On what day of the week did Christ die?

Until 1881 most theologians believed that Christ was crucified on a Friday, but in that year Brooke Foss Westcott was the first to propose an alternate day. He believe that Thursday would better explain Christ's comment in Matthew 12:40 where Jesus sates that as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Since then others taking the most literally view of holding to an exact 72 hour period have proposed that Christ was crucified on a Wednesday.

Examining the Wednesday view first, if the text in Matthew refers to a literal 72 hour period then Christ could have risen no later than 6 PM Saturday, otherwise He would have risen on the fourth day; yet we know from Scripture that He arose on the first day of the week or Sunday. If Jesus was actually in the tomb for a literal period of three days and three nights, logically He would have risen on the fourth day. However, Jesus said He would be raised up in three days (Matthew 16:21; Mark; 8:31; Luke 9:22; John 2:19-22; Acts 10:40; I Corinthians 15:4). Thus, Jesus must have been in the grave for a period of time only extending to the third day.

While Matthew 12:40 seems to indicate that Christ must have been in the tomb for three days and three nights, there is evidence that this phrase is an idiomatic expression and should not be taken to mean a literal period of three days and nights. For example in Esther 4:16, Esther asks the Jews not to eat or drink for three days, night or day. Later we find out that she saw the king on the third day (Esther 5:1). In I Samuel 30:12 an abandoned Egyptian servant had not eaten bread or water for three days and three nights, yet in verse 13 we read that his master left him behind three days ago. Also, according to the Wednesday view, Christ would have entered Jerusalem on the Sabbath, the preceding Saturday. If so, He would have been accused of breaking the Sabbath.

Those who hold to the Thursday view also insist on a literal interpretation of Matthew 12:40 but no so literal as to render it a 72 hour period. This view removes the restriction of Christ's resurrection having to occur no later than 6 PM Saturday and allows for the Sunday resurrection.

Adherents to this view rely on the concept of successive Sabbaths to explain why Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matthew 28:11) waited two days attend to the Lord's body and to go to the tomb after the Sabbath had ended (John 20:1). While the arguments for the Thursday view are very compelling it precludes Christ from eating the Passover meal, which many texts (Matthew 26:2, 17-19; Mark 14:1, 12, 14, 16; Luke 22:1, 7. 8, 13 & 15) seem to indicate that He did. Moreover, we know from Matthew 26:17 and Luke 23:54 that the last supper was a Passover meal so Christ could not have been crucified on the day of its preparation.

The argument of two successive Sabbaths is very weak. In Matthew 28:1, where the plural form of Sabbath is employed, it is not referring to more than one Sabbath. Often the name of festivals were written in the plural form yet the plural form was never used to speak of more than one festival. Also, John 19:31 presents a problem for both the Wednesday and Thursday views. If bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, "for that Sabbath was a high day," there would have been no immediate need to take down the bodies unless Christ was crucified on Friday.

The Friday view holds to Jesus' prediction that He would be raised on the third day (Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31 & Luke 9:22). According to Jewish literature, a day and a night make an "onah," and part of an "onah" is a whole. In other words any part of a day and night counted as a whole day. Proponents of the Friday view insist that this view best fits with the majority of biblical passages. Jesus was place in the tomb on the evening of the day of Preparation (Friday), the day before the Sabbath (Matthew 27:62, 28:1; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54, 56; John 19:31, 42); the women returned from the tomb and rested at home during the Sabbath or Saturday (Luke 23:56); on the first day of the week, early Sunday morning they returned to the empty tomb (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1-2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1); on the same day Jesus walked with two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13) and they told Jesus that their master had been crucified (Luke 24:21). This verse from Luke 24:21, which ends with these words "today is the third day since these things happened," provides the most compelling support for the Friday view.

There are four passages (Matthew 27:63; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34) that say Christ will be raised after three days. The three passages from Mark are paralleled respectively by passages that use the phrase "on the third day" (Matthew 20:19 and Luke 9:22; Matthew 17:23; Matthew 20:19 and Luke 18:33). In Matthew 27:63 the Pharisees informed Pilate that Jesus predicted that He would rise again after three days and then in the next verse they ask for the tomb to be guarded until the third day. These and other arguments from Old Testament typology, prophecy and history point to the validity of the Friday view.

How old was Jesus when He was crucified?

The date of the crucifixion of Jesus is not known definitely, and since the date of His birth is uncertain, it is doubly difficult to determine His exact age at the time He was crucified. Nobody has yet been able to make a calendar of the life of Jesus that is generally acceptable to Biblical scholars.

Luke 3:23 tells us that Jesus was about thirty years of age at the outset of His public ministry shortly after He had been baptized by John the Baptizer. John was six months older than Jesus and, according to Luke 3:1-2, John began to preach in the wilderness of Judaea in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. In the same passage we learn that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea; Herod (Antipas) was tetrarch of Galilee; his brother Philip (Herod) was tetrarch of Ituraea and of Trachonitis; Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene; and that Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. Since Tiberius succeeded Augustus in 14 A.D. the fifteenth year of his reign would have been 29 A.D. which suggests the Jesus was about thirty years old in 29 A. D. This would place His birth in 1 B.C or three years after the death of Herod the Great.

It is generally agreed that Luke is substantially correct in his historical facts. Herod Antipas, Philip, Lysanias II, Annas and Caiaphas all held the positions indicated in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, although it appears that Caiaphas was actually the high priest then; but Annas, his father-in-law, still retained much influence in the Jewish hierarchy as a former high priest.

Some authorities point out that Luke, being a Greek, would not necessarily be aware of the fact that a Jew in those days would have to be a man of at least forty or fifty before he would be accepted as a prophet and teacher by his people. Accordingly they suppose that Luke merely conjectured that Jesus was about thirty at the time He began His public ministry.

John 8:57 says, "Then the Jews said to Him, 'You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?'" Some authorities put considerable stock in this as indicating that Jesus was much older than He is generally supposed to have been. They argue that John, who was born and reared a Jew, would be more likely to be correct about His age than would Luke, who was not familiar with Jewish thought and customs. But the mocking question of His enemies proves little, except possibly that Jesus appeared to them as an older man than one in his early thirties, or that He was rather young to be taken seriously as a prophet.

If Jesus was nearly fifty at that time He would have been born about 20 B.C. John 2:20, refers to a period early in Jesus ministry, in which the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple." There is some historical evidence that Herod the great began to rebuild the temple about 20 B.C. so forty-six years later would be 26 A.D. Assuming that Luke 3:23 is correct, this would mean that Jesus was about thirty in 26 A.D., which agrees with the supposition that He was born about 4 B.C.

The duration of the ministry of Jesus is equally uncertain. Estimates range all the way from one to fifteen years, but three years is generally accepted primarily because three Passovers seem to be mentioned during the period of His ministry. It was long supposed that those three Passovers were in the years of 27, 28 and 29 A.D., which implies that Jesus was crucified in the spring of 29 A.D.

The Gospels sources (as pointed out in last's week's column) seem to agree that the crucifixion took place on Friday and that this Friday fell either on the day immediately preceding or the day immediately following the Passover. Investigators maintain that a scientific comparison of the Jewish calendar, inscriptions on Babylonian tablets, Biblical and historical references and other available data show that there was only one year during Pilate's regime in Judaea when the Passover could have met these conditions, and that was the year 30 A.D. Accordingly they fix the exact date of the crucifixion on April 7, 30 A.D. But in the New Testament Passover is used in a sense so vague that one cannot be entirely certain that the Passover and the Sabbath fell on the same day in the year that Jesus was crucified, although there is good reason for supposing that it did.

The Synoptic Gospels and John are not entirely clear on this point. The best information points to the conclusion that the public ministry of Jesus lasted between one and three years and that He was probably thirty-four years or possibly older when He was crucified.

Do you agree that Matthew Fox is today's Martin Luther, with whom Fox self identifies?

To paraphrase a famous line from a vice-presidential debate of many years ago, "I've read Martin Luther, I've studied Martin Luther - and believe me, Matthew Fox is no Martin Luther!" I was first exposed to the heretical teachings of Matthew Fox about 15 years ago when I debated one of his "disciples" over Fox's denial of Original Sin.

Matthew Fox was ordained a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican order in 1967, who became known for his method of combining non-Christian spiritualities with Christian symbolism. His syncretism and rejection of core Christian beliefs led to conflict with the Vatican. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith officially silenced him and in 1993 he was expelled from the Dominican order. Reportedly, some of the principle objections to Fox's work on the part of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were that he is a 'feminist theologian,' that he calls God 'Mother,' that he believes in 'Original Blessing' and not in 'Original Sin,' that he calls God 'child,' and that he does not condemn un-repentant homosexuals. Recently Fox has brought his teachings to the masses in his new book, A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality and the Transformation of Christianity.

His "self identity" with Luther came about when Fox was scheduled to give a series of lectures in Germany, the native land of Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger. Cardinal Ratzinger was once head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that had silenced and censured Fox. Fox writes, "I prayed one night (and) was awakened with this idea: Why not draw up some theses, just as Martin Luther had done five hundred years ago, that would speak to my concerns and those of the people from whom I was hearing? Why not re-enact Luther's protest: the nailing of the theses to the church door in Wittenberg?" In about two hours, Fox had written his ninety-five theses.

Matthew Fox decided to take his idea of ninety-five theses one-step further and hold a public event in Wittenberg, where he would re-enact what Luther had done centuries earlier. Fox decided he would nail a copy of his ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg castle church. But his plan did not go well. In Wittenberg, Fox and his cohorts were prevented from nailing the theses to the historic door and were required by civic authorities to stay at least forty-five feet away from the historic structure. In the end, Fox was reduced to nailing his theses to a piece of leaning wood. Needless to say, the spectacle lacked something of the seriousness of Luther's call for a reformation of the church.

Matthew Fox clearly sees the Roman Catholic Church as the main target of his criticism. Nevertheless, his call for a new reformation is actually addressed to the entire Christian church, Protestants and other non-Roman Catholics included, in which he calls for Christianity to "move from religion to spirituality." In contemporary context, this boils down to substituting postmodern concepts of relativity for the notion of an objective truth.

Fox covers a host of concepts and proposes an odd mix of heresies within his ninety-five theses. He begins with the assertion that God is "both Mother and Father." From this starting point he argues: "At this time in history God is more Mother than Father because the feminine is most missing and it is important to bring back gender balance." He also argues that the older idea of God as a "Punitive Father" must be discarded. "God the Punitive Father is not a God worth honoring, but a false god and an idol that serves empire builders. The notion of punitive, all-male God is contrary to the full nature of the Godhead, who is as much female and motherly as masculine and fatherly." Although most of Fox's theses range across a very disconnected landscape, some are quite simple in their rejection of classical Christianity. For example, in thesis #6, he heretically writes: "Theism (the idea that God is 'out there' or above and beyond the universe) is false. All things are in God and God is in all things (pantheism)."

In one sense, the proposals of Matthew Fox deserve little attention from orthodox Christians. After all, his rejection of biblical Christianity, like that of his contemporary Irish leprechaun and Jesus Seminar chair Dominic Crossan (who declares that most of what the Gospels state is inauthentic), are so transparent that hopefully they pose little threat to the institutional church.

I pray most persons will see Matthew Fox's "new reformation" for what it is--an attempt to hijack the Christian faith in order to push his own pantheistic agenda. The Reformation of the sixteenth century led by Martin Luther was a serious attempt to recover and embrace historic biblical Christianity. Matthew Fox's "new reformation" is precisely the opposite--an attempt to replace Christianity with a new form of paganism. No Matthew Fox, you're no Martin Luther!

Does the Bible say that Jesus was crucified on a hill called Mt. Calvary?

The popular notion is that Jesus was crucified on a hill or elevated place know as Mr. Calvary in Jerusalem. References to this belief are common in hymns, sermons and other religious literature.

The place of the crucifixion has been referred to as the hill of Calvary or "Mt. Calvary" since the fifth century. But the Bible does not contain a single reference or allusion to the place of crucifixion as a hill, mount or elevated place. It certainly was not a mountain.

The references to the place of crucifixion in the King James Version are as follows: "And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull," (Matthew 27:33); "And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull," (Mark 15:22); "And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left," (Luke 23:33); "And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called [the place] of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst," (John 19:17-18). John 19:20 tell us that the place where they crucified Him "was nigh to the city," and Hebrews 13:12 says, "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate."

Golgotha and Calvary are merely Anglicized forms of the Hebrew and Latin words meaning "a skull." Some authorities suppose the place was so called because of a tradition connecting it with the skull of Adam, and still others because its contour suggested a skull.

The exact site of the place of the crucifixion has never been identified beyond question. We have no means of determining the correctness of the conventional and popular notion that it was on a hill or elevated spot. The biblical accounts give us the impression that the place where Jesus was crucified and the tomb in the garden where He was buried were close together.

One tradition places the original Golgotha on a skull-shaped small hill above Jeremiah's grotto just outside the Damascus gate of Jerusalem. Another tradition places it on the elevated site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher within the walls of the modern city. All we know for certain is that it was a place near Jerusalem outside the gate and it probably was near a road.

Whether or not the original Golgotha may have been the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher depends upon the location of the city wall at that time. Some authorities say that archaeological and other evidence discovered in recent times indicates that this site in the time of Jesus lay beyond the second wall, which was the outer wall at the date of the crucifixion. They also say that theory is further corroborated by the discovery of several rock tombs in the vicinity.

Other authorities reject both the traditional sites referred to and say that the crucifixion took place in a valley near Jerusalem. But the popular notion that Jesus was crucified on the summit of a hill has become so fixed in legend, literature and art that it is not likely to be shaken by anything short of conclusive evidence to the contrary.

What is the best version of the various translations of the Bible and why are there so many different versions?

The short answer to the first part of your question is: the best version of the Bible is the one that people will read. However, one also needs consider the purpose one has in reading the Bible. Is one merely reading to get an overview of what is in the Bible or is one engaged in biblical research? Generally speaking, the easier it is to read a particular version of the Bible the less literal the translation and the following review generally follows that flow. All of the various versions of the Bible are not included since space delimits me to discussing only what I deem as the most popular ones.

It is a fact that all Bibles in the world are merely translations of the most ancient manuscripts and/or revisions of previous versions. There are no known original manuscripts of the Bible in existence. The oldest known biblical manuscripts are copies, not originals. As a result, some versions translated from the most ancient texts are excellent, while other versions are poorly done and contain numerous errors.

For example, The Reader's Digest Bible published in 1982 is basically what it claims to be, a digest version that leaves out about forty percent of the Bible. In its preface the editors clearly state that it is not intended to replace the full biblical text. The Good News Bible, (or Good News for Modern Man), and The Living Bible Paraphrased are not word for word translations, but are what some call equivalent translations. The Good News Bible was also partly oriented to please the Women's Liberation movement by changing the words "man" and "men" to impersonal terms where the male gender was not the sole intent. These paraphrased versions are exactly what they declare to be, a paraphrase of the Bible, and not a translation.

The New English Bible was begun as a cooperative effort of churches in the British Isles having the ambitious goal of producing a completely new translation "of the best available Greek text into the current speech of our time, and a rendering that should harvest the gains of recent biblical scholarship." Nevertheless, this version too makes frequent use of paraphrasing. The revisers chose what they deemed the best rendering when more than one interpretation was possible. Readers not familiar with the original languages are at the mercy of these translators random choice. The revisers depended more upon other versions than did earlier English Bibles. They unjustifiably practiced giving Jewish feasts the names of Christian festivities, such as "Whitsuntide" (I Corinthians 16:8). In several places they also made changes in expressions that refer to days of the week (Acts 20:7 and Matthew 27:62).

The Revised Standard Version (RSV) was the work of thirty-two scholars. The revisers made use of Masoretic Hebrew, the Aramaic text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of more ancient manuscripts than those available when the King James Version was translated in 1611. They also consulted a large body of Greek papyri to help recover more of the original Greek text. Despite this, the RSV still has its failings. One of the disputed features (which I have addressed in previous columns as well as on pages 37-39 of my book, Ask Augustine) of the RSV was the unwise translation of the Hebrew almah in Isaiah 7:14 as "young woman" instead of "virgin."

The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) modernizes and simplifies the language of the RSV and also revises it in the interest of "gender inclusiveness." In general this version is less literal than the RSV but more literal than the New International Version (discussed next). The deliberately non-Christian interpretation of the passage in Isaiah 7:14, which made the RSV unacceptable to orthodox Christians, was continued in the NRSV. This version was quickly favored by liberal seminary and university professors and in many mainline churches for which it was intended.

The New International Version (NIV) was produced by a committee of scholars associated with evangelical churches in America in the late 1960 's largely as a reaction to the liberal RSV. Their work, which consulted Masoretic manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other ancient versions, "seems" to be faithful in preserving both the theology and other subject matter of the originals, while at the same time updating the language to that of modern usage.

The most objectionable aspect of the RSV, as well as the NRSV was the policy of translating the Old Testament without any regard for the interpretations of the Old Testament passages in the New Testament and so the translators of the NIV stipulated that "the translation shall reflect clearly the unity and harmony of the Spirit-inspired writings." In their attempt to defend biblical inerrancy these scholars sometimes adopted a linguistically unsound interpretation. For example, to avoid an apparent contradiction between biblical statements and the known facts of modern science, Mark 4:31 has Jesus saying that the mustard seed is "the smallest seed you plant in the ground" instead of "the smallest of all seeds on earth." Likewise Matthew 13:32 reads, "the smallest of all your seeds" rather than "the smallest of all seeds." Jesus was merely using hyperbolic language; not making a scientific statement and the NIV's attempt to rescue Him from a technically incorrect statement is misguided.

Roman Catholic critics have also pointed out a Protestant bias in the NIV when the Greek word paradosis, which means tradition, is translated. The word is literally translated tradition in places where traditions are being criticized but it is translated as teachings where traditions are being recommended. Conservative Protestants also objected to its non-literal method of translation to make it more readable. For example the Greek word hilasterion means propitiation (that God who is angry with sin must be made propitious toward us by the blood of Christ) but the NIV, as well as the RSV and NRSV, render this word rather loosely as atoning sacrifice or atonement.

The American Standard Version (ASV) was begun in 1872 by a group of American scholars representing nine denominations. The object was "to make a good translation better, and to bring it up to the present standard of Biblical scholarship." After twenty-nine years of work this Bible was published in 1901. Variant readings of the Greek text were discussed and studied by the revisers, and the oldest manuscripts were consulted in preparing the finished product while at the same time remaining faithful to the subject matter and the original texts.

The New American Standard Bible (NASB), the work of fifty-eight anonymous scholars, was an improved version of the ASV, making use of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were not available at the time of the earlier version. As a whole the NASB makes use of grammatically correct, contemporary English. It appears to be a faithful version and is a conservative and literal word for word translation of the Scriptures.

The original King James Bible is not a recent work, but in spite of its archaic words (many of which have lost their original meaning) can be approached with confidence. The New King James Version and the English Standard Version show a profound reverence for the text and form of the 1611 version in its presently used 1769 edition. A definite advantage of these versions are that they show textual variants with the Majority Text, etc. in footnotes at the bottom of the page, giving the most complete set of footnotes found in any English Bible today. This should be very important to the serious Bible student.

Scholarly Bible study will not stop at present versions and their sources, but will make use of the oldest and most recently discovered manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, the languages in which the Bible was written, and of even older manuscripts than those now available as they are discovered. Who knows, one day perhaps, some of the original autographs may be found.

How did the Dead Sea get its name?

The name Dead Sea does not occur in the Bible. The Apostolic Fathers and other early post-biblical writers were the ones who first applied that name to the lowest body of water in the world. Its normal level is about 1300 feet below the Mediterranean. Given its depth of 1300 feet, this means that its bottom is nearly 2600 feet below sea level making it the deepest natural depression on the face of the earth.

In the Bible it is called “the salt sea,” “the eastern sea” and “the sea of the plain.” A tradition dating back about 1900 years says the Dead Sea covers the site of the wicked cities destroyed by Jehovah with brimstone from heaven.

Josephus refers to the Dead Sea as “the lake called Asphaltitis,” from which we get our word asphalt. The Arabs call this body of water Bahr Lut, “lake of Lot,” in allusion to the fact that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt on its desolate shores.

The Dead Sea deserves its name. Its waters are so salty that no fish, animal or plant life (except a few algae) is able to live in them. The water is about four times as salty as seawater and is so buoyant that a human body will not sink in it.

The sea receives the Jordan and other waters but unlike other bodies of water, has no outlet. Because the Dead Sea only receives from other waters and does not give, it is the most desolate and dreary region in the world. There is an obvious parable being shown to us by this body of water.

What is the Printers' Bible?

The Printers' Bible is an edition of the King James Version printed in 1702. It received its popular name from a printers' error par excellence. In Psalms 119:161 the Psalmist is made to complain, "Printers have persecuted me without a cause," instead of; "Princes have persecuted me without a cause."

Can one converse in Hebrew? Like Aramaic and Greek, the other two original languages of the Scriptures, Hebrew is a dead language in its ancient form. Because of the limited vocabulary it would be impossible for anyone to carry on a satisfactory conversation on current topics in pure Hebrew.

But Hebrew has continued to be a sacred, literary and ritual language among the Jews, and after World War I it was revived in a modernized form. Hebrew, with an enlarged vocabulary from other languages, and not Yiddish, is regarded as the national language in Israel.

Aramaic in its ancient form is a dead language, but dialects closely akin to it are still spoken by the Samaritans in the Mediterranean region. Greek is the ritual language in some Eastern Orthodox churches.

Are we living in Christianity's terminal generation?

The shape of the Christianity's challenge in postmodern America comes down to this; we must be continually on the alert to defend the faith, for the Christian faith now faces unprecedented attacks. The rise of a postmodern culture has produced an intellectual context in which the very concept of truth is held under suspicion, and claims to a revealed truth are simply ruled out of order. Yet, by definition, Christians are to be a Gospel people, cherishing, teaching, and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We remain Christian only when we maintain the integrity of our Gospel witness. We are truly Christian only when we keep our testimony to the Gospel without confusion or compromise.

We should be very concerned about certain trends in contemporary Christian churches (please note that I am NOT referring to contemporary styles worship) that threaten this integrity. The first is an ominous confusion about the Gospel itself. The heart of the Gospel is the objective truth that Christ died for sinners, and that salvation is by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. The cardinal doctrine of justification by faith is, as Martin Luther stated, "the article upon which the church stands or falls."

Yet much of what is presented in many pulpits today, and marketed by flashy television preachers, bears little resemblance to this simple message. Instead, sinners (if today's pulpits even acknowledge that there are sinners anymore) are told to seek after riches, material blessings, vibrant health, and earthly rewards. Salvation is packaged as a product to be hawked on the airwaves and sold at a discount. The notion of salvation from sin and judgment is entirely missing from this scenario. Salvation is presented as a gift of self-enhancement.

On the theological left, the Gospel has long ago been transformed into a social and political message of liberation from oppression. The Gospel of Christ has been reduced to a form of self-expression or therapy. Salvation is promised as the answer to low self-esteem and emptiness. Gone is any notion of a holy God who offers salvation from sin and its eternal penalty. In His place we are given a god who winks at sin.

The other pressing front in the current battle for the Gospel concerns the exclusivity of the work of Christ. The testimony of the Bible could not be clearer. Salvation comes to all who call upon the name of the Lord. Salvation comes through Jesus Christ, and through Jesus Christ alone. In our culture of political correctness and intolerant tolerance, we are told that such a claim is simply unacceptable. There cannot be only one way of salvation. Who is to say that the religions of the world are wrong, and that Christianity alone is true?

Well, that is the non-negotiable criterion of Christian faithfulness. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (John 14:6). Without this clear testimony, the Gospel is emptied of its integrity. The Bible allows no misunderstanding. Without conscious faith in Jesus Christ, there is no salvation. Christians must divide the world into those who confess Jesus as Lord and those who don't. God does have a bloodline.

Various forms of compromise erupt on this crucial front in the battle for the Gospel. Some advocate an open universalism, in which all persons are eventually saved. Others promote pluralism, promising that all roads will eventually lead to God, and that no faith has a privileged claim to truth. Some have advocated a form of inclusiveness in which other religions and faiths are seen to be included in the work of Christ.

Against these various attempts to evade the simple clarity of the Gospel stands the Word of God. Our Christian integrity stands or falls on the truth that salvation is found through faith in Christ alone. This is the logic of the missionary mandate and the sustaining conviction for all Christian evangelism.

Nevertheless, the worldview held by many individuals today, especially those among the educated classes, flatly rejects such claims as imperialistic and arrogant. R. C. Sproul has said that we are living in the most anti-intellectual age of the church and as a result we believe nothing. Our contemporary "feel good preaching that never mentions sin" is built on an epistemology of post-modern relativism. Rousseau was correct when he wrote, "sincerity has become more important than truth" and "feeling has become more important than reason." We judge churches today on how they make us feel, and not whether they preach and teach the truth of the Gospel.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter has warned that younger Christians tend to go soft on this doctrine that Christ is the only way. Educated in a culture of postmodern relativism and ideological pluralism, this generation has been taught to avoid making any exclusive claim to truth. Speak of your truth, if you must, but never claim to know the Truth. Personal and not prepositional truth is now regarded as the highest truth. Fifty-three percent of evangelical Christians today say that truth is relative. Unless this course is reversed, there will be no Christians in the next generation.

Charles Spurgeon stated it plainly, "We have come to a turning-point in the road. If we turn to the right, mayhap our children and our children's children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word." Those words ring with prophetic urgency more than a century after they were written. Christians must regain theological courage and conviction, or we must face the tragic reality that this indeed may be Christianity's terminal generation.

In the Apostles' Creed, why do we say of Jesus, 'He descended into hell?

First of all, let me congratulate the person who asked this question, because we always want to worship intelligently. It certainly should bother us to publicly affirm things when we aren't sure we believe them or don't understand. It is far better for us to get into the habit of asking questions and become educated about the history of our faith and the formulations of earlier generations.

In the Apostles' Creed we affirm together that Jesus was "crucified, dead and buried," and then "descended into hell," before "on the third day he rose from the dead." This deals with the time between Jesus' crucifixion on Friday and Sunday morning when He arose. Jesus went somewhere during this time and this answer affirms that it was to hell that He went.

The original languages help quite a lot in this case. The place where Jesus went after death in Hebrew is called "Sheol;" in Greek it is "Hades." Both of those terms are used for the place where dead souls were said to go. This is why doctrinally we say that Jesus' humiliation consisted of, among other things, receiving "the wrath of God and the cursed death of the cross, in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time" and "Christ's humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of death, and under the power of death till the third day; which hath been otherwise expressed in the words, He descended into hell."

The main proof text for these answers is Psalm 16:10, along with its New Testament citation in Acts 2:24-27, 31, where Peter preaches the Pentecost sermon partly from this text. In Ps. 16:10, David says, "you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay." Peter says in Acts 2:31, "Seeing what was ahead, he (David) spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay." In Ps. 16, the word "grave" is "Sheol," and in Acts 2:31, it is "Hades."

Therefore, when we say, "He descended into hell," we are simply recalling that Jesus came under the power of death, and went to the place of the dead until His resurrection. Hell, in that terminology, is not the place of final judgment, but the place of all the dead awaiting judgment. He went to the place of the dead, being under the power of death until His resurrection. Romans 6:9 says, "Since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him." Logically, then, death once did have mastery over Jesus, and that would be during the time He descended into hell.

Doesn't it seem that the Old Testament has a different view of the state of the souls of the redeemed than the New Testament does?

Yes, since the Old Testament seems to see the dead going down into Sheol or Hades, along with the unredeemed, to await the coming of the Lord. While the New Testament speaks of the souls of saved persons being "with the Lord."

In the Old Testament, and even during the life of Christ, the dead are presented in Hades. For instance, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus says, "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side" (Lk. 16:22-23).

This whole scene takes place in hell, that is, in Hades. On one side of hell, as it were, is paradise, where Abraham and Lazarus are. On the other side, beyond a great chasm, hell is really hell, and that is where the once greedy rich man now is. This also seems to agree with what Jesus said to the thief on the nearby cross who believed in Him: "Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise"(Lk. 23:43). Presumably, then, Jesus went to hell, proclaiming his victory to those given over for damnation, while actually staying in the paradise precincts.

All of that is quite different from the situation set forth after the resurrection and ascension of Christ in the New Testament epistles. In 2 Cor. 5:7-8, for instance, Paul speaks positively about Christian death, saying, "We are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."

It seems that after Christ's resurrection and ascension, the souls of His own are now in heaven - which is not what He said to the thief on the Cross, nor what the Old Testament says of believers. Perhaps, this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote in Ephesians 4:7, ""When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." After this, in the New Testament, hell is a place of punishment and final condemnation, a place to which neither Christ nor His people will ever go.

One thing, however, we can affirm with zeal, is that after His death and burial, Jesus descended into hell. And we can also say "His hell gained our heaven; his curse secured our blessing; his incalculable grief brought us immeasurable joy." Therefore, let us say it with conviction and with joy: "He descended into hell."

Isn't it true that doctrine divides, and so therefore, shouldn't we avoid doctrinal disputes?

The axiom of our day is the expression "doctrine divides." And, indeed that is true. Doctrine does have a tendency to divide, but it does not seem to divide as much within liberal churches and among liberal theologians as it does within the more conservative churches and among the more conservative theologians. I suspect that the reason for this is because the more liberal a church or a theologian is, the more able they are to tolerate a wide variety of doctrines because doctrine matters very little, if at all to them.

Liberal theologians and liberal churches have no passion about the content of the Christian faith, whereas conservatives are prepared to give their lives for the truth of the Gospel because it has eternal significance. The great theologian Emil Brunner made one of the strongest indictments against nineteenth century liberalism when he said the essence of liberal theology could be stated in one word, "unbelief." Liberal churches and liberal theology can be very tolerant with respect to the tenets of creedal Christianity because those things matter little if at all to them.

On the other hand, believers who read Scripture know that virtually every page of the New Testament contains exhortations to guard the truth that has been delivered because there are those who would undermine it with false doctrine. Historically, wherever the Gospel is preached it divides and controversy ensues.

However, people do not want perpetual controversy, they want peace. Peace and unity have become more important than truth. But is peace and unity at any price worth it? Neville Chamberlain is the archetype of those who call for peace and unity above purity or truth. In the Old Testament we are confronted with false prophets who preached peace when there was no peace. Yet today, we are constantly told that the highest virtues are peace and unity. Of course we need to coexist with those who may disagree with us, but in doing so we must never negotiate away the purity and truth of the Gospel.

Paul's preaching as recorded in Acts 17:1-15 caused division among the Jews in Thessalonica and Berea. Jesus tell us in Matthew 10:34-36 that He did not come to bring peace but a sword and to alienate even members of the same household against each other. The demands of discipleship must take supremacy over all other human obligations and relationships. When loyalty to Christ and His Kingdom conflict with other loyalties, regardless of how cherished they may be, those secondary loyalties must give way.

What is meant by the free will of man?

Though many secular determinists have denied the reality of will to human beings, that is not the case with historic Christianity. The issue in the church has been not so much whether we have wills, but the extent to which our wills are free. The issue in theology (as distinguished from philosophy, wherein the question of free will encounters other obstacles) has two aspects.

The first has to do with the relationship between man's will and God's will with respect to predestination and divine providence. Here, most agree (at least certainly Calvinists) that in the mystery of concurrence, or the point at which the human will intersects the divine will, man's freedom is neither violated nor destroyed. That is, the human will does not fall victim to coercion; God works out His divine will in and through the choices made by the human will. At no time does He reduce humans to the level of impersonal or non-volitional puppets who can move and act only as their strings are pulled externally. We are free but not autonomous.

The second aspect of theological concern regarding free will has to do with the degree to which our liberty has been impaired by "the Fall." This is the issue that was at the heart of the Pelagian controversy that pitted the British monk Pelagius against St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century. In that debate, Pelagius argued that man not only was created free but that his nature was created immutable. He denied the reality of the fall, arguing that Adam's sin affected Adam and only Adam. There was no fall into a state of moral corruption called original sin, which was transmitted to the entire human race.

Against Pelagius, Augustine argued that the fall produced dire consequences for humanity that involved the loss of original liberty. He distinguished between "free will" and "liberty." A better term for what he described as "free will" would be "free agency." Augustine argued that since the fall man still has a free will, or free agency - that is, he retains the faculty of choosing. He still can act intentionally, according to his desires. What he lost was any desire for the things of God. Thus, he never will choose God precisely because he doesn't want to choose God. This is freedom without liberty. This state of affairs is rooted in man's bondage to sin. The sinner is both free and enslaved at the same time, but not in the same relationship. We is free to do what we want, but what we want to do is sin. Therein is our bondage and the reason why Martin Luther wrote in his treatise, The Bondage of The Will, that "free will is a non-entity."

Pagan and humanistic views of man, even while admitting that we sin, do not agree that we sin because of a fallen nature that is enslaved to sin. Sin is seen as peripheral to human experience, not at its core. The humanist argues that a free will is always an indifferent will that has no pre-inclination to sin but is always able, in any circumstance, to choose sin or righteousness. It is this "indifference" that is on a collision course with the biblical view of man.