Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The New Testament as early evidence

According to the Military Historian C. Sanders, there are three tests of reliability for an
historical document: bibliographical, internal, and external tests (47, More than a Carpenter). In the way of explanation of these terms, “the bibliographical test is an examination of the transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, not having the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts and the time interval between the original and extant copy?” We can appreciate the tremendous wealth of manuscript authority of the New Testament by comparing it with textual material from other notable ancient sources. Over 20, 000 copies of New Testament manuscripts are in existence today (in comparison to about on average 20 for other ancient works)....and the interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible (often in the area of 1000 years compared to roughly 100 years in the case of the New Testament). As New Testament Greek scholar J. Harold Greenlee states: “Since scholars accept as generally trustworthy the writings of the ancient classics even though the earliest MSS were written so long after the original writings and the number of extant manuscripts is in many instances so small, it is clear that the reliability of the New Testament is likewise assured. The application of the bibliographical test to the New Testament assures us that it has more manuscript authority than any piece of literature from antiquity. Adding to that authority the more than 100 years of intensive New Testament textual criticism, one can conclude that an authentic New Testament text has been established (47-49, More than a Carpenter).”

Demonstrating that the number of manuscripts continues to grow from the above earlier dated source, Josh McDowell states in Evidence for Christianity, copyright 2006, that “we have close to, if not more than 25, 000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today. No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation.” “F. E. Peters states that on the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that made up the Christians' New Testament were the most frequently copied and widely circulated books of antiquity. As a result, the fidelity of the New Testament text rests on a multitude of manuscript evidence (60, Evidence for Christianity).” As McDowell states, in quoting Norman Geisler, the importance of the sheer number of manuscript copies cannot be overstated. As with other documents of ancient literature, there are no known extant (currently existing) original manuscripts of the Bible. Fortunately, however, the abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original with virtually complete accuracy.” McDowell adds in quoting J. W. Montgomery, that “to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament (61, Evidence for Christianity).” It is interesting to note as well, that if the vast quantity of New Testament manuscripts were lost, that much of the New Testament could be reconstructed from the writings of the church fathers alone, with one notable collection in the British Museum containing “86, 489” quotations (75, Evidence for Christianity).

Concerning the question of external sources, the third test (I will come back to the second), addresses whether other historical material confirms or denies the contents of the documents themselves. In other words, do other external sources substantiate what is written in the New Testament. Paul Barnett states the following in drawing on non-Christian written sources: “On the basis of this evidence from non-Christian sources it is possible to draw the following conclusions:
1. Jesus Christ was executed (by crucifixion?) in Judea during the period when Tiberius was emperor (A.D. 14-37) and Pontius Pilate was governor (A.D. 26-36). Tacitus
2. The movement spread from Judea to Rome. Tacitus
3. His followers worshipped him as (a) god. Pliny
4. He was called “the Christ.” Josephus
5. His followers were called “Christians.” Tacitus, Pliny
6. They were numerous in Bithynia and Rome. Tacitus, Pliny
7. His brother was James. Josephus
Barnett concludes that “While the evidence is not extensive, it is noteworthy that it does not in any way conflict with, but rather confirms, the historical information in the New Testament (34, Is the New Testament Reliable)?”

Archaeology as well, has confirmed the accuracy of the book of Luke especially as a detailed, precise historical document. Sir William Ramsay, though initially skeptical and thinking the book of Luke to be a product of the second century was led to conclude from the evidence of his findings that “Luke is a historian of the first rank...one that should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.” F.F. Bruce reflects that though “not every scholar would endorse Ramsay's judgment on Luke's technical expertise as a historian; but his detailed accuracy is something which can be checked time and again...our respect for Luke's reliability continues to grow as our knowledge of this field increases (92, The New Testament Documents, Are they Reliable?).” F.F Bruce continues in mentioning archeological finds that have supported the New Testament record, “the middle wall of partition, between Jew and Gentile, spoken of by Paul in Ephesians 2:14, found in a Greek language inscription in Jerusalem in 1871. Other New Testament incidents have been illuminated by archeological discoveries in and around Jerusalem. The Pool of Bethesda, described in John 5:2 (95, The New Testament Documents, Are they reliable?).”

Other issues that have arisen that have been clarified through archeological research including confusion over the census described in Luke, ossuaries (bone boxes) that are evidence of early Christianity, the pavement of the court where Jesus was tried by Pilate, the pool of Bethesda, the Gospels themselves have been authenticated by finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, a slab of stone very interestingly with a warning not to disturb graves by Emperor Claudius known as the Nazareth Decree. We also have the remains of a crucifixion victim which confirm the New Testament's description of crucifixion. We have the Pilate inscription validating that Pilate was indeed governor during the time of the life of Jesus, as the inscription notes both his name and title. We have ancient coins, three of which are mentioned in the New Testament, have been identified with reasonable assurance (94-100, Evidence For Christianity).The above is intended as a basic overview of two of the tests that have been employed in evaluating historical sources. However, it seems fitting to quote W.F. Albright at this point: “The excessive scepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history.” Add to that conclusion, Nelson Glueck, the renowned Jewish archeologist: “It may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference (91, Evidence for Christianity).”

As Josh McDowell states on page 101 of Evidence for Christianity, “One problem I constantly face is the desire on the part of many to apply one standard or test to secular literature and another to the Bible.” Indeed, we must apply consistent standards. That is something that I have found as well, in my research even for this paper. I was left baffled in attempting similar searches of other ancient sources to discover that every time I typed relevant terms into search engines in this area, Christian apologetics materials inevitably surfaced, even for non-biblical sources, leaving me confused and perplexed. Are there no papers out there defending or explaining other ancient sources, I asked myself. Has anyone ever applied the bibliographical test to Plato or Caesar's Gallic Wars? Where are they? Where is the hyper skepticism that we see for the Bible or does everyone just take everything but the Bible on faith? And so I began to wonder, how do we explain such differing standards, as well as such varying opinions concerning the validity of the Bible if the Bible is clearly the best we have from antiquity? Are scholars not reading the same materials; how then is it, that they come to such dramatically different conclusions?

Here is where I will begin to focus on the internal test for biblical or more specifically, New Testament reliability. Is the document internally consistent; I will come back to this question, but it is here as well that we must begin by addressing the question of worldview, or that lens through which people are interpreting that which they read or study. With this question in mind, “For the past 200 years, the dominant working paradigm for historical Jesus scholarship has been naturalism, the view that nothing exists except for matter, energy, and their interactions according to law and chance -nothing supernatural (227, True Reason).” “Philosophical naturalism is a commitment to a completely natural or material reality...It presents for us a closed system in which everything that can be said to be decidedly true or known must function within the assumption that God does not exist, or at least that he does not involve himself in the world. This presupposition is as common in historical research as it is in scientific inquiry. Rudolf Bultman, perhaps the most infamous and influential NT scholar of the twentieth century, worked from this paradigm. In his view, science had shown it was impossible to give mental assent to the worldview of the Bible. The task set before the New Testament scholar, in his view was to dig through and sift out all the mythology contained within the New Testament, a task he called 'demythologizing.' Many scholars following after Bultmann have operated under the same paradigm. For them it is beyond question that the Jesus of history was and is very different from the Christ of Faith and that central to this new portrait of Jesus is the elimination of the supernatural: no authentic dealings, no miracles, no prophecy, no resurrection (227-228, True Reason).”

I think it is fair to point out as Hardman does that “science has never made a case for the necessity of philosophical naturalism, nor is it within science's competency to do so; it's a question primarily of metaphysics, not science. We cannot say that science has disproved God, for science can only evaluate the natural world.” As Hardman points out (this approach), “denies a priori an open inquiry by failing to allow the possibility that God might intervene in human affairs. It therefore unjustifiably presumes a closed system at the outset and then, based on this, forces the conclusion that miracles do not occur (228, True Reason).” Though history has never justified an atheistic or deistic starting point, this assumption seems to have come into the work of modern historical investigation, that miracles are so uncommon and unlikely that we should assume another explanation, ignoring the fact that reports of miracles come from many parts of the world and are not as uncommon as assumed by western intellectuals. Regardless, for the mere purposes of explaining the materialist worldview by which many come to the New Testament, it is helpful to understand how it is that many such scholars do just that, they come to the New Testament with what is arguably an anti-supernatural bias, the assumption from the get-go that such events do not happen, thus discrediting the New Testament from the outset. As New Testament scholar David DeSilva suggests, “if we can get past an anti-miracle bias and leave open the possibility of such occurrences, the potential of engaging the Gospels and Acts on their own terms increases exponentially (232, True Reason).” As Hardman points out, a naturalistic mindset assumes that God does not exist. If God does exist, in contrast, the possibility of God acting in the natural world exists as well.

With this said, “In the early twentieth century, skeptical German theologians- notably Rudolf Bultman (and others) -applied a discipline called form criticism to the New Testament Gospels. (This method) sought to classify the sayings and narratives of the Gospels into (literary) forms (parables, poetry, etc)... and to give a history of those sayings or narratives and thereby (determine) the purest and oldest form possible. (Also with form criticism was the idea) that tradition served the needs and purposes of the church. That is, the narratives and sayings of the Gospels do not reflect the history of Jesus as much as they reflect the history of the church (233-234, True Reason).” According to Craig Blomberg, “the results of form criticism are highly speculative because they are based on what other ancient cultures did in settings that are not always closely parallel to the rise of Christianity.” Furthermore, as Richard Baukham, in his seminal work Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, states, “Virtually every element in this construction (form criticism) has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars. Many of these criticisms are rooted in the much better and fuller information that is now available about the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies (235, True Reason).” As Richard Bauckham states, “The world of the early Christian communities was not a purely oral one, but a predominantly oral society in which written texts had a place that was closely related to orality.” Add to this that we have “good evidence that we do have early written traditions concerning Jesus (237, True Reason).” As Robert Stein states, there is “no need to think that this material was simply memorized by the disciples (237, True Reason).”So, while “Bultmann's model suggested that the disciples almost immediately disappeared into the background of the first century, never to be heard from again, we have ample evidence that suggests that eyewitnesses stood at the forefront of the traditions. Firstly, we know from Paul's letters of their continued presence in early Christianity. Paul regularly interacted with the original disciples throughout his own missionary journeys. Second, Jesus' disciples would have been respected and sought after for their authority as sources about the life and teaching of Jesus....In other words, the apostles were continually active in the transmission of the Jesus tradition...the importance of the eyewitnesses in the early Christian movement...suggests that they may have had an important role in the control of the traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus. This is, of course, what the Biblical record claims and early Christian tradition attributes to the Gospels (242, True Reason).”

And so in contrast to the form critics who assumed that the early church did not have an interest in recording the events of the life of Jesus with the intent of being historically accurate, “as the twentieth century progressed, the classification of biography increasingly seemed to fit, in a way that is now almost universally accepted. Ancient biography did not involve a lack of reliable historical interest....biography was firmly rooted in historical fact rather than literary fiction...the very fact that the evangelists chose to adapt Greco-Roman biographical conventions to tell the story of Jesus indicates that they were centrally concerned to communicate what they thought really happened (243, True Reason).”

It is important to note that the Gospel writers themselves claim to be eyewitnesses. As the Gospel of Luke states in it's opening passage, “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those from the beginning were eyewitnesses...” Or, as second Peter states, “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” As Hardmann attests,“the view that the ancient historians utilized little to no filter for distinguishing truth from fiction needs to be abandoned...as Lucian wrote in the second century, “the historian’s sole task is to tell the tale as it happened (245, True Reason).”

And so in coming back to the internal test for historical reliability and asking the question, are the New Testament sources internally consistent? As J. P. Moreland states, in Scaling the Secular City, “the internal test asks whether the document itself claims to be actual history written by eyewitnesses...Prima facie it would seem that a strong case could be made for the fact that much of the New Testament, including the Gospels and the sources behind them, was written by eyewitnesses. This is mentioned explicitly in a number of places (Luke 1: 1-4, Gal. 1, 2 Peter 1:16). Further, apostolic position in the early church was widely known to include the qualification of being an eyewitness (Acts 1:21-22, Heb. 2:3), a qualification which shows that the early church valued the testimony of eyewitnesses and believed she had eyewitnesses leading her. The early speeches of Acts refer to the knowledge of unbelieving audiences (e.g., Acts 2:22) and no historian I know of doubts that Christianity started in Jerusalem just a few weeks after the death of Jesus in the presence of friendly and hostile eye-witnesses (137, Scaling the Secular City).”

Moreland continues in stating that “as Gottschalk reminds us, a document should be assumed trustworthy unless, under burden of proof, it is shown to be unreliable...it seems clear that the New Testament writers were able and willing to tell the truth. They had very little to gain and much to lose for their efforts. For one thing, they were mostly Jewish theists. To change their religion (without due grounding would be to risk damnation)...and yet they lived lives of great hardship and (most) died martyrs deaths for their convictions. There is no adequate motive for their labours other than a sincere desire to proclaim what they believed to be the truth (138, Scaling the Secular City). As Moreland continues, “the presence of adverse eyewitnesses would have hampered the spread of Christianity. Christianity began, and remained for some time, in the same area where Jesus had ministered. If the portrait of him was untrue, how could the apostles have succeeded there?” Moreland also points to the consistency of the Christian faith, it's agreement on core doctrines as consistent with the testimony of early witnesses that though they may disagree on details, a solid core of testimony remains (page 138, Scaling the Secular City).

And this is where in keeping the above conclusion of Moreland in mind, “a solid core of testimony remains,” I will address, though briefly, some of the current challenges I have noted from the secular culture concerning the general reliability of scripture. What I have observed from debates I have listened to and articles I have read, etc., is that much of what is written as skeptical material, challenging traditional Christianity seems to be overblown. For example, Bart Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus, implies as the subtitle states (The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why), that there has been a sinister mishandling of the evidence, and yet when pressed, Ehrman will admit that no core Christian doctrine is in question. Surely he must know that it has been given as high as 99 percent textual accuracy and that the vast majority of variants in the manuscripts do not affect meaning and amount to differences in spelling and word order, etc. Similarly, in a follow-up to the above, Bart Ehrman's Forged: Why the Bible's Authors are Not Who We Think They Are, seems to imply deceit on the part of the early church. And yet again, we have early and consistent support from the church fathers to support the traditional authorship of the Gospels and have similar support for the use of many of the books of the New Testament from within decades of their authorship. For example, Ignatius, c. 108 AD, quotes or refers to 24 of the 27 books of the New Testament (Is the New Testament Reliable, 40).

I found it interesting to learn that Augustine was answering the same challenges in the fourth century and had asked in response to similar challenges in his time, do we ask this of other sources? I find myself asking similarly, would the early church have read and viewed as sacred, documents of which they did not know the origin? Furthermore, my understanding is that there is no competing tradition and even if the works are anonymous, they are still the earliest references which have a long history of being authoritative, much like the canon of English literature. Hamlet and Paradise Lost have the reputation they do for a reason, because they have proven themselves over and over again and have passed the test of time, much like the canonical Gospels.

I wonder sometimes, if similar accusations were to surface regarding Shakespeare's works, if people would be so easily fooled, but then again, people are still reading and being taught Shakespeare. But here, for good measure, “John, who obviously knew all of the apostles, had a disciple named Polycarp (A.D. 69-105), and Polycarp had a disciple named Irenaeus (130-202). Polycarp and Irenaeus collectively quote 23 of the 27 New Testament books as if they are authentic -and in some cases they specifically say they are authentic. Irenaeus explicitly affirms the authorship of all four Gospels. Furthermore, through the historian Eusebius, we know that Papias (60-120) affirmed the authorship of Matthew and Mark. And no one doubts the authorship of the major works of Paul...most of the New Testament was accepted before the year A.D. 200. (I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, 368).”

In another controversial work, Jesus Interrupted, Ehrman points to contradictions in details of the accounts while seemingly failing to realize that historians trained in the historical method would not see such differences as worrisome, as Ehrman clearly does. Again, there is a core similitude that is consistent with cardinal Christian doctrines and asking was it one angel or two angels at the tomb, etc., points to the possibility of two independent witnesses (or a focusing in on one account or individual, etc.), who both acknowledge an empty tomb. This point again seems to be lost on Ehrman and other hyper critical scholars. There is also, I might suggest, a failure to interpret the accounts within the genre in which they are written, imposing what appears to be a modernist skepticism over gaining an understanding of literary devices or conventions that would have been accepted within the genre of Greco-Roman biography ie., changes in order of events, spotlighting, time-compression, etc. Authorship may be implied in this (genre) sense as well in some instances, in noting that Peter is spoken of in the opening and closing passages of the Gospel of Mark as is the case in other ancient works, possibly indicating that Peter is the work's author. It could be asked as well, if the church was seeking to merely apply the names of well-known figures, why then would they not have chosen Peter as the author of Mark?

Concerning another Ehrman work “Lost Christianities,” books that have been discovered at Nag Hammadi display a very different theology than the theology of the New Testament and clearly show a second century and onward Greek influence. The dates of these later works really do tell the story, if I may suggest. They were not excluded from the canon as is often alleged, as they were simply not present in the first century to be excluded. These are later works, in short, which show other cultural and theological influences, often a Greek influence which was the dominant cultural influence of the time. In contrast, the Jesus of the New Testament consistently describes the Jesus of history in his first century Jewish milieu.

Finally, yet another Ehrman book, How Jesus became God, seems to suggest on the surface that the belief in Jesus as divine developed over time, and yet it is apparent from the opening pages of Mark, thought by many to be the earliest Gospel, that this is clearly not the case. As noted in secondary sources, the supernatural is inseparable from the historical Jesus (Josephus, for example) as well as the belief in Jesus as God (Pliny the Younger, writing in A.D. 112). The crucifixion, one of the most attested facts we have about Jesus, implies that there had to be a charge. Ironically, my source on the latter fact and implication is none other than Bart Ehrman's blog.

So, that's a quick engagement of some key challenges to the Christian faith that are out there in the culture. In quoting Craig Blomberg on the general reliability of the synoptic Gospels in confronting these cultural challenges, “when one realizes that historical research regularly seeks to harmonize apparently conflicting testimonies, it becomes clear that it is disingenuous to disparage this method in the way so many today do when it is applies to the Gospels. And even if a few of the apparent contradictions were regarded as errors...the general trustworthiness of the Gospels could easily remain untarnished. The student who takes the time to read any three reliable historians' accounts of other ancient figures or events will frequently find much more variation among them than he encounters in the Synoptics (195, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels).

And so, having considered the historicity of the works themselves, and in so turning to the question of internal consistency regarding personal integrity of the authors in question. Here, Geiger and Turek list ten reasons why the New Testament writers give every appearance of being truthful: “in including embarrassing details about themselves, as well as numerous embarrassing details and difficult sayings of Jesus in addition to demanding sayings of Jesus. They carefully distinguish Jesus' words from their own. They include events about the Resurrection that they would not have invented. They include at least thirty historically confirmed public figures in their writings. They include divergent details. They challenge their readers to check out verifiable facts, even facts about miracles. They describe miracles like other historical events: with simple, unembellished accounts. Finally, they abandoned their own long-held sacred beliefs and practices, adopted new ones, and did not deny their testimony under persecution or threat of death (297, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist).”
Just in the way of mentioning, I know that evidence continues to surface that indicates that the New Testament shows every indication of indeed being eye-witness testimony. In terms of the writers knowledge of the landscape, vegetation, trees, and even the frequency with which names appear in the New Testament is consistent with evidence found in archeological excavations of grave sites of Palestine dating from the first century (my source on the latter fact is Peter Williams). Archaeology is still a fairly new field but what I am hearing is that evidence continues to surface as do manuscripts of the New Testament which continue to bring us closer to the original. That is a good thing, said with this history of this field in mind, objective evidence being preferred over generalized interpretation.

In summary, in the words of Gary Habermas, “the New Testament fares exceptionally well in terms of its historical reliability, actually exceeding what is often expected of an ancient text. We have in the New Testament essentially what the authors originally penned, and the texts have been confirmed time and again by various means. Tough questions will always have to be addressed, but we have a highly evidenced document from which to proceed (174, Why I am a Christian).” With this conclusion in mind, what I have found over the years is that by paying attention to dates of sources as well as in differentiating between what skeptical writers imply versus what we know in terms of objective facts about Jesus has a way of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. That's how I manage to keep a clear head, when there is so much competing information out there on Jesus, simply by checking dates and reading the earliest sources which despite all the controversy, are still found in the pages of the New Testament. The orthodox Christian church has always held to the earliest sources, which remain closest to the historical Jesus in terms of geography and time and his own first century Jewish surroundings. The New Testament writers may disagree on details or points of emphasis, but they don't disagree on cardinal doctrines.

In conclusion, It amazes me to learn as I have, and my source on the following is Gary Habermas, that the field of critical Jesus research has changed much in the last number of decades from a heightened skepticism to a new understanding that what we have in some passages of the New Testament is extremely early testimony. Paul, though writing decades later, is recounting events and repeating creeds from within a few years of the crucifixion. Given that these early creeds or hymns would also have needed time to develop, the critical consensus of the majority of scholars is that we are sitting on the first century events in question! Added to that, is that these are key events as relating to the formation of Christian doctrine, including the death, burial, empty tomb and belief in post-mortem appearances of Jesus. In other words, the heart and soul of the Christian faith as grounded in the resurrection is gaining acceptance as being consistent with the accepted facts of the Jesus of history. Scholars are realizing that there is simply no time for miracle accounts or belief in Jesus' divinity to have developed into anything other than what the early church originally believed him to be, the divine Word of God made flesh.

As I've heard N.T. Wright express, there has to be an explanation of how devout monotheistic Jews, who did not believe in a physical resurrection until the end of time (and resurrections in first century Jewish theology were understood to be physical), came to believe that Jesus had been bodily resurrected. Historically speaking (again, according to theologian and historian N.T. Wright), if something is new, it requires explanation. How then do we explain the rise of the early Christian movement from within the first century Jewish community? What changed the disciples from fearful deniers and doubters, to bold proclaimers? It should be recognized, in short, that the Resurrection has explanatory power in explaining the rise of Christianity.

I'll close with the words of Paul, from a letter few would contest was written by Paul, as he himself describes having received the following from the early church within a few years of the crucifixion, what amounts to the foundation of our faith. I come back to these central facts through my own uncertainty and I'm reminded, that clearly the newly formed church through much opposition, came back to these central facts too, what they could never have invented, that which they did not understand, yet which confirmed, such extraordinary claims.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians, 15: 3, 4).

Margaret Harvey










Bibliography:

Barnett, Paul. Is the New Testament Reliable? Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Blomberg, Craig L. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Second Edition), Downer's Grove: IVP Academic, 2007.

Bruce, F.F. The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981.

Geisler, Norman and Turek, Frank. I Don't have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004.

Gilson, Tom and Weitnauer, Carson, editors. True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2012.

McDowell, Josh, Evidence for Christianity. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006.

McDowell, Josh. More Than a Carpenter Wheaton, Illinois: Living Books, 1973.

Moreland, J. P. : Scaling the Secular City: A Defence of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.




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