Do we sin because we are sinners or are we sinners because we sin?

Sorry but I have so busy with running the ministry of www.actministry.org and completing my dissertation (I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation at Princeton on the topic, Do we sin because we are sinners or are we sinners because we sin?) is an interdisciplinary proposal for a kenotic theological doctrine of moral cognition, one that accounts for the salvific status of amorals who suffer post-natal brain trauma resulting in declarative memory loss and false memory, infancy deaths as well as preconscious retrocausal urges such as found in victims of Tourette's syndrome. The subtitle is - Cognitive Nolition, Neuroscience and Kenotic Soteriology) that I did not check to approve some of your comments till now.

I shall remember to break up the paragraphs so that it will be easier to read.

Ben, I have visited and spoken to the Christian Graduate Fellowship at Oriel College in Oxford and plan to visit Oxford again in October.

In about a week, I will be visiting Malaysia to speak on these topics (check out the ACT website above):

Location: Canaanland Book store
Dates: Sat Aug 01, 2009
Times:10.30 am - 12.30 pm
Description:How China Nearly Became A Christian Nation?

Do you know that the Gospel arrived in China during the Tang Dynasty in AD635, the same year it arrived in England?

In AD 635, missionaries from the Syriac Church arrived in China with the Gospel. It was embraced by the emperor of the Tang dynasty. In AD 781, a large stone was erected to commemorate the arrival of the Illustrious Religion. By the 13th century, the Mongolians came to power in China. Genghis Khan married a Christian wife, Sorkakthani, mother of emperor Kublai Khan. Kublai hosted Marco Polo and asked the pope to send 100 teaching monks to evangelize China - they never came and Marco returned to China just after the Great Khan died. What happened after that?

ocation: Canaanland Book store
Dates: Sat Aug 08, 2009
Times: 10.30 am - 12.30 pm
Description: Christian Belief In A Post-Modern World

Is it still unreasonable to believe The Bible in an Age of Science?

Christian theology through the Church ought to welcome responsible articulations of scientific knowledge as natural scientists within and without the Church discover (investigate) divine disclosure (revelation). If science is discovery and theology is confessional, knowledge can only assume the status of wisdom when it becomes understanding. Knowledge shaped by wisdom provides true understanding.

Location: Canaanland Book store
Dates: Sat Aug 08, 2009
Times:2.00 pm - 4.00 pm
Description:The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Discovery of the oldest Bible in the world in 1947 : What does it mean for Christians in 2009?

The Dead Sea Scrolls, more accurately known as the Qumran Scrolls, are the remains of 813 scrolls and manuscripts written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. 220 of them represented the Old Testament. These are the oldest known Hebrew text of the Bible with some text dating back to about 250 BC. Prior to 1947, the earliest text of the Bible was dated to AD 895. In 1947, a shepherd boy discovered some of them in a cave at Qumran, along the west coast of the Dead Sea in Israel. Subsequently, 11 caves yielded over 100,000 fragments. This discovery has significance for Judaism and Christianity. The scrolls (i) tell us about early Judaism (forerunner to Rabbinic Judaism and 1st century Christianity); (ii) explain the circumstances which led to the Christianity’s rapid Hellenization and Rabbinic Judaism’s resistance to Hellenization; (iii) show that modern translations of the Old Testament are reliable to an uncanny level of accuracy, and affirm that the LXX was a faithful translation; (iv) attest to the accuracy, historicity and antiquity of the New Testament texts, and its nexus to the Hebrew culture; (v) show that Christianity is a stream which flows from a common river, as a corrective to the stream of Judaism, and lays full claim to the faith of Abraham and Jacob, Moses, Noah; and (vi) serve as textual bridges between the two Testaments of the Christian Bible.

Dates: Mon Aug 03, 2009
Times:8.00 pm - 10.00 pm
Description: This is a special invitational only lecture on the Old Testament for Project Timothy which will be hosted by Community Baptist Church.

Topics include:

Biblical chronology
Prehistory – Gen.1-11
Oral History – Gen.12-50
Documentary History -
Theology themes: Hebrew Bible & Judaism
Doctrinal application (Christaintiy):

Chronology of events:
Theocracy-Nation of Israel
Kingdom of Israel (Saul, David, Solomon)
2 kingdoms of the North and the South
Assyrian/Babylonian Province of Israel
Intertestamental Roman Province of Judea

Political and Religious Hegemonic Empires in and over Palestina:
Egyptian-
Assyrian-
Babylonian-
Persian-
Greek-
Roman (50 BC-AD 500)
Byzantine (AD500-1500)
Ottoman (AD 1500-1900)
British (1900-1950)
American


Chronology of Doctrinal Christianity
God is one
0. Abrahamic Covenant – Pre-Judaic
00. Jacobean (Israelite) Promise
Exodus – miracles of plagues
Sinai covenant (From Hebrew et al, to Israel)
1. Mosaic Judaism
YHWH – abba (Father)
Canaanite-Israelite
2. Davidic Judaism
Exile and Return
The Samaritan Problem
3. Rabbinical Judaism
4. Intertestamental Judaism

Please elt your friends know if they happen to be in Malaysia in August

The New Apologetic Challenges

I have been asked why I not posted for a while. The reason is that I have been tied up with a ton of research and I prefer to post when I am more sure than less.

What I do want to share is that Christian belief ought to acknowledge that none of us belief is splendid isolation - we adopt the authorities of others only when it makes sense to us (however well we disguise this process). Even those of us who 'feel' led by the lord is simply expressing the fruit of our reasoning in Christianese.

When asked why I chose to believe in the Christian faith having studied so many others, I answered that 3 criteria seems to me to be reasonable. If God exists and has been revealed to humanity, I expect the message to be:

1. universally accessible. No one ought to be underprivileged by geography and history (lived in wrong part of the world or born at the wrong time).
2. philosophically coherent. This is not bowing down to classical philosophy but merely stating how we think. We are made to discover knowledge by observing, pondering and then making judgments on what seems to us most believable. If our beliefs are not coherent, they will soon unravel when questioned.
3. scientifically convergent. This is not bowing down to the scientific method. Rather, it is drawing from the fruits of good scientific inferences based on measurable evidence from which models, hypotheses and theories are constructed for testing.

These 3 criteria serve as my own Baloney Detection Kit (adapted from C. S.'s) to assess any claims to divine truth.

Now to the new apologetic challenges. They come in several forms but their sources appear to be drawn from the following fields of inquiry.

Archaeological findings and their interpretations.
Natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences).
Social sciences (psychology, psychiatry and sociology).
Religious pluralism that leads to epistemic relativism.
Historical and geological analyses of events and locations.
Literary analyses including the issue of canonization.

I shall expand on these in later posts.