My 100th Blog Post

I've been postponing my blogging the last couple of weeks in large part because I knew this milestone was coming and it is finally here: 100 blog posts! Some of these I migrated from my "side project" blog on "the gospel according to Scripture," but for the most part they originated here and have been largely theological. My original intent was to make this blog about all sorts of things I like and think about and my next goal (as far as the blog is concerned) will be to write about whatever I want to write about. The point is to write.

To celebrate my 100th post I thought I would share with you some of my favourite posts along with my 5 most popular posts of all time. If you're new to the blog, you may not realize that I don't just blog about hell. I've also written a lot about the gospel and the age of the earth.

My favourite posts in chronological order:

5 points often missed about what the Gospel is about. An early post that really captured succinctly what I was blogging about for months.

A Christmas card about the gospel. I was really passionate in this post and it was 'off the cuff.'

Genesis isn't teaching modern science. This post is a must read for Christians debating Genesis 'vs' Science. Just....stop.

Is creation out of nothing a doctrine ex-nihilo? Ditto.

FEAR and the church Probably my all-time favourite.

Is hell the primary motive for Christian mission? Forgot I wrote this post (I was writing a lot at the time) until Jon Coutts posted his index of my posts and I reread it. It may be the best thing I've written (IMHO).

5 most popular posts countdown!

5. How the world views Jesus. A very provoking and heart wrenching reality.

4. Comparing the 3 views: The Hell Triangle. A good basic comparison of the 3 views.

3. An atheist's view on life? Honestly not a great post. It was just the last one before a hiatus

2. RIP Sarah Jones. A post honouring a worker in the film industry I never met.

1. No one goes to hell immediately to hell when they die. Glad this is number one. An important shift needs to be made about how Christians perceive death and judgement. This post is a good example of that.

Amendment: The actual number one post is far and away "A sermon on the gospel." I checked my traffic records from the blog I migrated those posts from. Unfortunately the link for the audio is dead, but I still have my notes if anyone wants me to come preach it at their church. :) One of my favourites, "A christmas card," is also tied with "RIP Sarah Jones." 

Motivation and Kevin O'Leary's Self Fulfilling Prophecy

I still remember when the NDP was in power in BC. I remember the 'fast ferry" fiasco. But I also know how our Liberal government has made some doozies themselves. The aftermath of privatizing hospital staff and the treatment of teachers and education in our schools are examples of gross mismanagement. The BC Rail scandal is probably the biggest scandal the province has seen and it came under the BC Liberals.

This week Alberta elected a new government. After 44 years with the Progressive Conservatives in power the people of Alberta elected a New Democratic Party majority. Many opinions have been given on the subject, but perhaps none as crassly put as Kevin O'Leary. Here are a few quips from an interview he gave the day after the election:

Bad things can happen to good people and it has in Alberta
This is bad for Alberta and everybody knows it
Alberta has fallen into a socialist bog. I don’t know what else to call it. I don’t know how this could happen.
There will be a 40-50% drop in capital going there while there is uncertainty in the business model. Because we don’t know what the government will do.
I wouldn’t invest any money in Alberta now and no big capital expenditures will move forward until we understand whats going to happen. A socialist government causes distress in capital evaluations.
I think i’m dealing in reality.
When you get a new government they learn by making mistakes. When you get an NDP government you get disaster.
NDP is the ‘dark force’ itself.
Unions are ‘sheer evil’.
If we had a federal NDP many people would have to leave the country.That is a nightmare I can guarantee won’t happen

I don't know how he can guarantee there won't be a federal NDP mandate when he doesn't understand how Alberta flip flopped so hard, seemingly overnight. What I think he can guarantee is that selfish, powerful, rich businessmen like himself will not invest in Alberta and the capital investment will fall dramatically. This is not the result of an NDP government, but the manipulation of the economy by the wealthy to motivate the poor by squeezing them out. The economy won't suffer because the government adjusts taxes to alleviate financial stress on the middle class and the poor. It will suffer because the rich refuse to work within a system that seeks to restore equity. O'Leary won't invest in Alberta and predicts a reduction of investment capital. This is the self fulfilling prophesy of Kevin O'Leary.

Welcome to Hell

The word "hell" in the more recent English bibles is translated from one word, Gehenna, which means "Valley of Hinnom." It is outside of Jerusalem and the end scene of an apocalyptic battle in Isa 66. Gehenna was a place of sacrifice to Molech and where they burned bodies after battles. There is no evidence that it was a garbage dump as often claimed (with no reference). 

Jesus uses the word Gehenna more than anyone else (while speaking in Jerusalem, not in Galilee!!), but he didn't talk about what we think of as "hell" more than anyone else. That was Paul by most counts. 

Did Jesus descend to Hades? Part 1

I have written previously on whether or not Jesus descended into hell here. But my friend, Andrew, tagged me in a comment for this article by Joe Rigney on Jesus descending to Hades wondering what my thoughts were . I couldn't comment on the Facebook post because it was shared by someone with restricted comments so I thought I'd share them with everyone. Here's the link to the article followed by quotes and my commentary.

http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/252233-descended-hell.html#.VS-bC3XvM9A.facebook

"We all know that Jesus died... But what happened after he died? We know that his body was laid in Joseph’s tomb, but what about his human soul?"

And what I find shocking is that Rigney conclude that..."Jesus’ soul went to Hades...." The reason why I find this shocking is because Joe Rigney blogs at desiringgod.org which is a staunchly reformed website named after the book, "Desiring God" by their chief figurehead, John Piper. Piper has spoken about and written his own blog post on this subject defending that the textual evidence for such a view is weak and he believes Jesus' soul went to Heaven when he died until his resurrection.

Asking what happened after Jesus died is a great question. I think that the article by Rigney does an excellent job of addressing it and gives a thoroughgoing explanation with an encouraging message at the end.  In my post on whether Jesus descended into hell, I make a similar claim: "...[Jesus] was among the dead between his death and resurrection whether you take it as a literal grave of the dead or a metaphorical/spiritual underworld/realm." So, I'm in support of this article's conclusions as one of two options. However, I have not come to the same understanding as this author does. 

"Death is separation, a dividing of things that ought to be united. Fundamentally, it is separation from God....But of course, death is more than just separation from God. Death also marks the separation of the soul from the body. God made human beings to be embodied souls and ensouled bodies, and death rips this union asunder."

 First, I don't agree with his definition of death. This isn't how we define the term or use it in most instances, and the Bible doesn't generally use it this way either. With rare exceptions where the word is used figuratively, 'death' means that the person dies physically. If one is a dualist, which I am not, and one thinks that the soul departs from the body at death this departure is still not death. This would be an effect of the death of the body. It is the body that is said to be dead and the spirit/soul is 'alive' and therefore not dead. Therefore death cannot mean separation in this instance, but the death of the body causes separation of body and soul.

Second, I don't think the soul/spirit is some immaterial substance that can survive death. With Martin Luther and many others I hold to 'soul sleep' and think that the human person is a whole that cannot be separated and survive. I am what in theological terms is called a 'monist'; I believe a human person is a single entity. Yes, it can be described as having various 'parts', but they make up one indivisible whole. In philosophy of mind this view is referred to as 'non-reductive physicalism'.

So I don't think of a human being as having a soul. I think you are a soul primarily because it is what I see in the Bible. In Genesis, for example, it says that God made man out of the dust and breathed the breath of life into him and he became a living soul. A 'soul' was not breathed into him, life was and the 'living dust' is called a living soul. Not only that, but after the fall, God says 'for dust you are and to dust you shall return.'. And the word for 'soul' is used for all of the other animals created beforehand. This is why the more modern translations say 'creature' instead of soul in this instance. They are being more consistent than the KJV and other translations where the creation of man is the first use of the english word 'soul' making it appear as a more unique creation than the text suggests in that manner (Though I do think the text is saying humans are unique by other means).

Now, I don't hold this monist view dogmatically and could very well be wrong. The point is that words we often think imply dualism are not doing so necessarily. I agree with Dr. Glenn Peoples who thinks that the primary reason for upholding a dualist view of human persons is cultural and theological (Read more about his defence of monism here and here).  And what is the primary/only theological belief that requires dualism? The belief that when people die they are in Hades and Paradise or Hell and Heaven....or in the case of Rigney, Hades and Heaven!

More to come in part 2...