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Whether shock-and-awe biblical archeology, “lost” gospels found just in time for the Easter documentary season, or conclusive proof that the Nephilim of Genesis 6 were actually ancient aliens, the ol’ World Wide Web abounds with juicy rumors. While no one is talking about the big “John the Baptist Skull” story (because I just made that up 10 minutes ago), Facebook has recently been “abuzz” with an article published by the website, World News Daily Report, entitled “Newly-Found Document Holds Eyewitness Account of Jesus Performing Miracle.” This is the same website, incidentally, that broke the story, “Rancher Shoots Down UFO Near Area 51.” Despite the site self-identification as a “political satire web publication,” the article was posted and passed around social media hundreds of thousands of times. As a historian focused on the Roman Mediterranean, I’ll comfortably go on the record stating that this story is a pure and fantastic invention. Rather than debunking this particular Jesus rumor, however, I’d like to address a larger question facing many modern followers of Jesus: How should we respond when confronted with such “breaking news”? How might we advise those we disciple on these kinds of intriguing and quick-to-go-viral claims?

As indicated in a previous post, Talbot School of Theology will be well represented this year at the Evangelical Theological Society's national meeting [need link here]. For those unable to attend (most of you, I assume!), here is a video clip that touches upon some key ideas that I will be sharing in my plenary address. The interviewer is Dr. Jason Cusick, a pastor at Journey of Faith Church in Manhattan Beach, CA. The clip was shown in a church service as part of a series on the church and the family.

Dear Dr. Craig, I was listening to an older podcast of yours wherein you stated that one can affirm states of affairs without needing to affirm the truth-status of the proposition used in the affirmation of any state. However, if we deny the reality of truth-status' (in an effort to avoid making propositions or "truth" a real, existing thing), then how can one say that any proposition is self-refuting? ...

Kyle Strobel (assistant professor at Talbot's Institute of Spirtual Formation) and Jamin Goggin ('03, M.A. '08) recently released Beloved Dust: Drawing Close to God by Discovering the Truth About Yourself. We wanted to learn more about this book, so we put together some questions that Kyle graciously answered.

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. " Greetings Dr. Craig ... It seems to me that the fact that life exists anywhere at all is miraculous. Your syllogism defending the fine-tuning argument is great but I would like to hear what you would personally say to Dr. Tyson ..."

Every year Bible scholars from around the world gather for a series of conferences about the Bible and related topics. This year the conferences are being held in San Diego, making it convenient for many Biola faculty to attend the conferences, present papers, see friends, and wander the book tables. The following list (thanks to David Roberts for compiling it) includes the presentation titles by those associated with Biola. As you can read, our professors are engaged in research in many different and interesting areas!

This series of posts presents several of my active assignments from the required freshman class Biblical Interpretation and Spiritual Formation. This one has the students examine their use of time and money, and usually students are surprised at the results. Here are the instructions ...

This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Q. ... Perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough but I have not been able to find any such support for the existence of or the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit plays such a prominent role in Christian theology and worldview -- but how can someone believe in it other than blind faith? I find this especially troubling when statements like "The early church fathers were guided by the Holy Spirit." It just seems impossible to verify or dispute leading to a grey area where Christians are no longer convinced by the evidence but believing blindly ...

I often think about home in a specific way. For a long time, home has been a safe place to come back to at the end of the day. It has been a place to establish a comfortable niche in the world as a respite, a literal financial investment in emotional well being. Home has been about rest and nurture, as it can be a place of ministry to family and friends. It also has been a place to launch out into kingdom ministry more broadly.

Dr. Craig, I am a longtime admirer of your work. Although I am no longer a Christian, your work as a philosopher and theologian has played a significant role in the formation of my own views and I am fully persuaded of theism, although I still have lots of questions about it. I think your analysis of God's relationship to time is plausible, but I always get stuck on the idea that God is timeless apart from creation, but temporal since creation ...

The release of the movie Left Behind has again drawn attention to the Christian belief in the rapture. The movie tries to portray the chaos in the world as millions of Christians suddenly disappear. This image has interested Christians for quite a while. I recall watching the Thief in the Night series of movies back in the 1970s (the Antichrist had sideburns!). But I am interested in a question that is often overlooked: what is the point of the rapture in the Bible?

Recuerdo que mi padre solía decir con frecuencia “cada cabeza es un mundo” cuando se refería a las diferentes maneras de pensar y actuar entre las personas. Por esta razón, la comunicación es parte básica de las relaciones humanas. No se puede establecer ninguna relación importante y duradera sin que exista una comunicación fluida en la que se intercambien ideas y opiniones. La diversidad de percepciones nos abre la puerta a las relaciones saludables a través de la comunicación, pero al mismo tiempo crea la posibilidad de conflicto. Así que, es importante que todos en general, pero esencial para los líderes, que aprendamos a disentir sin ofender.

Are you as concerned about the growing problem of biblical illiteracy as I am? We Christians have more Bible-focused resources available to us than has any generation of Christians in the history of the world. Despite this we are literally—from a spiritual standpoint—starving ourselves to death. Would you like your church, adult Bible class, youth group, or small group to reach Bible fluency by pursuing an Old Testament Fluency in 12 Weeks class or a New Testament Fluency in 12 Weeks class using the free resources at biblefluency.com? Here how.

Dr Craig, I'm growing more skeptical about Christianity and was wondering if you could answer a question about the gospel. When Jesus was on the cross He either paid for all sin or some sin. To pay for some sin would mean limited atonement which is not what scripture teaches. But if Jesus paid for all sin then why are some people who are in Hell paying for their sin? ...

La carta del apóstol Pablo a los Efesios representa uno de los documentos doctrinales más importantes del cristianismo. En los primeros tres capítulos Pablo explica lo maravilloso del amor y la gracia divina que nos dio vida a través de Jesucristo cuando todos estábamos muertos en nuestros pecados. En Jesús también, el Dios de toda gracia nos ha bendecido con toda bendición espiritual. Los cristianos somos adoptados en la familia de Dios, encontramos aceptación, redención, perdón, sabiduría, una herencia eterna que está garantizada por el Espíritu Santo.

What does it take to achieve Bible Fluency? In my next two posts I will guide you through how to use a brand new free resource called Bible Fluency: Sing it, See it, Study it, found at biblefluency.com. This first post seeks to answer the question: How can I use music, visuals, and a workbook to help me learn to think my way through the Bible?

I recently previewed the upcoming Nicholas Cage film, Left Behind, based on the books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The film centers on the chaos that ensues after the instantaneous disappearance of millions of people worldwide due to the coming of Christ for his church, an event known as “the rapture.”

Q: I listened to your debate with Sean Carroll, read your post-debate threads, interacted with Aron Wall and Luke Barnes, and have determined that you haven't yet responded to Carroll's Quantum Eternity point against premise 2 of the kalam, "under conventional quantum mechanics, any universe with a non-zero energy and a time-independent Hamiltonian will necessarily last forever toward both the past and the future." Aron Wall confirmed that this point is independent of one's stance towards an A or B theory of time. Wall mentions on his blog that one could try to argue that the total energy of the universe is zero, but Barnes and others don't think this is the case. Do you have any response yet to Carroll on this? Even better would be a response that presupposes that the net energy of the universe is non-zero.

"First, even though I am an atheist, I have learned a lot from you by reading your responses in Q&A and watching your debates. Even though you sometimes make my blood boil with your views, there are several areas of agreement. One of these is your nominalist (or anti-realist) position concerning abstract objects, which you recently discussed in your Q & A on God and Infinity. My question, however, concerns the implications of your nominalist view, which I think leaves you in an uncomfortable position regarding your ontology of beauty and possibly your moral ontology ..."

Dear Dr Craig, You may be aware that Frank Turek has a question he will sometimes ask atheists, "if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian"? Well, recently, an atheist flipped this question around and asked me "If the Islamic State were true (by which he means, if the specific type of Allah that IS believe in, existed) then likewise, would you become an IS member?" ...

Half of my teaching load each semester consists of teaching the required freshman class Biblical Interpretation and Spiritual Formation. Although I thought the combination of these two topics in one class was strange when I first read the job posting, the class has grown on me and I now love teaching it. I see the connection as leading from proper reading of the Bible to spiritual formation: the very structure of the class helps prevent us from merely reading the Bible in an academic fashion. We spend a large part of the semester looking at the different genres of the Bible (law, prophecy, etc.) and then we reflect on spiritual formation topics related to those genres (such as legalism and idolatry).

Hi Sir, I am very glad to meet you through online... I understood the essentiality of trinity, there is no doubt about why I should believe in triune God. But, I have been thinking what could be the reason for son and father relationship in God head ...

A family had a priceless family heirloom – a vase – that was passed down one generation to the next generation. One day, the parents of the family who had possession of the vase, left the teenagers at home while they went out shopping for the day. When they returned home, their children met the parents at the door, with sad faces, reporting: “Mother, Father… you know that priceless heirloom our family passes down one generation to the next… while our generation just dropped it”

"... I have a question about morality that you'll hopefully be able to answer and clarify your position on. My knowledge of meta-ethics is pretty modest, but I'm actually leaning albeit tentatively towards morality being objective (see, there's at least one thing we agree on!). I'd argue that moral obligation can be objective without God (I won't do that here though), but I'd go even further and say that IF morality is founded in God it is NOT objective. If "objective" means "mind-independent" which might be a rough definition of objective, but let's accept it for now doesn't that make morality founded in God "divinely subjective" rather than objective? ..."

I recently read a fascinating book by Richard Nisbett, who compares and contrasts contemporary Asian and Western worldviews. It just so happens that the strong-group mentality of Nisbett Asian culture corresponds in some important ways to the mindset of people in the New Testament world.