In the June 17, 2024, zoom meeting of the “Reasons for Faith” course, Dr. Meyer talked about Peter Kreeft’s book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley.” The book is a novel that tells the story of a philosophical discussion of faith engaged in by three famous men (C.S. Lewis, J.F.K., and Aldous Huxley) who died on the same day within hours of each other. The discussion takes place in an intermediate place (Purgatory?)  and the men are discussing possibilities of where they might be now that they have died. Kennedy takes the “modern Christian” view, Huxley presents arguments from the “Orientalized Christian” view, and Lewis takes the “conservative Christian” view.¹

Dr. Meyer explained that in this novel, the contributions of C.S. Lewis present the concept of “Aut deus aut homo malus,” which is a Latin phrase translating to “either God or a bad man.” This is one of the arguments for the truth of the divinity of Jesus. Dr. Meyer told us the story of how he explained this concept to one of his dinner companions by drawing a diagram on a napkin at the table. In the diagram, he divided a circle into four parts.

In the God/Man quadrant, Dr. Meyer challenged the idea that Jesus merely claimed to be God. He explained that Jesus proved that He was NOT just a part of nature (as in Huxley’s pantheistic view of the universe) but that He is God the Creator, and that He proved that fact by the miracles He performed, which demonstrated His mastery over nature (i.e., calming the storm, feeding the five thousand, healing the lepers, etc.).

In the Morally Bad Man quadrant, Dr. Meyer challenged the idea that Jesus was a liar by citing examples of Jesus’ sagacious wisdom, love of mankind, and good moral teaching, along with His humility and boldness. Dr. Meyer pointed out that Sages are not liars and that liars and deceivers typically exhibit self-centered and self-seeking behavior, whereas Jesus never acted out of self-interest but was always concerned with doing the will of His Father.

In the Intellectually Bad Man (Insane) quadrant, Dr. Meyer stated that if Jesus only thought He was God (divinity complex), then He would have demonstrated the traits of people who think they are God. Dr. Meyer said that people who hold this view are usually full of themselves and are unwilling to sacrifice their personal desires and ambitions for the good of others. In the records of the life of Jesus (in the gospel accounts and in the writings of extra-biblical authors such as Josephus and Tacitus), Jesus is portrayed as a good and wise teacher, traits that are exactly the opposite of the traits of an insane person. In Antiquities 18:63, Josephus writes:

“About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly.”²

Tacitus was a member of the Roman Senate and a great historian. In “The Annals Book 15,” he wrote about Jesus and the Christians of that era:

“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”³

Early Church Fathers such as Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Origen believed that Jesus was not insane but that He was God. Irenaeus of Lyons (Ad 130-202) portrayed Jesus as having a perpetually good, loving nature derived from His heavenly Father. In “Against Heresies” he wrote:

“But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth.”⁴

Jesus claimed to be a person, not an impersonal force. Dr. Meyer also brought up the fact that Jesus was unique in the way that He brought grace and truth into harmony, which most people (especially insane people) can’t or won’t do.

After Dr. Meyer finished explaining why three of the suppositions were not tenable, he arrived at the conclusion that Jesus is truly the Divine Man. This conclusion appears to be the most probable one considering how it adheres to people’s “sense of fitness” spoken about by C.S. Lewis in the chapter “On Probability” in his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study.⁵

Some scholars such as Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Thomas L. Brodie take a mythical view of Jesus rather than believing that He was an actual historical figure.⁶ In the mythical view of Jesus, it is believed that Paul was writing about a celestial Jesus and that Christians viewed Jesus the same way they viewed all the other Greek and Roman gods.

There is plenty of evidence to rebut the mythical view of Jesus. Excavating the Evidence for Jesus by archaeologist Dr. Titus Kennedy is a book that presents a comprehensive archaeological defense of the Gospels’ historical reliability and their account of Jesus of Nazareth’s life. The book is well-illustrated and documented, and Dr. Kennedy examines the different phases of Jesus’ life chronologically, from birth to resurrection, as recorded in the New Testament. Along the way, he notes relevant archaeological, historical, geographic, and literary findings and argues that in each case, there is a surprising amount of evidence that supports the Gospel accounts. The book is intended to allow readers to decide for themselves whether the evidence confirms the existence and story of Jesus.

Some of the most amazing evidence for the historicity of Jesus are the following archaeological discoveries that Dr. Kennedy includes in his book. These discoveries have validated the existence of four key figures (Jesus, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, and Herod Antipas) involved in the trial of Jesus recorded in the Gospels.

Evidence of Caiaphas’s tomb. The tomb of this priest was discovered in a burial cave in south Jerusalem in 1990. Two of the 12 stone boxes found had the name Caiaphas written on the side, and one contained the entire name, “Joseph, son of Caiaphas.” The most elaborately decorated ossuary found in this cave contains two inscriptions relating to Caiaphas.⁷

The Pilate inscription, in 1961, was discovered by Italian archaeologists working at Caesarea Maritima (Israel) while excavating a Roman amphitheater. It was a tribute from prefect Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar and contains an inscription listing his name and title as: “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.” Pilot corroborates Luke’s writings that Tiberius was emperor at this time and place.  Pontius Pilate is also known from the writings of Philo, Tacitus, and Josephus.⁸

The Coins of Herod Antipas as Tetrarch of Galilee: Herod Antipas had the right to mint his own coins. The archaeological record reveals that he minted coins of four denominations during his reign.⁹

The Nazareth Inscription is an edict from an unnamed Caesar inscribed in Greek on a marble slab (tablet). The decree imposed a death penalty in Israel for anyone caught disturbing graves or moving bodies from family tombs, specifically “sepulcher-sealing tombs,” such as the one Jesus was buried in. It was acquired by Wilhelm Froeher in 1878, who recorded that it came from Nazareth.¹⁰

All of Christianity hinges on the question of the historicity and truth of the deity of Jesus Christ. Accounts of His life, death, burial, and resurrection were carefully recorded in the Gospels, attested to in extra-biblical sources, and evidenced by archaeological discoveries. If Jesus did not exist (and rise from the dead), the claims of Christianity are null and void. The “Aut deus aut homo malus” argument is the idea behind the trilemma that C.S. Lewis presented in his book Mere Christianity. The following is a famous quote from that book about the identity of Jesus.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”¹¹

References

1.Between Heaven and Hell (novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Heaven_and_Hell_(novel)#:~:text=Kennedy%2C%20C.%20S.%20Lewis%2C%20%26%20Aldous,a%20philosophical%20discussion%20on%20faith.

2.Maier, Paul L. (2016, March 30) Josephus and Jesus https://www.namb.net/apologetics/resource/josephus-and-jesus/#:~:text=The%20standard%20text%20of%20Josephus,who%20accept%20the%20truth%20gladly.

3.Kraby, Clayton (2024) Jesus Outside the Bible the Bible, 1 – Tacitus https://reasonabletheology.org/jesus-outside-the-bible-1-tacitus/.

4.Barnett, Tim (2016, November 24) Nine Early Church Fathers Who Taught That Jesus Is God https://www.str.org/w/nine-early-church-fathers-who-taught-jesus-is-god#fn:16.

5.“On Probability” Lewis, C. S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study Harper Collins Publishers 1947, renewed 1974 page 167.

6.Schmitty422 (2018) Jesus Mythicism https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/9457g3/what_is_jesus_mythicism_and_how_is_it_understood/.

7.“Caiaphas’s tomb” Kennedy, Titus Dr. Excavating the Evidence for Jesus the Archaeology and History of Christ and the Gospels Harvest House Publishers 2022, p. 163.

8.“The Pilate Stone” Kennedy, Titus Dr. Excavating the Evidence for Jesus the Archaeology and History of Christ and the Gospels Harvest House Publishers 2022, p. 82.

9.“The Coins of Antipas” Kennedy, Titus Dr. Excavating the Evidence for Jesus the Archaeology and History of Christ and the Gospels Harvest House Publishers 2022, p. 187.

10.“The Nazareth Inscription” Kennedy, Titus Dr. Excavating the Evidence for Jesus the Archaeology and History of Christ and the Gospels Harvest House Publishers 2022, p. 220.

11.“The Shocking Alternative” Lewis, C. S. (1996) Mere Christianity. Simon & Schuster pp. 54-56.

The most accurate assessment of the criminal personality was offered in 1984 when a book was published that flew in the face of everything our intellectually corrupt universities had been teaching about criminality for the last several decades.

Stanton E. Samenow was a clinical psychologist in private practice who was a consultant and speaker and a member of President Reagan’s Task Force on Victims of Crime. He co-authored the three-volume study The Criminal Personality with Dr. Samuel Yochelson.

In his book Inside the Criminal Mind, Samenow debunked the following myths that passed for ‘science’ in the minds of our deluded academics:

1. Criminals don’t know right from wrong (or lack the ability to empathize).
2. Criminals are hapless victims of oppressive social conditions.
3. Crime is contagious.
4. Crimes of passion are cases of temporary insanity.
5. People turn into criminals because they were rejected by society.
6. Watching violent television programs brings out violent behavior in children.

Only a decade earlier, Robert Martinson did an extensive experiment with juvenile delinquents to determine if rehabilitation and treatment were effective in changing their behavior. In his published findings, “What Works? Questions and Answers about Prison Reform,” he found that “nothing works.”

There was no program or intervention that was effective in preventing a criminal from continuing to commit crime once out of ‘treatment.’

Martinson came under severe criticism for creating the “nothing works” doctrine, and his study has been dismissed as too extreme. He came under severe criticism, not because of faulty research, but because there is lots of money in rehabilitation.

There is no money in punishment.

Any time his research is referenced, there is a cacophony of howling liberals shouting their usual insults. They do this despite the fact that, to this day, nothing works to rehabilitate the criminal.

Well, one thing does work as far as society is concerned — punishment.

Punishment works by protecting the taxpayers and the law-abiding from dangerous people. When our governments, which we pay to protect us, have no interest in that, they have become corrupt.

Protecting citizens from criminals does not advance the agenda of corrupt governments.

Theorists have spent a lot of time trying to determine why someone violates the rights of others for their own benefit. They have come up with many misguided ideas as to why this is the case when, if you employ Occam’s razor, the answer is simple.

Criminals commit crime because they want to (a little Dan Bongino lingo there).

Those with a criminal mentality tend to believe that they are subject to no authority. They believe they can hurt someone, take advantage of him/her, and get away with it.

The motivation of every criminal is nothing more than that they are predators who see a weaker person and choose to exploit that person. The definition of a criminal is one who violates the law and the rights of others because it serves his purposes.

It does not matter if he has mental illness, such as schizophrenia, or if he is a drug addict. He is a criminal first; the other maladies only make him more dangerous and unpredictable.

In today’s society, especially in States run by the Godless Democrats, the criminals are almost always considered victims of an oppressive society. Nothing could be further from the truth. When criminals are ‘oppressed,’ it is because their behavior is destructive, and limits need to be placed upon them for the good of everyone.

Modern-day Democrats identify with criminals because they possess the same mentality. Both have no respect for the law, especially God’s moral law, and enjoy exercising power over someone who does not have the power to resist.

This is the communist mindset.

This was on display during the Daniel Penny trial. Daniel Penny is a hero and a law-abiding citizen who saw a dangerous criminal threatening innocent people. He then moved to do what the corrupt New York government refused to do; he neutralized the criminal so he could not harm the innocent.

It does not matter whether the criminal was suffering from schizophrenia, had a drug addiction, or was a great Michael Jackson impersonator; the government had the solemn duty to put him behind bars.

As it turns out, the real criminals in this case are the D.A., the prosecuting attorney, and the judge. They all simply saw an easy white victim, Daniel Penny, and decided to exploit him to push their social justice agenda.

George Floyd, a career criminal who died of a drug overdose, now has his own statue so he can be venerated. The officer who was protecting us from this predator now sits behind bars after a corrupt trial in a Democrat State.

Social justice is a demonic ‘narrative’ designed to undercut God’s moral law. Satan always provides an alternative to God’s will so that his people can also have a guiding principle that gives their lives meaning (ex. Creation vs. evolution, Capitalism vs. Marxism, etc.).

To put it in philosophical terms, it is like the Hegelian Dialectic process. God proclaims a truth, or a thesis, and Satan promotes a lie, or antithesis. It is the hope of Satan to produce an abomination, which is a synthesis between the two.

And this dialectical process continues until the antithesis becomes the thesis.

The fact is that the criminal, like the rest of us, possesses free will. He knows the difference between right and wrong and truth and falsehood; he simply prefers the former. If he is not held accountable for his destructive behavior, he will continue to engage in it.

What is scary is that we need elections to get rid of political criminals. And many judges who have a criminal mentality (sociopathy) have a lifetime appointment.

There are lots of people who grow up in poverty, are abused, are raised in a dysfunctional family, or face any number of terrible hardships. However, not all of them turn to crime to deal with the resulting emotional turmoil.

In fact, very few people who suffer physical and emotional hardship turn to crime.

So, when you see a gang of thieves engaging in wanton theft, or beating a helpless victim, prosecuting an innocent man, or engaging in gang rape, the explanation for this is simple. It is not due to racism or poverty or any other sociological explanation.

These people simply believed that they could abuse someone while satisfying their sick ideology and that they would not be held accountable for it.

Criminals know right from wrong. Instead of concerning themselves with such virtues as truth or righteousness, they have chosen to focus on another priority. They simply size up a situation to determine who they can exploit and take what they want without repercussions.

Criminals often blame rejection from parents or society as a reason for their criminal behavior. However, if you examine their past, you will find that they were always sneaky and defiant.

They deserved whatever rejection they received. The rejection did not cause them to alter their behavior, as it does with most people; they just grew more devious to fool the unwary.

When would-be miscreants are raised in a functional family, this does help to repress their natural instincts. All children need love, moral training, discipline, and age-appropriate autonomy. The probability of children who are properly parented turning to crime is very low.

However, when deviants grow up in a dysfunctional family, their destructive instincts are given free rein. The likelihood of them turning to crime rises exponentially.

The latest theory is that criminals suffer from poor brain development. Proponents of this theory claim that this deficit causes the criminal to act impulsively and, thus, he is incapable of controlling his behavior.

Many of us would have liked to have access to this nonsense before our fathers took the belt to us.

The fact is that our brains contain all the mechanics to function like an adult by about age twelve. The child just lacks experience. The brain may continue to grow with experience until he is about twenty-five, but he is still fully responsible for his behavior when he reaches adolescence.

Every child knows that he has an obligation to obey his parents and other legitimate authorities. He is taught this and fully understands it at a very young age. The criminal simply rejects any legitimate moral authority.

Some have blamed peer pressure as being responsible for crime. When a child acts out, parents will often claim that their child just “fell in with the wrong crowd.” The problem is, if the parents move to a new town, the child will most likely “fall in with the wrong crowd” again.

He likes the wrong crowd.

Lately, we have heard the propaganda that expelling kids from school causes crime. They tell us that the “School-to-prison pipeline” is a real occurrence and that no youth should be removed from school.

As one would expect, this causes turmoil in the classroom as out-of-control youth disrupt the learning environment. They also burn out teachers whose primary concern is dealing with misbehavior instead of teaching.

And when teachers are not supported by administration, whose hands are tied by poorly thought-out legislation, they start looking for a new line of work.

The fact is that these kids reject school long before it rejects them. As in all situations, these kids view the other youth and administration as tools to be used and manipulated.

And when they get sent to the school psychologist or counselor, he is just another dupe who has been miseducated in our universities and can be easily deceived.

He will usually walk out of these meetings with a candy bar.

We are then told that we cannot lock these people up because correctional institutions are “schools for crime.” We are led to believe that those who commit crimes are being turned into something they were not before when they were locked up.

Those in prison may expand their criminal associations and get smarter when they commit crime, but they are not turned into something they were not before.

When other youth see that the criminal is not punished for his behavior, many begin to question the authority of their parents. They see deviancy being rewarded and begin to engage in it themselves.

Prisons are not schools for crime; societies that do not punish bad behavior are schools for crime.

In the final analysis, criminals are criminals regardless of how oppressive or permissive the environment that they find themselves in. There is simply a certain group of people who have decided that exploiting others is superior to acting toward others in good faith.

It is the job of the government to ensure that their numbers do not grow to unsustainable levels.

As with most other subjects, practically everything that our universities teach about crime is false. This becomes even more depressing when we find that students get criminal justice degrees and are less educated than the average person with common sense.

Unfortunately, they bring the universities’ silly theories into the real world to the detriment of society. This is especially destructive when our State and Federal legislators take their theories seriously and codify them.

We do know that two things work when dealing with criminals:

1. Incarceration
2. Punishment

These two strategies have worked for the last six thousand years. They have protected law-abiding citizens from wicked people and have brought order to society.

That is why the evil Globalists, such as the Soros family, have installed shady prosecutors who punish the law-abiding and return dangerous criminals back to the streets. They are not doing this because they wish to see our civilization thrive; they want to cause discord and bring it down.

Instead of going to the university, if one wants to understand the criminal, one should just read his Bible.

As the old saying goes, “From evil doers come evil deeds” (I Samuel 24:13).

Unfortunately, God’s moral law is being replaced with the man-made evil of social justice. When this occurs, chaos erupts and anarchy ensues. People get victimized, and the criminal is not brought to justice.

And, increasingly, law-abiding citizens are seen as criminals by our corrupt governments.

Over the last four years, the Godless Democrats have shown us that they are willing to go so far as to incarcerate decent people while releasing dangerous criminals back to the streets. They are incapable of ‘building back better’ because they are, by God’s own definition, fools.

The Godless Democrats corrupt everything that they touch.

They claim that punishment does not work on the criminal but viciously employ it against their political opposition. The J-6 political prisoners are a testimony to that sad fact.

Pro-life Catholics, who are jailed for prayer, and parents opposing transgenderism being imposed on their kids, and being harassed by the FBI, are more examples.

The criminal is a person who lacks faith. His mind has been formed by the world, and he learns all its lessons to get all that he can out of it. He will use and abuse others and do so without conscience until he is held accountable.

That means the criminal must receive actual punishment, not simply come clean after being caught (read “Duke Lacrosse accuser”).

And, since most Western governments have grown sympathetic to the criminal’s point of view, because they share it, the problem is only going to get worse.

To change a criminal, the same process is necessary that brought us all from death to life. Rather than rehabilitation, which fails most of the time, there needs to be a spiritual renewal:

“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing or rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-6).

This is a great revelation, not only for criminals but for those who think that the criminal is a sympathetic character.

When criminals reject faith and spiritual renewal and refuse to repent, then the government should deal with them ruthlessly.

The Apostle Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, insisted that every government established by God holds no terror for those who do right. It is to hold terror for those who do wrong.

It is to commend those who do right.

Those governments that refuse to uphold their duty to the law-abiding populace have not been established by God.

When a society becomes wicked and faithless and has no respect for God’s moral law, God often turns those people over to a government that rewards the wicked and terrorizes those who do right.

The governments of England, Canada, and Australia are case studies of this ugly fact.

Fortunately, God just gave the U.S. one last reprieve.

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