I hope it encourages you to purchase the book and use it to strengthen your apologetic as you converse with those who are in your life that do not have Jesus as their Lord and Savior. As with the last book review that I shared on Substack, I plan to revisit the arguments mentioned in this review a little bit later on, and add my more details and resources for your use. Until next time, my the hope that is within you cause you to worship the Father in Spirit & in Truth and lead you to interact with those around you in a graceful and respectful manner.

Preface

The following is a paper that I recently completed for my doctoral seminar in philosophical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS). It is for this reason that this article is as long as it is, and the language and writing style used in this paper is more academic and less conversational than my usual articles. However, I thought I would still share my work here because a part of my desire in writing on Substack and some day in books is to two fold: 1)to further the academic/scholastic conversations; 2) to write in such a way as to bridge the gap between purely popular level writing and purely academic writing. I want to bring the laity into the academic conversation, and I want to help equip them to engage in thinking God’s thoughts after Him while representing Him well and truthfully to a lost and dying world. This means pushing ourselves in intellectual pursuits so that we wrestle with difficult concepts and styles of argumentation, but it also means pushing ourselves to communicate clearly. I hope that this paper represents this desire well in that it is academic, but it is not so high up in the ivory tower as to be completely unclear or foreign to those who are not academics. Additionally, it should be made clear that I knowingly did not cover ever thing that I wanted to and could have covered in this paper due to space constraints. I hope you will read this paper and provide your honest yet gracious feedback. I have also added images to this paper just for aesthetic purposes.

Introduction

Justice is a concept that mankind has tried to define since before Socrates. Justice is difficult to define, but man appears to be equipped to recognize when justice has occurred or when it has been denied. From Edmond Dantes to Atticus Finch to Katniss Everdeen, literature and film have been filled with characters demanding and fighting for justice in their individual lives and in society. The real world is no different, after all, the various artforms are often depictions of what human society is or longs to be.

The struggle for justice can be seen in the countless individuals and organizations across time and cultures that spend a vast amount of time and money seeking justice for themselves or their cause, and yet the practical conundrum of justice is that it is a rare thing for all parties involved to obtain the justice that they seek. For example, the Civil Rights movement in the United States led to legislation that called for companies to follow “affirmative action” policies, which identified that companies could “eliminate discrimination from employment by examining” the number of women and other minorities working at the company, and then set placement goals in order to rectify the “underutilization” of those minorities.[1] Affirmative action policies have since given way to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, which forbid companies to set quotas but allow for these placement goals if the company desires them.[2] The placement goals of affirmative action and DEI policies are an attempt by members of the Civil Rights movement to remove employment discrimination based on ethnicity, sex, culture, religion, veteran status, sexual orientation, etc., which is a just action for those minorities who have been rejected by a company based on one or more of those factors.[3] However, a potential consequence of these placement goals is that qualified job applicants who are not in a minority category are passed over for positions that are filled by minority candidates that may not be as qualified as the candidate who is not a minority. This consequence is an unjust action, particularly considering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, during which Dr. King said that his dream was that his children would be known by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin.[4] This disparity shows how a just act on one party’s side could have unjust consequences affecting another party and thus making true and complete justice a difficult goal to achieve within an imperfect human society.

The intent of this paper is to show that, regardless of one’s definition of justice, the desire for justice itself comes from mankind being made in the image of God or the imago dei, and so the pursuit of justice is a way for man to participate in God. However, before the desire for and pursuit of justice can be shown as a way for man to participate in God because of the imago dei, there are some key terms that must be understood if justice is going to be seen as a form of participation in God. The concepts that will need to be understood are as follows: justice, imago dei, and participation. There are other sub-concepts or related concepts that will also need to be explained in connection with these three primary concepts. After each term has been sufficiently explored, this paper will conclude with the three key concepts being brought together in an argument that shows that Justice is participation in God.

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Justice

One’s view of justice, as with many concepts, is dependent upon one’s worldview.[5] This can be said because what one believes about theology and anthropology will influence one’s ethical views.[6] In Plato’s Republic, Cephalus, who claims that when someone is near the end of life, he or she will become “frightened and concerned about things he didn’t fear before” because that person will fear having to “pay the penalty” for the things that he or she has done in this life.[7] Cephalus’s statement invites a shift in the seriousness of the tone of Republic, by showing that justice is not just a matter for the state, but that justice is an intimate matter for every person and is the soul’s ultimate destiny.[8] Socrates continues to have other conversations that offer other views on the nature of justice. According to Polemarchus, justice is about loving your friends and hating your enemies as well as repaying your debts.[9] In Socrates’s next interchange with Thrasymachus, the definition of justice that is provided is a forerunner of Machiavelli’s philosophy in which the mighty makes the rules and take whatever they desire.[10] Furthermore, this view has elements of Nietzsche’s Übermensch in which the standards of justice and ethics are employed by the “bourgeois” to keep the weak in their place, and those that follow standards of morality, such as justice, do so because they were either too weak to reject those standards or they feel that obeying the morality standards are justified in order to “put chains on those in power.”[11]

Plato’s Republic also includes an example of what Plato would consider the perfectly unjust person and the perfectly just person. The important distinction is that the perfectly unjust person will be so skilled at his craft of committing injustice that those around him will think of him as a just person. The perfectly just man, by his nature of being completely just, has a reputation for injustice because of how “unsoftened” his sense of justice is and because it is only through the complete unjust treatment of the just man that his justice will shine through.[12] While, not all encompassing, the variety of views about the nature of justice in Plato’s Republic is helpful for the present discussion on justice as participation in God because this wide range of views shows that justice is a naturally occurring desire within humanity though how it is practiced can differ greatly based on one’s worldview.

In modernity, views about justice have not changed very much though they are phrased differently. For example, the modern social justice movement is predominately based on a collaboration between Karl Marx’s conflict theory, hegemony as developed by the father of Cultural Marxism, Antonio Gramsci, critical theory as developed by a group that would become known as the Frankfurt School, critical race theory as developed by Derrick Bell and defined by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and intersectionality as developed by Kimberle Crenshaw.[13] This collaboration can be referred to by the term Critical Social Justice (CSJ), and CSJ appears as an accurate representation of Glaucon’s perfectly unjust man described in Plato’s Republic, mentioned above. The relationship between worldview and ethical issues, such as justice, as well as a variety of views on the nature of justice have already been discussed. It is important to press forward into looking at the biblical view of justice.

Any philosophical and/or theological argument regarding justice must ultimately be concerned with the pursuit of truth, otherwise, the argument being made cannot be trusted. For Christians, truth comes from the Bible, which Itself claims to be inerrant by being referred to as the Word of God that is breathed out by God (2 Tim 3:16); and if God is perfect then His word would also be perfect.[14] Voddie T. Baucham, Jr. puts it this way, “God clearly condemns injustice. He is also clear in His condemnation of falsehood and lies.“[15] The clearest picture of Baucham’s statement in Scripture is in the ninth commandment found in Exodus 20:16, ”You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”[16] This commandment shows that lies are harmful for those that the lies are told about, but because this is a commandment from God and Scripture is clear that violators of God’s commands will not go unpunished, this commandment also shows that lies do harm to those who lie. However, Baucham also points out that lies ”also blaspheme the very character and nature of God Who is truth (John 14:6), whose very Word is truth (Psalm 119:43, 160; John 17:17).”[17] Clarifying the doctrine of divine simplicity is crucial to humanity’s understanding of God being just. For if God is not simple, then there is the possibility that He loses His ability to be just, or there is the possibility that at some point God was not just. If either of those possibilities were to be true, then God would not be God. It is also important to recognize that simplicity means that either God existed at one point without all of His attributes or that His attributes preceded Him in existence which invites the question as to the source of these attributes.[18] Augustine wrote that Plato understood God to be immutable and simple thus God is the Creator of all other beings because God Himself is uncreated.[19]

Essentially, if God is not His attributes, then He cannot be trusted to be immutable, nor can He be trusted to be truthful or, as shall be shown below, just. Alvin Plantinga summarizes the Thomistic view of divine simplicity rather well when he says that God is “identical with goodness itself and with his goodness, with his act of understanding, his will and his justice.”[20] In other words, Thomists believe that for God to be simple then God must be His attributes, which also means that if God is just it is because He is justice Himself rather than justice being merely an aspect of His personality. God is a just God. Several passages of Scripture attest to the justice of God. Isaiah 40:13 – 14 reveals that God has not been taught how to be perfectly just by anyone nor has He been taught all that He knows.[21] Psalm 11:7 & Psalm 33:5 are abundantly clear that God is just and that He loves justice, ”For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face...He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.” Furthermore, the prophet, Zephaniah, teaches that, ” The Lord within her is righteous; he does no injustice; every morning he shows forth his justice; each dawn he does not fail; but the unjust knows no shame” (3:5). God’s justice is one that is distributive in which the Sovereign King over the cosmos distributes to each person what that person is due based on merit.[22] This distributive justice may not be related to the provision of daily needs, such as food and shelter, apart from God’s sovereign plan for the universe. In other words, God being just guarantees that God will provide those things that He has deemed necessary for His creation to survive, as the creation is dependent upon its Creator for its survival, but God’s just provision does not guarantee that all needs and wants are met at all times. After all, Exodus 16:35 shows that God provided manna for the people of Israel to eat on a daily basis for forty years while they were in the wilderness, but the people of Israel grumbled against God because they were not satisfied with what God had justly provided.

God’s justice is an essential property of who He is and as such follows the pattern of both remunerative justice (rewarding those who do good) as well as retributive justice (punishing the wicked).[23] Scripture also shows that God rewards the righteous and the just.[24] This, of course, is what makes the gospel message to be such joyful and wonderful news. The cross shows humanity the love, mercy, and grace of God in that He pours out His retributive justice upon His perfect and sinless Son as the substitutionary atonement for the sins of humanity, and for believers in the Son, the credit or merit of Jesus goes to their account so that they receive the benefits of God’s remunerative justice.

Since God is goodness itself, He only wills that which is wise and good, which also means that God can only will that which is right and just.[25] Therefore, God wills His subjects to do that which is right and just. Leviticus 19:15 says, ”You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.”[26] While this Scripture prohibits siding with any one group on every occasion and encourages siding with the righteous in each instance, it is important to bear in mind that Scripture also teaches that true religion, that is truly following God, is to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering (James 1:27). The Lord Jesus Christ commanded His disciples to feed the hungry, quinch the thirst of the parched, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and welcome the stranger (Matthew 25:31 – 40). Now that it has been shown that justice is a divine attribute and that there is a biblical view of justice, it is important to grasp the concept of mankind’s being made in the image of God.

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Imago Dei

The term imago dei means “image of God” in Latin, and this concept originates with Genesis 1:26 – 27, which says,

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

This concept does not mean that every human being looks like God in a physical way since God is Spirit and does not have a body (Jn 4:24). However, this concept does mean that God created humanity to be like Him in essence, in nature, and in action. For humanity to be like God is for humanity to be similar in spirit and in action as well as for humanity to find its ultimate identity in its Creator. After all, what is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”[27] If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then there is an implied relationship between God and His image bearers, and the type of relationship that most clearly demonstrates this is that of a father and a child. The child is an image of the father, and the more that child participates in the relationship with the Father by doing the things that the Father does and calls the child to do then the more like the Father the child will become. Another way of understanding the image of God within humanity is to see that it is referring to humanity’s ability to reason, which reflects God’s wisdom.[28] This understanding of the imago dei would also explain Aristotle’s understanding of humanity’s desire for knowledge.[29] Romans 1:19 – 20 also makes this clear: ”For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Steven J. Duby identifies that this verse, among others, is a better reason for using the phrase ”natural knowledge of God” rather than ”natural theology.”[30]

(This paragraph about Lee was not in the paper that I submitted in my seminar.) Another illustration for thinking about humanity being created in the image of God and humanity being like God is to consider the example of the actor, Sir Christopher Lee, and the fictional character of James Bond. Ian Fleming, the author and creator of the fictional novels containing the legendary character, James Bond, was a cousin of the brilliant and beloved actor, Sir Christopher Lee. This is not the space or time for going into the many wonderful sides and accomplishments of Lee’s life.1 However, it is necessary to mention that during World War II (WWII), Christopher Lee was an officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and, eventually, joined the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was the precursor to the SAS. Sir Lee was essentially a spy, the details of his work has still not been revealed and Lee never admitted to what he did for the British government during this time. Lee’s cousin, Ian Fleming, based his character James Bond upon Christopher Lee. So, in other words, James Bond was created in the image of Christopher Lee, which means that while James Bond is not a perfect reflection of Christopher Lee, the main attributes of James Bond came from Christopher Lee or rather from Ian Fleming’s experience of Christopher Lee. In other words, when it comes to humanity being made in the image of God, we get all of the essentials of who we are from God, and we are meant to reflect the true nature of who God is, just as James Bond is meant to reflect, at least in part, the nature of the Sir Christopher Lee.

John Calvin called the natural desire for knowledge, though more accurately it is the knowledge of God that is naturally desired, the divinitatis sensum, or ”sense of the divine.”[31] This sense of the divine, some might call it natural theology, is yet another way of understanding how being made in the image of God affects humanity. Natural theology is not to say that humanity knows God immediately or completely, but that humanity obtains knowledge of God indirectly and analogously through the physical senses, which also explains the variety of representations of God across time and cultures.[32] Many philosophers have articulated similar ideas though many of them are not based in the truth of Scripture and thus are not based in the truth of God, which means that their theories and views should be rejected. For example, Voetius advocated for the term ”implanted theology” but rejected Descartes’ concept of ”innate ideas.”[33] However, the concept of natural theology is also why so many Christian theologians have been able to interact usefully with secular philosophers such as Augustine and Plato or Aquinas and Aristotle.[34] The sense of the divine or natural theology is about there being a different sort of divine revelation than the divine revelation is found in Scripture. However, there is still something rather unique about the imago dei as it relates to divine revelation. Andrew Davison phrases it in this way, ”In revelation, God gives something of himself to us, and he does so in a way that we can assimilate.”[35] Assimilation can be another way of understanding how humanity is to participate in the image of God though there is more to cover regarding the imago dei before moving on to participation.

It is important when talking about the imago dei and natural theology to remember that though Adam and Eve were created perfectly in the image of God, when they sinned in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), the image of God in humanity became soiled or clouded. In other words, the human reason meant to display the perfect wisdom of God became less than what it was originally meant to be so that it no longer reflects the perfect wisdom of God. The fallen form of human reason explains how the world is filled with such diverse views. The goodness that humanity was created in and for (Gen 1: 31) became polluted with a false view of what goodness and justice is because of sin. Anselm put it this way, “Oh how hard and cruel was that Fall!...He lost the blessedness for which he was made, and he found the misery for which he was not made. That without which nothing is happy has gone from him and that which by itself is nothing but misery remains to him.”[36] Anselm well summarizes the human condition since Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden. C. S. Lewis put it this way, ”man is now a horror to God and to himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because God made him so but because he has made himself so by the abuse of his free will.”[37]

However, Scripture reveals that though man’s nature was broken because of the Fall that the law of God is still written on their heart so that their consciences reveal and even judge them for their actions (Romans 2:15). C.S. Lewis refers to the biblical notion that the law of God is written on the heart of every person as the Law of Nature, in i.e., a law of ”fair play or decent behaviour or morality” which everyone naturally knows and expects from one another. Lewis explains further that the war against the Nazis can only be justified if there exists a ”Right” which is at odds with the wrong of which the Nazis are guilty.[38] What the concept of the imago dei, by way of terms such as natural theology and sense of the divine, teaches humanity is that man is made in the image of God, and that ever since the Fall, mankind has been trying to build a society based upon the innate attributes that God created humanity with. God is good and so it is that even pre-Incarnation philosophers such as Socrates seek to uncover and then share with others what it means to live “the good life.”[39] The concept that man is made in the image of God raises the value of every human being because not only is mankind created by a personal God, but they are also created for a purpose. Plato believed that no one has ever adequately described the true nature residing within each soul.[40] Now that both justice and the imago dei have been explained to some degree, it is essential now to understand what is meant by participation.

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Participation

Participation, using Plato’s notion, “connects the world of Becoming with the world of true Being.”[41] The idea of participation is about a lesser being or a finite being experiencing or rather engaging with or imitating a greater or infinite being or concept.[42] Participation is twofold in the sense that one continually participates in the being from which one came, such as a son always carrying the shape of his father‘s nose on his face, and participation is twofold in the sense that one commits the act of participating in the being from which one came by committing actions that are in alignment with that being, such as a son choosing to become a police officer because his father had been a police officer.[43] In the son becoming a police officer, there is a certain unique participation the son has in the father that would have been missed had the son chosen a different profession such as being a mechanic or a janitor. Another example of participation is that of a baseball player. A baseball player is not all of what the concept or the sport of baseball truly is, nor is a singular baseball player capable of fulfilling every role on the baseball diamond at the same time or even in the same game. Hence, there are always nine players for one team and at least one player from the other team on the diamond. The presence and participation of all players is required for a game of baseball to occur. For baseball players, participating in baseball is about assimilating into the concept of what the sport of baseball truly is. However, a better example of assimilation as an understanding for participation would be when a citizen of Saudi Arabia, which is generally known as one of the strictest Islamic countries that follow Sharia Law, immigrates to the United States of America and seeks to fully immerse themselves in the concept and culture of being an American citizen.[44] Assimilation will look like the newly minted American citizen living a life that freely engages or participates in the freedoms that come with the citizenship, including the freedom to continue living under the parameters of his or her Islamic faith and demands of Sharia Law, but the new American citizen is by no means still subject to the strictest Saudi Arabian application of Sharia Law.

Participation in God is similar but quite different than this analogy. Aquinas explains participation like this: “the created intellect is raised by a kind of supernatural light to the vision of the divine substance, there is no created intellect of so low a degree, as to its nature, that cannot be raised to this vision.”[45] Aquinas explains that the distance between the lowest created intellect and the highest created intellect is of no difference when compared to the distance between the highest created intellect and God, which means that ”it makes no difference therefore what intellect be raised by the aforesaid light to the vision of God, whether it be of the highest, or of the lowest, or of a middle degree.”[46] While Aquinas says that the distance does not matter, it does not mean that the distance is not there at all. Aquinas, based on Plato’s notion of participation in conjunction with Aristotle’s theory of act and potency, shows that participation displays a potential of the lesser to be like the greater, but even if the participation leads to an actualization of potential, man’s participation in God will still be limited due his finite nature.[47] Participation in God is about the intellect of humanity and the very soul of an individual being raised into the vision of experience God as He is.

As previously mentioned, mankind is fallen because of sin, both the consequences of original sin in Adam and Eve and the consequences of personal sin.[48] However, the beauty of Christianity is that Christ has come to take on the justice of God so that man can have the good merit of His perfect obedience. Therefore, Christianity ”bids man to recognize that he is vile and even abominable, and bids him want to be like God.”[49] Also previously mentioned is that man is created in the image of God, which means that there was, before the Fall, an innate goodness in humanity, and by God’s grace goodness can still be experienced by humanity post-Fall. However, the point of participation is to experience and to enjoy the thing in which one is participating in. Therefore, for good things to be good, they must participate in ”the Good Itself” just as ”living beings that are alive by participation in the form of Life Itself.”[50] Any time one participates in a divine attribute, one participates in God, but only if the manner of participation honors God. For Scriptures show many examples, such as Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:6 – 7), of people who performed actions that were not inherently evil, prohibited, or otherwise sinful, but they were punished because of the manner that the person performed the action. Boethius wrote, ”It is impossible for anything to be by nature better than that from which it is derived. I would therefore conclude with perfect logic that that which is the origin of all things is in its own substance supreme good...While only God is so by nature, as many as you like may become so by participation.”[51]

Based on what Scripture says and what has been understood by philosophers and theologians, it should be said that participation is how the world “receives all that it is from God.”[52] The receiving “all that it is from God,“ that is participation, is why the gospel message of Christianity is so important for humanity.[53] Humanity has already received the imago dei but that image of God in humanity and thus the participation of humanity in God has been corrupted or been made imperfect. Therefore, a restoration is needed, and God provides that restoration by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to live perfectly and die perfectly upon the cross as atonement for sins. This restoration leads to a ”new self” (Col. 3:10) in which a person with faith in Christ is gradually restored and made new so that they begin to live in a way that more clearly reflects the image of God. Without Christ’s being the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) then all of humanity will remain dead in their sins (Romans 3:23 & 6:23). However, because the Christian is not perfected upon regeneration, it is necessary that the Christian should live in a constant state of participation in God in order to accurately reflect God‘s image. All of humanity should also be in a constant state of participation in God for the same reason, but it is only the Christian who is able to rightly participate in God. Humanity is to receive a portion of God from God because humanity cannot partake of the wholeness of God.[54] However, despite that humanity cannot participate in the wholeness of God, humanity, particularly Christians, are called and commanded to participate in Him. The church lives this out in the ordinances and sacraments depending on which denomination with which one belongs.

Conclusion

Justice is, ultimately, caused by participating in who God is and the sort of actions He performs. Justice is caring for others because they have been created in the image of God. Justice is providing a judgment that is equal based on the merits of the case rather than the qualities of the persons involved in the case. Justice is a virtue that must always be in connection with other beings. This is true whether justice is being spoken of in regard to human justice or divine justice. True human justice is when humans act justly towards one another, and divine justice occurs when God interacts with His creation. God is just in and of Himself, which means that He whatever He does is just. As has been reiterated a few times already, God’s ultimate expression of justice was poured out on Jesus when He was on the cross, taking our place in the judgment seat before the Father.

The image of God or imago dei is a biblical and essential Christian doctrine that relates to humanity’s true origin. Humankind did not arise from through a mysterious and blind system of chance evolutions, but man did come through a mysterious yet personal, loving, good, and just God who created man in Him image, after His likeness, so as to reflect the glory of His being to all of creation. Adam and Eve were meant set in the Garden in perfect communion with the Father as well as with each other and creation. Adam and Eve participated in God by performing the work of keeping and expanding the Garden, but when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they caused the image of God in the rest of humanity to be cloudy until Christ’s incarnation. It is because of Christ’s perfect lived life and His atoning death on the cross that He was resurrected from the grave on the third day; therefore members of the human race who confess and believe in the Lord Jesus are able to participate in God afresh and anew. The participation of believers in God, though made new, does not mean it is a perfect participation, but it does mean that the Father sees Christ’s perfect participation in us so that we are able to draw near to the throne of grace with boldness (Heb. 4:16). Since all of humanity receives all good things from God, all good things must somehow result from participation in God, so long as the manner of participation is honoring to Him. Justice is no different.

Anselm of Canterbury is known for having written that God is “something than which nothing greater can be thought...You alone, then, of all things must truly exist and therefore of all things possess existence to the highest degree.”[55] Boethius, similarly, wrote that ”God is the essence of happiness.”[56] If God is the greatest being imaginable and must exist necessarily, then it follows that God, in His justness, must always act to bring Himself the most amount of glory possible. Therefore, as His creatures that have been created in His image, humanity’s highest form of justice would be to participate in giving glory to God for who He is and not just what He has done. Baucham was also able to help show that biblical justice is concerned with truthfulness, and biblical justice is about doing the right things for others, for self, and in God as He is.[57] In giving glory to God consistently as a manner of lifestyle, one will inevitably live lives that are honorable and that are honoring towards oneself and others. In acting justly towards others and towards the self, one should be led back to giving glory to God for the good things that He has given us.

It has been the goal of this paper to show that the desire for justice as well as the act of pursuing and fighting for justice is a consequence of participation in God via the imago dei. A part of this argument that is necessary but may be overlooked is the role of the image of God. It should be clear that without the image of God within humanity then there is not the participation in God as has been discussed here. There are likely ways in which non-human, non-reasoned animals might participate in God, but those ways will be different from the human ways of participation. It is the image of God that makes mankind unique among all of God’s creation, and justice is a unique attribute of God as He is the source of all goodness and justice in and of Himself. God is, Himself, uniquely just so that there is order throughout the universe, and except for the occasional special event, that order is always followed. Regardless of the source that secular social justice movement organizations claim to get their moral standards from, the truth is that their passion for justice does not derive from Marxism or Critical Race Theory. The desire for justice stems from God being just and man’s being created by Him, in His Image, or as Scripture puts it in Him, through Him, to Him, and for Him (Col. 1:16 & Romans 11:36).

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[1] Tracey O’Brian, “Federal Contractors and Employers with DEI Initiatives: Three Takeaways from SCOTUS Decision Striking Down Racial Preferences,” Labor and Employment Law Insights, Husch Blackwell, July 11, 2023, https://www.laborandemploymentlawinsights.com/2023/07/federal-contractors-and-employers-with-dei-initiatives-three-takeaways-from-scotus-decision-striking-down-racial-preferences/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Those factors would be any of those features of a person that one would find under the demographic information of a job application that are also, generally, thought to be beyond one’s control such as race/ethnicity, sex, age, sexual orientation/gender identity, and disability status. Some of these factors are no longer included on most job applications to avoid hiring bias, and while some of these factors, such as sexual orientation, are controlled to some degree by the individual, it is just for the majority of companies to give candidates a fair hearing in regards to employment despite any of these factors. There are other factors that are sometimes discriminated against as well that are, generally, within the control of the individual such as marital status, educational attainment, religious affiliation/belief, and veteran status. These factors can sometimes be required by a company for a particular job role such as a management position requiring a certain level of education from a job candidate, or a not-for-profit Christian organization can require that all job candidates be a Christian. This is just though there are also instances where companies have unjustly discriminated against job candidates based on one or more of these factors.

[4] Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,” https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety.

[5] It is beyond the scope of this paper to cover all the possible definitions of justice, and it is also beyond the scope of this paper to argue for which definition of justice is the correct or best definition. Furthermore, it is beyond the scope of this paper to examine every relationship between a certain worldview and its view of justice. However, for the duration of this paper, the Christian worldview and the biblical view of justice will be assumed as true, and it is this view of justice as participation in God that will be argued.

[6] Thor Madsen, lecture notes for HT3300 Introduction to Apologetics, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, September 2022.

[7] John M. Cooper, ed., “Republic,” in Plato: Complete Works, (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997), 975.

[8] Louis Markos, From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 23.

[9] Cooper, 976 – 977.

[10] Markos, 25.

[11] Ibid., 27. This same character that Socrates converses with in this portion of the Republic is pushed by Socrates to admit that these “might makes right” rulers often cause their own downfall by “fostering civil war” (Markos, 28). Furthermore, Socrates is able to get this character to admit that justice has a tendency to cause unity rather than disunity.

[12] Cooper, 1001 – 1002. Markos, also, points out on pp.30 - 31 mentions how the description of the way the just man is treated sounds ”eerily” like an early prophecy of what would happen to Jesus Christ.

[13] Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism‘s Looming Catastrophe, (Washington, D.C.: Salem Books, 2021), xi - xviii. CRT is defined as a theory that “recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analystical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color, CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutural and colorblind, however, CRT challenges this legal “truth“ by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege.“

[14] Baptist Faith & Message, 2000. https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/. It is beyond the scope of this paper to argue for or defend the inerrancy of Scripture as well as many other foundational doctrines ot the Christian faith. This paper will proceed from here with the basic assumptions that Christianity and its essential beliefs are true though it will be necessary to explain justice as a divine attribute as well as the meaning and implications of humanity being made in the image of God.

[15] Baucham, 41.

[16] Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version (ESV) (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025).

[17] Baucham, 41.

[18] James E. Dolezal, All That Is In God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism, (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), 40 – 44.

[19] Augustine of Hippo, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson, (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 308.

[20] Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have A Nature?, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 38.

[21] Craig A. Carter, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), 136.

[22] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Questions on God, eds. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 252.

[23] Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019), 223 – 224.

[24] Genesis 18:19; Deuteronomy 16:20, 32:4; Psalm 1:1 - 3, 5:12, 9:7, 37:28, 99:4; Proverbs 10:6 & 22, 21:3; Isaiah 5:16, 30:18, 33:5, 56:1; Jeremiah 23:5; Ezekiel 18:19, 33:16; Micah 6:8; Romans 3:26.

[25] Aquinas, 252 – 253.

[26] This verse may seem contrary to what a lot of modern secular groups will identify as justice, especially those who have been influenced by Marxist ideologies. It appears justice, from their perspective, is about siding with the poor or the minority regardless of the case for the rich or the majority, whereas, biblical justice according to this verse is about siding with the right side of the case rather than looking at the characteristics of the persons on each side.

[27] https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-shorter-catechism/.

[28] Alister E. McGrath, The Science of God, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdsman Publishing Company, 2004), 61.

[29] Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics: Books 1 – 6, trans. John P. Rowan, (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 5.

[30] Steven J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 70.

[31] McNeill, John T., ed. The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Vol. I, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1967), 43.

[32] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 159 – 161.

[33] Bavinck, 161.

[34] James K. Dew, Jr., & Ronnie P. Campbell, Jr., eds., Natural Theology: Five Views, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2024), 2 – 6.

[35] Andrew Davison, Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 318.

[36] Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works: Including Monologion, Proslogion, and Why God Became Man, eds. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 85.

[37] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (Collins: Fontana Books, 1976), 57.

[38] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 4 - 5.

[39] Markos, 29.

[40] Markos, 31.

[41] Alexander J. B. Hampton & John Peter Kenney, eds. Christian Platonism: A History, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 122.

[42] Davison, 105.

[43] Ibid., 103 – 104.

[44] https://www.tbsnews.net/world/countries-follow-sharia-law-297286. & https://meccainstitute.org/sharia-law-countries/.

[45] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Translated by the English Dominican Fathers (San Antonio, TX: Henderson Publishing, 2025), 415 – 416.

[46] Ibid., 416.

[47] Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, (Piscataway, NJ: editiones scholasticae, 2014), 106.

[48] Due to limitations of the scope of this paper, a full treatment of original sin and personal sin is not feasible. These concepts are among those mentioned in a prior note regarding presuppositional assumptions for the purpose of this paper.

[49] Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 105.

[50] Hampton, 123.

[51] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Revised Edition, Translated by Victor Watts, (London, England: Penguin Books, 1999), 70 - 71.

[52] Davison, 101.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Duby, 236 – 240.

[55] Anselm, 87 – 88.

[56] Boethius, 70.

[57] Baucham, 41.

Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament, by Benjamin C. F. Shaw. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024. Pp. 140. ISBN 978-1514007587.

Many use apologetic books as resource materials for discussions or for academic papers. The beautiful thing about apologetics books is that they are great for reference material, and these books should lead people into conversations about their contents. Benjamin Shaw’s Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament is such a book that will inspire Christians to speak more and speak confidently about the reliability and trustworthiness of the New Testament. Trustworthy is readable for both the laity and for scholars. It will be beneficial for any Christian wanting to get his or her feet wet in the waters of New Testament apologetics. And it can also be a good book for non-Christians who are curious about the case for the New Testament and Christianity.

Shaw’s purpose is to introduce the reader to the main arguments in favor of the reliability of the New Testament (NT). Shaw makes thirteen such arguments, using the illustration of Google maps to acclimate his readers to the varying perspectives that each argument gives for the NT’s reliability. The arguments can be categorized based on the type of perspective that they provide for such reliability. Some arguments look at reliability from a “zoomed out” perspective while others take a more “zoomed in” perspective. These different angles help us to assess both the general reliability of the NT (zoomed out) and the reliability of specific events and figures that occur within the NT (zoomed in). Shaw also offers an argument from the “map-holder’s” perspective. I found this illustration to be very helpful in understanding the various levels of importance that each argument takes in the overall discussion. He builds the basis of each argument by providing insights from both Christian sources as well as skeptic, agnostic, and atheistic sources. He also responds to arguments that have been used to oppose the reliability of the NT.

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Shaw’s first argument focuses on the text of the NT, showing that Christians can have confidence that the words in the NT are the ones the original authors wrote. This confidence comes, not because we have any of the original autographs of the NT, but we can have confidence because of the massive amount of original copies or manuscripts that we have access to for each of the NT books. Wes Huff makes a compelling case in this video for how we should understand the evidence for the New Testament’s reliability. Wes’s main point is that looking at the Greek manuscripts of the NT is like putting a 100,000 piece puzzle together while having a 110,000 pieces at your disposal. What this means is that there is an abundance of evidence for what the authors originally wrote when the manuscript copies are compared with one another, and what is more is that those few instances where scribes or others have added things to the copies are all the more evident because of their differences from the other manuscripts. In other words, there is enough evidence or manuscripts to create an internal system of checks and balances, but not only that, the differences in the manuscripts are, whether minor or major, insignificant to modern Christians as none of the variations would ever lead to a change in any essential Christian doctrine.

The second argument focuses on the genres and the audience expectations of the NT writings. The genres of the NT should inform Christians not only about how the original audience would have understood these texts, but also about how believers today should understand them. For example, you should not read and understand Jesus’s parables in the Gospels in the same way that you read and understand Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Paul does use analogies to make his points in his letters but his analogies do not serve the same purpose as the parables. Both the Gospels and Paul’s letters (at least the ones that we have in our canon of Scripture) are inspired and inerrant, which means we should cherish them both and use them to draw nearer to the heart of God. However, this does not mean that they will be applied to our lives in the exact same way. Let me clarify: Paul teaches a lot of rich and deep theology in his letters, and his letters always contains practical examples of how Christians are to live out the theology he has taught. His teachings is based on what he was taught directly by Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the original Apostles. We have to take his teachings and then slightly alter how we follow them based on our modern context. However, when we consider the parables and other teachings of Jesus, we find a different type of teaching. Jesus’s parabolic teachings are multi-faceted in that they are meant to remove the veil of the Law of Moses so that we may see and desire God more clearly as He is. Furthermore, because Jesus’s teachings removes that veil, Christians are better able to see how we ought to live out our lives in devotion to God. In other words, the teachings of Jesus serve a different purpose in that they draw unbelievers to salvation and clarify the lives of believers, whereas Paul’s teachings serve the purpose of solidifying the teachings of the church and increasing the bonds of brotherhood within the church.

Next, Shaw focuses on the dating of the NT, demonstrating that the generally accepted date range for the books of the NT canon falls well within the plausible timeframe for reliable ancient texts. Both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree that the New Testament writings are the most reliable Christian writings of the first century. This is, by far, one of my favorite pieces of evidence for a couple of reasons: 1) A great number of scholars from a variety of backgrounds now agree on this. 2) When you compare this evidence with the evidence for other historical figures, such as Achilles, and events from the ancient world, such as The Trojan War, the evidence for the NT falls much closer to the actual timeframe of the events and the eyewitnesses of the events. The earliest evidence for the Trojan War comes about 400 - 500 years after the Trojan War supposedly happened.

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Fourth, Shaw argues the authorship of the various NT writings. One of the most interesting aspects of Shaw’s clarification about the authorship of the Gospels, noting that the names currently associated with each Gospel account have been the same names that have always been associated with them since they began circulating. In other words, The Gospel According to Matthew has always been known as The Gospel According to Matthew, and the same goes for the other three gospels. The same can be said with the majority of the Pauline, if not all, epistles in that they have always been attributed to the Apostle Paul. This is largely due to his self-identifying himself as the author in pretty much every letter. There is, of course, the matter of the book of Hebrews in which the author is not named at all, but some believe that Paul wrote it while Barnabas and James have also been suggested among the other possible authors. However, it is important to remember that just because the author is not known for sure does not negate the authenticity or the reliability of the book.

The fifth argument Shaw provides regards creedal traditions. This does not refer to the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed but instead refers to the creeds recorded within the NT. Creeds were important for first century Christian because the illiteracy rate was so high, necessitating some form of easily memorable and easily repeatable creedal summaries. Combined with the widely accepted dating of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (in the 50’s AD) it can be reasoned that these creeds originated before the letter was written. Most scholars believe that these creeds originated at the start of the church, which would put them as being in the 30’s AD. This gives modern Christians and skeptics alike a glimpse into what the first Christians truly believed – thus also showing that the content of Christianity and the NT have not been changed over the centuries.

Some examples of these creedal traditions are as follows:

1. 1 Corinthians 8:6 which says, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

   1. This is an early Christological creed that also affirms the first part of the Shema of Israel found in the OT, Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This is one of many passages that show a congruence between the OT and the NT.

2. Philippians 2:6 - 11 which says, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

   1. This is known among scholars as “the Christ Hymn”, which because of its structure seems to be something that Paul is quoting rather than composing originally. Some scholars believe that this passage may have been sung believers in the earliest worship gatherings.

3. 1 Corinthians 15:3 - 7 which says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

   1. This tradition is known as the “The Resurrection Creed,” and it is one of the earliest creedal traditions, dating from within just a few years of Christ’s resurrection. Paul also uses the language of “received” which has a connection with rabbinic language regarding tradition, which means that what he says here in this passage is the tradition that was taught to him by the Apostles in Jerusalem.

Romans 10:9 - 10 which says, “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

1. Scholars consider this passage to be a creed because of its conciseness and memorability. It follows the pattern of other creeds as well, and it is believed to have been used during worship and baptismal settings.

   1. The pattern is short and rhythmic:

      1. Confess with your mouth - Jesus is Lord.

      2. Believe in your heart - God raised him from the dead.

   2. It is focused on the core of Christian identity in two central affirmations:

      1. Jesus’s Lordship (The identity of Jesus)

      2. His resurrection (God’s vindicating act)

   3. Paul’s matter of fact wording suggests a pre-existing tradition.

2. The connection to baptismal practices are consistent with other NT writings and early as well as most modern Christian baptism practices.

   1. The first of the practices is a verbal and communal confession of what the baptismal candidate believes, of which the identification of Jesus as Lord has always been required. This is a pledge of allegiance before the community that will help you live according to that pledge as well as hold you accountable for when you do not live according to that pledge. Additionally, including the resurrection of Jesus is essential because otherwise, how would Jesus be considered Lord. It is also important to note that the identification of Jesus as Lord was a dangerous statement for them to make because that language put Jesus above or in the place of Caesar (so it is a political claim) and it is putting Jesus as equal with the Father (so it is also a theological claim).

   2. The second is not necessarily a practice but evidence of an internal trust in this statement as well as the lived evidence of that trust and transformation of life would have been a key part of the confession for a baptismal candidate. Baptism was never seen as a one and done, fire insurance policy. It was a commitment to King Jesus, and if you ever fell into a consistent/persistent pattern of not following Him then the legitimacy of one’s baptism will be called into question.

There are many other creedal traditions throughout the NT, but these few examples will suffice for now. If you are interested in more information on this particular topic, I suggest that you check out the works of Dr. Michael Bird, Dr. Ryan Reeves, Dr. Gerald Bray, and Dr. Carl Trueman.

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The sixth argument goes over how the NT meets the criteria that are used to determine the historical reliability of any ancient text. Most of my comments about this has already been mentioned above. Seventh in Shaw’s lineup is an argument known as “undesigned coincidences,” that is, when two texts or accounts corroborate each other unintentionally. This argument is absolutely fascinating to me, and it is one that I really enjoyed reading and thinking about.

Here are some examples of undesigned coincidences:

1. In John 6:5, Jesus is preparing to feed the 5,000, and He turns to the disciple, Philip, to ask him where to buy bread. The question is Why does Jesus ask Philip? The answer to this question is found in two passages: Luke 9:10 & John 1:44. Luke 9:10 tells us that Jesus feeds the 5,000 near the town of Bethsaida, and John 1:44 tells us that Philip is from Bethsaida.

   1. This is significant because Luke is unintentionally corroborating the Gospel of John by answering a reasonable question as to why would Jesus ask Philip where to buy bread, and how would Philip know where to buy bread from.

2. In Mark 14:54, Peter follows Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. The question is, of course, how did Peter get in? The Gospel of John holds the answer to the question in chapter 18, verses 15 - 16, which tells us that John was known to the high priest and was able to get permission to let Peter into the courtyard.

   1. This is important because Mark lacks an explanation as to how Peter is able to get into the courtyard when he clearly gets recognized as one of Jesus’s disciples.

3. In Matthew 27:63, the priests say, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’” However, the Gospel of Matthew does not record Jesus mentioning or predicting his resurrection on the third day. However, Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22; & John 2:19 record Jesus either explicitly predicting his resurrection after three days or predicting his resurrection on the third day by way of an analogy.

   1. This is particularly significant in that the Gospel of Matthew mentions this claim nonchalantly, but the other three Gospels all confirm this claim.

4. In Luke 8:3, a disciple of Jesus, Joanna, is mentioned as being “the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager…,” and Luke also mentions Joanna as being at the empty tomb (24:10). So, Joanna is the wife of a high-ranking official in King Herod Anitpas’s administration, but Luke does not offer any background information as so to how Joanna became a follower of Jesus. She seems to be an unlikely person to end up being a disciple of Jesus. It is even more strange that Luke is the only Gospel account to mention that she is a witness of the crucifixion and the empty tomb as well as being one of the women that went to tell the apostles about the resurrection.

   1. The missing link is the fact that the Gospel of Matthew in 14:1 - 2 mentions Herod’s keen interest in Jesus’s ministry and Herod’s belief that Jesus is the risen John the Baptist. Additionally, Matthew 14:6 - 11, the involvement of Herod in the death of John the Baptist is revealed. Neither of these passages mention Joanna or Chuza by name, but it gives insight to information about Jesus, the kind of people who would’ve been exposed to the growing rumors and anxieties regarding Jesus’s miracles and teachings.

   2. In order to put it all together, Matthew’s passage shows the awareness and concern of Herod and his household regarding Jesus and His ministry; Luke shows a woman who has a direct and high level connection to Herod’s household being both a follower of Jesus and being a witness of the crucifixion and empty tomb.

   3. This undesigned coincidence is not necessarily groundbreaking, but it is quite important. It is my favorite of the undesigned coincidences because it is so minor or minute in detail that couldn’t possibly be false. It is also my favorite because it reinforces one of the most powerful arguments, in my view, for the reliability for the New Testament and the historical account of the resurrection of Jesus, which is the fact that the first witnesses and messengers of the resurrection are women! If Jewish men, in the first century, were going to make up a story that would be the founding of a new religion and that was meant to gain them power and influence, then the one thing they would not do is begin the story with women being the first eye witnesses and messengers. The reason for this is that women were not considered to be trustworthy, especially in legal court cases, as eyewitnesses.

      1. Just as an aside, there are people out there who try to claim that the Apostles made up the story of the resurrection in order to gain power and influence, and this objection is likely due to how powerful the Church became overtime, but these Apostles did not experience that power in the way that these objectors are thinking. Sure, we could say that they experienced the power of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost by speaking in tongues and then healing the sick as well as raising the dead, but these men (most of them) were ultimately hunted down and martyred for this story.

      2. What is more, if these men were simply making up this story, why would the include the fact that they doubted the women’s account that the tomb was found empty. There are other examples that could be discussed as well that are considered as embarrassing facts that they would not have included if they were merely making up a story.

If you are interested, I would encourage you to check out Wes Huff’s video on this as well as checking out other resources that go over the other undesigned coincidences. I really enjoy looking at the undesigned coincidences because it is like the New Testament reaffirming the New Testament. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “The devil is in the details,” well, undesigned coincidences are like that except we would more accurately say that, “God is in the details.”

The next argument has to do with archaeological evidence. Shaw provides various examples of archaeological discoveries that confirm NT accounts of events, persons, and customs. What I appreciate is that there has yet to be a single archaeological discovery that has contradicted the biblical narrative. Scholars and skeptics have proposed alternative explanations, but there is a big difference between offering a different interpretation of the evidence and having evidence that disproves an interpretation of an event. The problem with these alternatives interpretations is that they eventually fall apart. In other words, the scholarly skeptical interpretation does not line up with the rest of the evidence, and they, typically, have to end up making some excuse about waiting for further evidence to confirm their interpretation. This leads to an additional problem because of Okham’s razor. If you have ever heard of Okham’s razor, then you know that the simplest answer or the answer with the least amount of assumptions wins the argument. With Christianity as a whole, but particularly in the case of the archaeological evidence, the simplest explanation is that the Bible is true, and that the biblical narrative is the best explanation for what happened.

Specific examples of archaeological evidence that supports the NT:

1. The Pilate Stone: Until 1961, Pontius Pilate is thought to have been a fictious character by some scholars even though he is mentioned as one of the key figures in the trial of Jesus in ever Gospel account as well as being mentioned in the book of Acts, which was also written by the gospel writer, Luke, and 1 Timothy. Specifically in Luke 3:1 and Matthew 27:2 name Pilate as the governor or the governor of Judea, and John 19 shows the full range of Pilate’s power and authority over the events of Jesus’s crucifixion.

   1. What was discovered? A limestone block that was inscribed with the words, “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea,” was found in Caesarea Maritima in Israel. The dating of the block ranges from between A.D. 26 - 36, which fits perfectly for the timeframe in which Pilate served as the governor or prefect of Judea. For more information about this discovery, please see this video.

2. The Gallio Inscription at Delphi: Acts 18:12 says, “But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal,” While Gallio’s existence is never really scrutinized by scholars, archaeological evidence has been discovered that supports his existence as well as the role that he reportedly fulfilled in the book of Acts.

   1. What was discovered? Between 1885 and 1910, a letter was found during a French excavation led by École française d’Athènes of the French School of Archaeology. No single person is identified as the one who discovered the letter, but it was found during the large scale excavation of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The letter includes the inscription, “Lucius Junius Gallio, my friend, and proconsul of Achaia…,” which is significant because it confirms the Acts text above, and the dating for the letter, A.D. 51 - 52, falls within the timeline of the book of Acts and specifically the timeframe of the verse mentioned above. For more information regarding this discovery, please check out this video.

3. The Pool of Bethesda: In John 5:2, it says, “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.” Some translations refer to these colonnades as being porticos or porch, and these porticos surround what was known as the pool of Bethesda. Some scholars have believed that this was a fictious detail within John’s account of the Gospel.

   1. What was discovered? Between the 1880’s and the 1890’s, an excavation of Jerusalem’s old city, near St. Anne’s Church and the Lions’ Gate or St. Stephen’s Gate, was initially conducted by Conrad Schick, but further stratified excavations took place between 1956 and 1962 by Father Pierre Benoit, Kathleen Kenyon, and later Joan Taylor. In these excavations, a large double pool was found that was surrounded by four porticos with the two pools separated by a fifth portico. The location of this discovery matches the John 5 account. This matters because before this discovery, scholars thought the story in John as largely an unhistorical account and gave many metaphorical or symbolic interpretations, but after the discovery scholars recognized that the account of John 5 is seen as a verified 1st century account of a, now, verified structure. For more information regarding this discovery, please check out this video.

4. The Pool of Siloam: Similarly, in John 9, another pool is mentioned called the Pool of Siloam. The text says, “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.”

   1. What was discovered? In 2004, workers, who were making repairs to a damaged sewage line in the southern part of the City of David, discovered the steps that, after excavation, would lead down to the pool of Siloam. Specifically, this pipe was located under a small potato field in the Palestinian Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Archaeologists Eli Shukron and Ronny Reich were brought in to investigate and confirm that the steps and the pool matched descriptions of monumental stepped pool fed by Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the same water system tied to the biblical Pool of Siloam. Furthermore, coins and pottery were found embedded in the cement and sediment layers helped to date the pool’s use precisely to the time of Jesus (1st century B.C.–1st century A.D.) This discovery is important because it affirms the setting of the miracle of Jesus healing the blind man in John 9. For more information regarding this discovery, please see this video.

Obviously, one of the biggest and well-known archaeological discoveries that affirms the reliability of the Bible is that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and due to the notoriety of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I am not going to really cover that here, but I will provide a link to a video regarding that discovery in case you are interested.

The ninth argument focuses on evidence from non-Christian sources, which include Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. All three of these non-Christian sources confirm basic New Testament teachings about what Jesus did, the origins of the Christian movement, and descriptions of early Christian worship. I will give a quick bullet point explanation of how each of these are important for the reliability of the NT.

• Josephus

  • Was a 1st century Jewish historian, who mentions Jesus twice in his work Antiquities.

    • Jesus is mentioned in The Testimonium Flavianum in Book 18, and then again in Book 20 which also confirms that Jesus was known as the Christ and that he had a brother named James.

  • Also confirms the existence of other essential characters in the Gospel accounts such as Pontius Pilate (whom Josephus also confirms to be the governor over Judea), James the brother of Jesus Christ, and John the Baptist.

  • Can be trusted because he lived in Galilee, had contacts within the Sanhedrin who were involved in both the trials of Jesus and James, and there is also evidence to suggest that he also knew the Apostles personally. While Josephus does not confirm theological standings, he is a reliable historical source because he lived in the same time period and had connections with the eyewitnesses as well as the authors of the NT events.

  • For more information, please check out this video though there are many others that are interesting.

• Tacitus

  • Is known as one of the greatest Roman historians of all time and is considered a one of the most reliable historical sources, especially in regard to the confirmation of Jesus’s existence and the early church, because he was born a little more than 20 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection (A.D. 56), and he died close to 30 years after the last of the NT books was written and the last of the Apostles have passed away (A.D. 120).

    • Jesus appears in Tacitus’s Annals 15.44, and in this account, Tacitus confirms that Jesus was executed under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, which confirms the NT Gospel accounts.

    • Tacitus also recorded that after the Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the Christians were blamed and persecuted by Nero, and he records how the spread of Christianity as a recognizable group began in Judea and spread throughout the region from there, which also confirms the timeline of the NT regarding the spread of early Christianity.

  • Was also a Roman Senator and Consul which gave him access to official Roman documentation, which also explains why his records are primarily based upon eyewitness accounts and state documents.

  • For more information regarding Tacitus, please check out this video.

• Pliny the Younger

  • Much like Tacitus, Pliny the Younger lived within the timeframe of the Apostles and other eyewitnesses of the Gospel and other NT events (A.D. 61 - A.D. 113).

  • Was the governor of Bithynia‑Pontus, which is modern-day Turkey, and during his stent as governor, he wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan (Epistulae 10.96–97), which described his encounters with Christians.

    • Pliny reports that Christianity had spread to his small province, and that people from all ages and classes were converting to this new religion.

    • Pliny also reports on some of the earliest Christian gatherings for worship, specifically which day of the week their gatherings occurred, that they sang hymns to Christ “as to a god,” that they bound themselves to a certain moral ethic that fostered good citizens (not to commit fraud, theft, adultery, or breach of trust), and that they gathered later for a shared meal that Pliny describes as “ordinary and innocent.”

      • This accounting of early Christian worship confirms the writings of the Luke in Acts and the Apostle Paul in Philippians and 1 Corinthians.

    • Pliny’s letter confirms Christians being persecuted and required to renounce Christ, and he identified Christians as Romans who could not transfer to Rome.

      • Trajan’s response to Pliny’s letter began a brief period of improved secured for Christians because Trajan informed Pliny that Christians were not to be hunted intentionally. However, if a citizen was accused of being a Christian, and they refused to renounce Christ then they could be punished for being a Christian. (This corresponds with NT writings such as 1 Peter that mentions sporadic and localized persecutions of Christians).

  • For more information regarding Pliny the Younger, please check out this video.

There are other non-Christian sources that affirm or confirm the historical reliability of the New Testament, but these three are some of the most powerful and reliable of those kind of sources.

The tenth argument focuses on Christian sources that are not found in the canon of the NT, such as the letters to Corinth from Clement of Rome, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and letters from Polycarp of Smyrna. Of course, there are The next argument looks at the criteria the early church used to discern which books were inspired by the Holy Spirit and which were not, and thus which books should or should not be admitted into the canon of Scripture. Shaw gives some insight into the texts that were rejected as noncanonical during this argument as well.

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The twelfth argument for the reliability of the NT focuses on the spiritual and life-transforming power of its message. Shaw does not argue that just because a book has an impact on an individual’s life or on society the book then must be trustworthy or true. Rather, his argument is about the consistency of effect that the NT has had on Christians directly and on nonbelievers indirectly.

The final argument, known as the “minimal facts approach,” which was developed by Shaw’s mentor and the author of the foreword to this book, Dr. Gary Habermas. The minimal facts approach uses the historicity of key events surrounding the message of the gospel, which has major implications for the reliability of the NT.

While many skeptics may believe Christians are uninformed and ignorant about historical matters, Trustworthy shows that those skeptics are likely ignorant themselves of the strong case for the reliability of the NT. The number of skeptics quoted as supporting the NT’s case is encouraging, but they seem to lack the God-given faith to believe the beautiful message of the Gospel. While ours is a blind faith, it is an informed blind faith. That is, our faith is blind in that we cannot comprehend God in His fullness, nor can we grasp how He is working out His plan, but we can always trust that He is good. It is important and right for us to attempt to understand as much as we can this side of heaven, but we also must remain humble about the degree to which we lack knowledge. Our faith is informed in that we believe so that we can better understand. Trustworthy is a book that will inform the faith of its reader, and by God’s grace, help those who wrestle with unbelief.

Elvis DeFreese

PhD Apologetics Student, Doctoral Fellow, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

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How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a classic Christmas story/movie, and it is one that must be watched in my house at least once during the Christmas season. My wife and I always enjoy watching the classic 1966 animated film written by Dr. Seuss and narrated by Boris Karloff, but I also enjoy watching the Jim Carey version from 2000. The newest Grinch movie from 2018 was alright in my opinion, but I do not think it is worth watching when the other two are available. If you disagree with me about the films, that is fine but be sure to leave me a comment below. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I imagine that there may be some who have as strong of feelings about the Grinch films just as some have about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. (It is by the way.)

Now, this will not be a review of the Grinch films, but a reflection of the Grinch story in light of the Gospel. The older I become, the deeper my appreciation for the Grinch’s story goes, and this appreciation stems from my appreciation for the Gospel. There is something in Dr. Seuss’s wording that just captures the beauty of Christmas, the true essence of Christmas. Whether intentional or by happy accident, Dr. Seuss teaches a deeply biblical and spiritual truth through the story of the Grinch.

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For those of you who are, somehow, unfamiliar with the Grinch’s story, here is a brief rundown, or you can just click this link and watch the 1966 animated version on YouTube, which lasts about 24 - 26 minutes. In a distant land, there is a place called “Whoville.” The people that live there are called the “Who’s,” and the Who’s are delightfully cheerful people (they are almost annoyingly cheerful) who love Christmas. However, the Grinch is not a Who but a “What” that lives on a mountain on the outskirts of Whoville. The Grinch, as you might guess, is the opposite of a Who in that he hates Christmas and anything cheerful. As the song goes, he is a “mean one,” a “vile one,” and a “monster.”

One day, the Grinch is done with the Who’s cheerful Christmas songs being wafted up to his mountaintop home, and so he plans to rid them of all the things related to Christmas: trees, decorations, gifts, lights, etc. The Grinch executes this plan by breaking into everyone’s house and stealing these things while dressed as Santa Claus. How diabolical! When morning came and the Who’s discovered that everything physical that related to Christmas had been taken overnight, they did an odd thing, or at least it was odd for the Grinch. The Who’s gathered in the center of town, held hands, and sang. The cheerful notes wafted their way back up to the Grinch, and because of the Who’s unyielding Christmas spirit, the Grinch was inspired to return all that he had stolen and change his ways forever. The Who’s gladly accepted him into their fold.

Now, let us dive into the details of this story. First, the Grinch is completely unique from everyone else in Whoville, and part of his uniqueness is that no one knows where he comes from. I appreciate how the Jim Carey version attempts to address the question of the Grinch’s origin, but it still amounts to no one knowing where he is from nor why he is alone. Second, the Grinch is a creature that is altogether different from the Who’s because of his natural disposition that hates all things the Who’s considered good and cheerful, which puts him in immediate opposition to them. Jim Carey’s version does a good job, though, of creating sympathy for the Grinch as it shows the Who children bullying the Grinch because of how different he is from everyone else.

Again, this is not a review of the films, but it is a reflection on seeing the truth of the Gospel in the story of the Grinch. I hope you see how I came to realize that the Grinch does not really steal Christmas in the story, but that he finds Christmas, or more accurately; Christmas finds the Grinch. I hope that Christmas will find you too through the story of the Grinch. In the words of Dr. Seuss, I hope that you see that Christmas “doesn’t come from a store…,” but Christmas “means just a little bit more.”

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This is a chest x-ray of the Grinch’s heart, which is two sizes too small at the beginning of the story, and is Dr. Seuss’s explanation for the Grinch’s grotesque disposition. The Grinch hates the Who’s, their joy, and their Christmas because his physical heart is too small to care about anyone else but himself. Theologically speaking, this is what it is like to have an unregenerate heart. The Grinch is lost! He is a slave to his own desires! The Bible has these things to say about the unregenerate heart.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. Jeremiah 17:9 - 10 (NKJV)

The heart, no matter the size, deceives the very one who physically possesses it. The story of the Exodus clearly shows that there is a paradox in which God hardens and softens the hearts of men and women. “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy and compassion upon whom I will have compassion.” (Exodus 33:19 & Romans 9:15, ESV) However, as Jeremiah 17:9 - 10 and other passages indicate, there is a level of culpability that each person is responsible for his or her actions, so that the Lord is justified in His judgment of us and our sins. Though God is sovereign over all things, He does not perform all things. He is not the one who sins. Otherwise, how would God be able and be just in giving people over to the desires of their flesh (Romans 1:24 - 25)?

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. Ephesians 4:17–18 (ESV)

The Grinch is darkened in his understanding because he is ignorant of the life of God! He has no idea what the joy of Christmas is! He may be able to see it and recognize it in others, but he does not know it experientially. His heart is hardened so that he cannot see the joy of Christmas, and he vehemently cannot stand for anyone else to enjoy the beauty and wonder of Christmas. He cannot help but be angry and spiteful. The Grinch is the most accurate family-friendly representation of secular society today. The Grinch wants everyone to placate to his own will, but the Grinch also wants everyone to leave him alone to be what he is without judgment or correction. While none of the Who’s are trying to convert him to Who-ism as it were, by their very presence and nature, he feels the weightiness of conviction that something within him is not as it ought to be.

The Grinch’s real problem is not that his heart is two sizes too small. The Grinch’s problem is that he is dead! D-E-A-D, DEAD! Without the Christ in Christmas, without the knowledge of the life of God found in Christ, the Incarnate Deity, the Grinch has no hope of enjoying life, let alone celebrating Christmas! To be clear, without Christ, you and I and the Grinch are and remain dead in every way that matters.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23 (NKJV)

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Ephesians 2:1–3 (NASB)

These passages show that sin leads to death, and that those who are sinful are not just going to die but are dead already. Scripture is clear that there is nothing good in humanity, nor in the Grinch that would give us or him the ability to choose God of our/his own volition (Romans 7:18). Nowhere in Scripture is there a human being, a fallen man or woman, who freely chooses to love and serve God independent of God loving and calling that individual to Himself first. You must understand, no matter where you are on the doctrine of election, that Christ did not come to make bad people good and good people better. Christ came to bring the dead to life!!!

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Some might say that the change in the Grinch’s outlook came through the Grinch’s journey of personal development or enlightenment. Some might say that the Who’s just finally wore the Grinch down. However, Dr. Seuss and more importantly the Bible has something more elegant and powerful to say about the Grinch’s change of view. Dr. Seuss says that the Grinch,

hadn’t stop Christmas from coming. It came, somehow or other, it came just the same…[to which the Grinch responded: “How can it be so? It came without ribbon. It came without tags. It came without boxes, packages, or bags.]…then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more…

This could seem like personal development, but nowhere in the story does the Grinch try to improve himself, nor does he even hint at the thought that he might need to improve. He was not spending his days watching Oprah or listening to Dr. Phil or Joel Osteen.

Dr. Seuss and the people of Whoville say that “the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day and then the truth came through.” Did you catch that? His heart grew three sizes when it had been two sizes too small! So, now, not only is the Grinch’s heart at a normal size, but it is actually one size larger than normal! This is exciting news for the Grinch and for us! This is what the Gospel does! It takes your tiny dead heart and it makes it alive and big! Furthermore, the Grinch then finds the strength of ten grinches plus two; that is the strength of twelve grinches! This should remind you of what Jesus said in John 10:10b, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26 (ESV)

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Ephesians 2:4–9 (NKJV)

The Bible shows us that we should understand salvation as having nothing that comes from us. It does not come from an innate goodness and an ability to choose good or God over our sinful desires. It is not about you being able to make a better choice or decision than someone else. In other words, it is not about you being convinced through scientific evidence or rational arguments, even though the evidence and those arguments are important. The Bible tells us that the “truth of Christmas comes through” when, by the grace of God, God gives us the faith to believe that Jesus is who He says He is, and that He has accomplished what He set out to accomplish through the cross and the empty tomb.

Salvation is a gift of grace that comes solely from the hand of God, and even your ability to believe comes from Him (Eph. 2:8 - 9). Jesus said that we do not choose Him but that He chooses us (Jn. 15:16), and the Apostle John wrote that we love because He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). In bringing this back into the context of the Grinch’s story, when the “truth of Christmas comes through” in the Grinch’s heart, we could understand that as the effectual call and work of the Holy Spirit, so that now the Grinch understands what the joy of Christmas is. If you paid close attention to any of the films, the Who’s do not sing a different tune from before nor do they sing it in a different fashion or key. They do not introduce fog machines and fancy light shows. The only thing that really changes is the Grinch’s understanding of what the Who’s are celebrating or rather Who the Who’s are celebrating. The Who’s are faithful to worship the true reason for Christmas even when all their gifts and decorations and all other external signs of celebration are missing. Are we, the Church, being this faithful?

When the Who’s, specifically Cindy Lou Who, surprise the Grinch by responding to his thievery with joy and singing rather than anger or despair, they bring the light of what true Christmas is and ought to be. You can think of it as their evangelizing the Grinch to the Who way of thinking and believing. Is it not wonderful to think about how many times the Grinch must have heard their joyous songs about Christmas, and yet nothing happens until there is just a sudden shift in his understanding? I think about all the times growing up in church, hearing the Gospel preached faithfully week after week, season after season, and yet, there was no salvation until there was a sudden shift in my understanding. The pastor had not preached anything that he had not preached a thousand times before. So, what changed? Me. I changed, but I did not change myself! How could I? The Scriptures I shared above, as well as many others, show that I did not change myself. It was God the Holy Spirit, coming and changing out my heart from a stony dead one to a fleshy living one. This is what happened to the Grinch!

Now, I am not saying that the Grinch is a perfect illustration for the Gospel because there is no such thing as a perfect illustration. I expect that some of you are still not convinced or even agree with my seeing the Gospel within the Grinch’s story. It is okay if you do not agree with me at the end of the day. I am fallible. I can be wrong, but where I do not think I am wrong is wanting to see and savor Christ wherever I can. He is, as Anselm put it, the One whom “none greater can be conceived,” and so why not try to look for Christ and the gospel in everything that we see, hear, watch, listen, taste, and smell. He created it all. (If you think seeing Christ in what we taste is a weird thing, then go to Psalm 34:8, John 6:35 & 48, John 4:10.) Charles Spurgeon once remarked that seeing Christ in the Scriptures should be like all the roads in Britain leading to London in that every passage of Scripture leads to Christ. I contend that even our entertainment ought to point us back to Christ in some shape, form, or fashion.

In closing, I just want to encourage you to seek Christ more than gifts or any other trinket you can find in a store during this Christmas season. I want to encourage you to see and savor Christ in all your entertainments, including Rambo, Die Hard, and all the Hallmark romances. Carve out roads in your heart that lead to Christ so that your affection for Him grows with each passing mile and with every encounter with the things of this world. 1 Corinthians 8:6 tells us that all things exist from the Father through and for the Son, that is Jesus Christ.

Blessings to you this Christmas season, my brothers and sisters in Christ! Merry Christmas! He has come, and He shall surely come again!

A while back, a student asked me why I was getting my doctorate in apologetics. This question stemmed from a conversation in which I mentioned that I am not all that familiar with the names of various apologists or the different viewpoints on apologetics. The question made sense in light of my statement, but it still took me by surprise as the decision to get a doctorate in apologetics makes sense to me though that decision was not easy. This post is the result of my reflecting upon this conversation, and my journey to apologetics. It has been sweet to look back and see just how much the Lord has been guiding my steps to this calling into apologetics, and it is even sweeter to see how much God has used my wife to lovingly guide me and help me realize this calling. I hope that you will enjoy it, and I hope that the Lord will use it to bless you and perhaps help you discern your own calling.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a knight, but when I realized that knights didn’t really exist anymore, I wanted to go into the Army. As I grew older, I wanted to become a Green Beret sniper. There were a number of factors that influenced this dream. My father and uncle served in the Vietnam Conflict as well as in Desert Storm. My grandfather served in the Army during World War II. I also grew up watching the first three Rambo movies almost on repeat, need I say more?

When I was fifteen years old, I felt the call to ministry, but after a while, I became distracted by worldly things. The desire to go into the Army continued, and it wasn’t until a few years after my high school graduation that I realized that God was not leading me to the Army. I went to college, after some prodding from my former youth minister, and I earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from East Texas Baptist University (ETBU), thinking that I would eventually work for the FBI to track down serial killers. You may be picking up on a theme. I was looking for adventure, a chance to prove that I was a man and a warrior.

Unfortunately, this season was characterized by an unintentional running from the call to ministry. I never left the church nor was uninvolved in ministry activities. I went on short-term mission trips to places like Trinidad, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. I went to Alaska to help train youths in leadership and ministry. I worked at a Christian summer camp for several summers during my undergrad years. However, it took me moving back home, getting married to my lovely wife, and a considerable amount of time and discussion to see that a life of ministry, of serving Christ with all that I am as the greatest adventure of them all. My wife helped me to see that I had been called to be a warrior in God’s army rather than in the United States Army.

It was during those undergrad years that I was also exposed to people like Ray Comfort and Mike Licona. I had the privilege of meeting and serving with Licona on one of those Alaska trips. Licona’s apologetical arguments for the historical Jesus and for the historical evidence for the resurrection blew my mind! These two gentlemen along with Lee Strobel’s book The Case for A Creator did a wonderful job of introducing me to the field of apologetics.

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After our first year of marriage, my wife and I decided to move back to ETBU for a Master of Arts in Counseling, which I graduated with in 2017. From 2015 to 2020, I worked in a children’s unit of a mental health organization. I worked as a skills trainer with kids ranging from 3 years old to 18 years old as well as their parents. In those years, I saw a lot of hurt and trauma. I saw kids who were trying their best to overcome the abuse they had experienced, but I could tell that no matter how much they improved behaviorally through the skills training, true and complete healing was not taking place.

There was a stirring, a burning in my soul that wanted to proclaim that the answer to their deepest hurts, the salve that would heal the wounds of their souls was and is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many of my clients knew that I was a Christian and would ask me about my faith in some of these difficult situations.1 It was these situations with my kiddos and my desire to share the Gospel with them that the Holy Spirit began growing seeds of obedience into my heart and mind.

When you look carefully throughout the story of the Bible, God’s voice and direction is often made clearest during times of pain and suffering. God makes a covenant with Abram and Sarai after Abram laments their childlessness. Abram becomes Abraham and Sarai becomes Sarah but even still they wait 25 years for the promise to be fulfilled. Job suffers immensely and is rewarded for his faithfulness. Jonah’s sleepover in the belly of the fish for 3 days and nights, though a prophecy about Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, was, for Jonah, a clear revelation of God’s will for him. I want to be clear here that God does not only reveal Himself or His will to us through pain and suffering, but it happens more often than we realize. There is a reason that Romans 8:28 is such a poignant verse.2

In 2018, my family and I found out just how essential Romans 8:28 & Philippians 4:7 is to walking with the Lord faithfully through grief and suffering. I am not going to tell the whole story, but I will share with you that my youngest nephew, Austin, was killed at the young age of 18. He had been my little buddy since I was a freshman in high school. I was devastated by his loss, but in the grief, the Lord whispered to me, reminded me of the call to ministry that He had placed on my life back when I was a teen. At Austin’s graveside, I preached my first sermonette, and as hard as that was to prepare for, in actually doing it, I felt the Lord’s presence and I was comforted.

Through the help of the Holy Spirit in me, in my wife, and in a Christian counselor, I experienced healing from my grief. The Lord continued to pursue me as the thought and desire to go to seminary grew in my mind, like a budding flower slowing opening its petals. After a couple of weeks, my wife approached me with the idea/feeling that the Holy Spirit had impressed upon her that I was not supposed to be a professional counselor. I chuckled and told my wife what I had been thinking and praying about. I am thankful that the Lord provided affirmation through my wife because if it had come through anyone else, I would have just waved them off. So, my wife and I began to pray and research, and I began to seek out godly counsel from our pastor as well as former pastors and mentors. All of them encouraged me to follow this desire.

Being from Louisiana, I always envisioned going to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, but God led us through various means to Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO. We moved here in August of 2020 after almost a year of research and prayer. This began a new and very sweet chapter in which I was pursuing a deeper knowledge of God so that I could enjoy Him more and be prepared to serve Him faithfully. What made this chapter even sweeter was that my wife was and still is going through this training with me. She focused on biblical counseling while I focused on preaching and pastoral ministry. I came to greatly enjoy systematic theology, but I also never lost my wonder in how apologetics could take science and oftentimes objections that non-Christians have against Christianity and show how those objections are actually evidence for Christianity.3

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During my MDiv, I worked at a couple of different places that made me realize how important apologetics is for Christians. The first job was as a Peer Mentor at a residential facility for at-risk teens known as Shelterwood Academy. This facility was a Christian based program, and our counselors used an integrative approach to helping the residents. We were explicitly a Christian ministry and were able to share the Gospel at every opportunity. During my time as a peer mentor, I walked alongside young men who were struggling with drugs, gender identity, and same-sex attraction.

One of these young men identified as a girl. His parents, nor we, as a staff, affirmed his preferred gender identity. He compromised by allowing us to call him by the first letter of his birth name. Instead of focusing on his gender identity issue at every turn, I focused on getting to know him as a whole person. We talked about what he liked to do for fun and what he thought about different issues. We talked about his history in the church and what he understood about the Bible. Without affirming his gender dysphoria, I was able to show him how the Bible clearly says that he matters to God. I made sure to reiterate to him in every conversation, especially those where gender and homosexuality was discussed, that God loves him and that I loved him through the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit living within me. He did not changed his mind about what he identified as, but before he left, he thanked me for loving him and for showing him that God loved him too.

The other job, which I still work at, that has shown me the importance of apologetics is at Amazon. In my almost three years at the same warehouse, I have encountered many people groups of varying faith backgrounds and even some who have no faith background. Over time, people find out that I’m a minister of the Gospel, and various other details that I have shared both in this post and in previous postings. I have had many conversations about the Gospel and the Christian faith with people from these different groups. I have not received a lot of questions that I have not considered before, but more times than not, the questions are posed in ways that I had not previously considered.

For example, one coworker asked me once why Jesus must be perfect and why God could not just forgive sins without Jesus’s death. As a seminarian and a theologian, I knew the answers to these questions, but I had never had to provide them to a non-seminarian before. I realized that these were not easy questions to answer, even though the coworker is highly intelligent, he is relatively uneducated in the realm of theology. He has researched certain aspects of Christianity, but the sources he has referenced have been very skewed and unreliable. He has asked some very good and critical questions, and I have been blessed to have some very beneficial conversations with him as well as other coworkers. These conversations are beneficial for me because they help me to grow in my faith and force me to study more carefully. These conversations have allowed me to build a rapport of love and compassion with them. These conversations are also beneficial for my coworkers because they have grown, to some degree, more open to the Christian faith than they were before.

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Ultimately, I owe the decision to pursuing a doctorate in apologetics to my beautiful bride. As we talked about my varied interest, I was pretty sure that I wanted to go for systematic theology, but my dear wife, who knows me so much better than I know myself most of the time, pushed me towards apologetics. She told me that apologetics is more in my wheelhouse, and what can I say, she was right. I am so blessed to have such a wise and discerning wife. I am enjoying the wide world of Christian apologetics that I get to dive into and figure out how I can best contribute to the field. I am so very grateful to God for continually using my wife to affirm and guide me as I seek to lead our family in obedience to God’s will and calling upon our lives. It is hard to believe that God is allowing us to both pursue doctorates so that we can serve Him, the church, and the lost.

There are a lot of other events that I would like to share with you, but this post has grown a bit long and I suppose it is best to save some of those things for another time. As someone who has always desired adventure and to prove myself a warrior, I lean towards apologetics because it requires one to be confident and competent in what one believes, the kind of confidence and competence in a wide range of topics that would be the equivalent of elite warriors being confident and competent in a variety of weapons and tactics. This confidence and competence also demands it be answered with confidence and competence from those that we debate.

I have also spent a good portion of my life as a counselor, and so I have an enormous amount of compassion for people. I see unregenerate hearts striving towards a concept of goodness that they will never fully understand outside of faith in Christ. I do believe that an unregenerated heart will always choose its own will rather than choosing obedience to God’s will, but I also believe in the common grace that God has graciously gifted even to unregenerated hearts to experience and even desire the good things that He has in store for us in this life. Here is my point: God has brought me through all that I’ve mentioned in this post and so much more, and I believe that He brought me through these things so that I would have this conviction that we must hold fast to the truth of God’s Word while also maintaining a spirit of graciousness and love towards the lost. This is the why I’m going into Apologetics.

I suspect that not many of you will read the title of this article the way I intend for you to read it, but that's okay. I will explain. A little over twenty years ago, the late country music artist, Toby Keith, wrote and performed a song entitled “I Love This Bar.” Now, I don’t listen to music as often as I did when I was younger, and when I do listen to music, I don’t listen to country music as much as I used to. When this song first came out, I enjoyed singing it because Toby Keith was one of my favorite musicians, and country music was my favorite genre.

My tastes have changed in the past twenty years, but when the song came on the radio the other day, I couldn’t help but sing along. The difference that twenty years makes! As I sang and listened to the song, I paid attention to the lyrics. I noticed a couple of things: 1) there are some aspects of the song that are just not appropriate, at which point I stopped singing the song; and 2) that there was something faintly familiar about the song. No, it wasn’t the familiarity of an old song that I used to sing all the time. It was the familiarity of a shadow or spirit in the song. Listening ever more intently to the lyrics of the song, I recognized the shadow of how Christians should think, feel, and treat one another within our local churches. To help you see what I’m saying, here are some of the lyrics:

“We got winners. We got losers...We got yuppies. We got bikers...We got cowboys. We got truckers...We got early birds and all-nighters, and the veterans talk about their battle scars...I love this bar. It’s my kind of place. Just walkin’ through the front door puts a big smile on my face. It ain’t too far, come as you are...”

Do you see it? There are two things that should be apparent. First, Toby Keith might be describing a bar in his song but if we love people well in our churches then our church members should just as easily be able to see:

“I love this Church. It’s my kind of place. Just walkin’ through the front door puts a big smile on my face”.

Going to your local church shouldn’t be a chore. It shouldn’t be a “got to” but a “get to” sort of activity. I mean, think about it, if you are a believer in Christ and a member in good standing at a local church, then you “get to” participate in the weekly gathering of the saints in praise and adoration of the Triune God. How incredible is that privilege?! How do we dare allow our emotions to influence us in such a way that we view our local gathering of the body of Christ as a bore, as a stuffy and constraining time? We should see the gathering as a glorious and freeing time of worship.

Secondly, when you listen to Keith’s song, there is a sense that his bar has an open atmosphere, so that anyone who comes in is welcome to stay and participate. In Scripture, we find in both Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11 that Christ dissolves all labels that would and have previously divided us. Christ is the Great There should not be anything that divides us from one another because nothing is greater than Christ, who unifies us! He is the Great Unifier! In truth, the only divisions in our churches on Sundays should be between those who are true believers and those who are not yet believers. In other words, the difference should be between members and non-members of the church. For clarification purposes, I mean that only those who have confessed Christ as Lord and Savior, have been discipled, and baptized under the care of a pastor can be members of a local church.

Now, I know some of you are likely thinking that I’m forgetting about why we have denominations within our Christian faith. I have not forgotten. As much as I love being a Baptist and a Southern Baptist/Great Commission Baptist at that, there is a big portion of my heart that loathes the fact that we have denominations. It shouldn’t be that we have such different interpretations of Scripture that we cannot be a part of the same local church body, other than the fact that we live in different geographic locations. Alas, until Christ returns and brings perfect unity and understanding to His bride, we have these divisions, known as denominations, that are necessary due to various convictions on secondary and tertiary doctrines.

Now, back to my second main point on unity in Christ. Here is what I want you to walk away with concerning Toby Keith’s song. If we are keeping the Gospel at the center of our ministries in and for the church as well as at the center of our lives then the Gospel will be reaching the so-called winners, losers, yuppies, bikers, cowboys, truckers, veterans, and many other different types of people. We should welcome all with open arms, although this does not mean we will affirm, approve of, or encourage their sins or lifestyles that are contrary to God’s commands. Also, it does not mean that we will give them leadership positions or give them free reign regarding how they participate in the activities of the church. However, it does mean that we will love them and share the Gospel with them through our words and actions towards them and each other. This means that if or when they do walk through the doors of our churches, then we do not treat them as less than or as freaks of nature or as anything other than what you and I are as well. We are all sinners in desperate need of God’s mercy and grace. The only true difference is that your sins, if you are a Christian, have been forgiven. Remember how much you have been forgiven of and at what price that forgiveness was purchased, and then approach that stranger with all the love, respect, and dignity that is befitting an fellow image bearer, and share the Word of Life with them.

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Are there things that we should do and things we should not do? Yes, absolutely. What we should not do is sin, and what we should do is obey. But no matter how much you obey or sin, the fact remains is that we, Christians, are all sinners undeserving of God’s grace and mercy and have been saved from His holy and righteous wrath through the gift of faith in Christ that He has given to us. We should not judge nonbelievers for acting like non-believers. Jesus never commands us to judge the world, that is His job and His alone. The only room for judgment within the church is the loving and gentle judgment that it takes for us to rebuke, correct, exhort, and encourage one another along the sanctification journey. Putting it another way, the only allowance for judgment between church members, from Scripture, is the judgment it takes for brothers and sisters to participate in church discipline and discipleship. Furthermore, you may be thinking about the passage in Matthew 7 about “judge not lest you be judged” right about now, but I would caution you to read the full context of that passage. Jesus is not forbidding us from judging each other, because if He was saying that then He would contradict Himself in Matthew 18 when He gives those guidelines for church discipline, but what Jesus is doing is cautioning us about the spirit in which we judge each other because how we judge each other will be how we will be judged.

In conclusion, I merely want to point out what should be obvious: the world hungers for what God has graciously given us through the global Church. One of the many reasons why it is so hard to get nonbelievers into churches is that we have made our churches less welcoming than the local “watering hole.” We have turned what should be seen as the gathering of the Bride of Christ into a social club fit only for the moral elitist and the pious hypocrite. Join with me, my brothers and sisters in Christ, in connecting with people, in going to welcome the sinners and tax collectors as our Savior did, and in loving the lost enough to tell them about what Jesus did for them and the life He calls them to live.

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Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament, by Benjamin C. F. Shaw. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024. Pp. 140. ISBN 978-1514007587.

Many use apologetic books as resource materials for discussions or for academic papers. The beautiful thing about apologetics books is that they are great for reference material, and these books should lead people into conversations about their contents. Benjamin Shaw’s Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament is such a book that will inspire Christians to speak more and speak confidently about the reliability and trustworthiness of the New Testament. Trustworthy is readable for both the laity and for scholars. It will be beneficial for any Christian wanting to get his or her feet wet in the waters of New Testament apologetics. And it can also be a good book for non-Christians who are curious about the case for the New Testament and Christianity.

Shaw’s purpose is to introduce the reader to the main arguments in favor of the reliability of the New Testament (NT). Shaw makes thirteen such arguments, using the illustration of Google maps to acclimate his readers to the varying perspectives that each argument gives for the NT’s reliability. The arguments can be categorized based on the type of perspective that they provide for such reliability. Some arguments look at reliability from a “zoomed out” perspective while others take a more “zoomed in” perspective. These different angles help us to assess both the general reliability of the NT (zoomed out) and the reliability of specific events and figures that occur within the NT (zoomed in). Shaw also offers an argument from the “map-holder’s” perspective. He builds the basis of each argument by providing insights from both Christian sources as well as skeptic, agnostic, and atheistic sources. He also responds to arguments that have been used to oppose the reliability of the NT.

Shaw’s first argument focuses on the text of the NT, showing that Christians can have confidence that the words in the NT are the ones the original authors wrote. The second argument focuses on the genres and the audience expectations of the NT writings. The genres of the NT should inform Christians not only about how the original audience would have understood these texts, but also about how believers today should understand them. Next, Shaw focuses on the dating of the NT, demonstrating that the generally accepted date range for the books of the NT canon falls well within the plausible timeframe for reliable ancient texts. Both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree that the New Testament writings are the most reliable Christian writings of the first century.

Fourth, Shaw argues the authorship of the various NT writings. One of the most interesting aspects of Shaw’s clarification about the authorship of the Gospels, noting that the names currently associated with each Gospel account have been the same names that have always been associated with them since they began circulating.

The fifth argument Shaw provides regards creedal traditions. This does not refer to the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed but instead refers to the creeds recorded within the NT. Creeds were important for first century Christian because the illiteracy rate was so high, necessitating some form of easily memorable and easily repeatable creedal summaries. Combined with the widely accepted dating of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (in the 50s AD) it can be reasoned that these creeds originated before the letter was written. This gives modern Christians and skeptics alike a glimpse into what the first Christians truly believed – thus also showing that the content of Christianity and the NT have not been changed over the centuries.

The sixth argument goes over how the NT meets the criteria that are used to determine the historical reliability of any ancient text. Seventh in Shaw’s lineup is an argument known as “undesigned coincidences,” that is, when two texts or accounts corroborate each other unintentionally. The next argument has to do with archaeological evidence. Shaw provides various examples of archaeological discoveries that confirm NT accounts of events, persons, and customs. The ninth argument focuses on evidence from non-Christian sources, which include Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. All three of these non-Christian sources confirm basic New Testament teachings about what Jesus did, the origins of the Christian movement, and descriptions of early Christian worship.

The tenth argument focuses on Christian sources that are not found in the canon of the NT, such as the letters to Corinth from Clement of Rome, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and letters from Polycarp of Smyrna. The next argument looks at the criteria the early church used to discern which books were inspired by the Holy Spirit and which were not, and thus which books should or should not be admitted into the canon of Scripture. Shaw gives some insight into the texts that were rejected as noncanonical during this argument as well.

The twelfth argument for the reliability of the NT focuses on the spiritual and life-transforming power of its message. Shaw does not argue that just because a book has an impact on an individual’s life or on society the book then must be trustworthy or true. Rather, his argument is about the consistency of effect that the NT has had on Christians directly and on nonbelievers indirectly.

The final argument, known as the “minimal facts approach,” which was developed by Shaw’s mentor and the author of the foreword to this book, Dr. Gary Habermas. The minimal facts approach uses the historicity of key events surrounding the message of the gospel, which has major implications for the reliability of the NT.

While many skeptics may believe Christians are uninformed and ignorant about historical matters, Trustworthy shows that those skeptics are likely ignorant themselves of the strong case for the reliability of the NT. The number of skeptics quoted as supporting the NT’s case is encouraging, but they seem to lack the God-given faith to believe the beautiful message of the Gospel. While ours is a blind faith, it is an informed blind faith. That is, our faith is blind in that we cannot comprehend God in His fullness, nor can we grasp how He is working out His plan, but we can always trust that He is good. It is important and right for us to attempt to understand as much as we can this side of heaven, but we also must remain humble about the degree to which we lack knowledge. Our faith is informed in that we believe so that we can better understand. Trustworthy is a book that will inform the faith of its reader, and by God’s grace, help those who wrestle with unbelief.

Elvis DeFreese

PhD Apologetics Student, Doctoral Fellow, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Thanks for reading this review and my Substack! Please feel free to send some feedback my way. If you liked this review, please feel free to subscribe and share this with others! Have a blessed day!!

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I’m new to Substack as a whole, and I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what I want to accomplish with Substack. I appreciate ’s advice about being patient and praying about the vision of my Substack. I also want to thank for his patiently answering my questions, giving me feedback on a future post, and giving some great advice on the layout of this publication. Ultimately, I want to bring God glory through my writing, and I hope to encourage my readers to do the same. My publication is entitled “For Truth & Grace Apologetics” because apologetics is not about apologizing for our faith but seeking ways to defend and express the truth of God in a spirit of grace and love. Therefore, I want to engage with my fellow believers in a gracious way that inspires unity among the brethren. I also want to work on undoing some of the effects of hurt and abuse that the church has intentionally and unintentionally inflicted upon those who do not believe in Christ. I want to teach and train my brothers and sisters in Christ to do the same: to love each other well no matter where we disagree on secondary or tertiary doctrines, and to love our neighbors well so that we do not bring dishonor upon the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It has been a little daunting even getting to this point, and I still feel a little daunted. However, as the great Robin Williams told his students in the classic film, Dead Poets Society, “Sounds to me like you’re daunted. Say it again like you’re undaunted.” I’ve been published before outside the area of theology (I used to be in the mental health field), but it is the idea that I could eventually have subscribers that pay to read what I have to say that makes this endeavor a bit daunting. This makes me want to be more careful and intentional about what I write. At the moment though, it is not my goal to get paid subscribers. My goal is to become more consistent and persistent in my writing outside of the academic requirements of school. Here are some general ideas of what you can expect from me: Book Reviews - I love to read and evaluate books, so I will post whatever book reviews that I’ve gotten published in journals. Musings/Reflections - I have a post that I’m working on where I reflect upon an old Toby Keith song. Rebuttals & Encouragements - I hope to make time to write posts in which I respond to someone else’s post either in the affirmative or in gracious opposition. Essentially, I want to engage in the conversation and help keep conversations open and going, and Essays/Papers/Prose - I’m working on my dissertation and I’m hoping to write about the area of apologetics that I’m focusing on, and I hope others will engage in that conversation with me. I also hope to encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ to engage with secular culture in a way that is winsome without sacrificing the truth of the Gospel. This means being able to see, particularly in Western civilization, how much of our society’s major movements are based on the Christian worldview even if they outright reject the truth of Christianity.

In landing this introductory plane, I sincerely hope to be an encourager to you. I encourage you to seek, to proclaim, and to glorify God through Jesus Christ. I encourage you to wrestle with me and for me in reflecting upon and seeking understanding in the deep waters of God. I encourage you to do battle with me against the enemy. I encourage you to call me out on areas where we disagree so that we may lovingly and graciously work out our faith together with fear and trembling. I encourage you to pray: pray for me and pray for this ministry.

Blessings and Peace!

Elvis

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