Question:

If miracles are to be considered divine singularities, is the scientific method appropriate for evaluating the occurrence of miracles?    Does recognizing the occurrence of miracles halt scientific progress since doing so would require recognizing the miracle as a divine singularity instead of a repeatable regularity, and also result in the scientist's giving up being a scientist by the traditional definition of the title?  Does the recognition of miracles beg-the-question or require special pleading, if naturalistic means are not employable to recognize them?  Lastly, if miracles are to have any apologetic value, what criteria external of Scripture can be employed to evaluate them, if any?

Question:

Do the ethnic depictions of biblical figures matter?  I had a discussion with someone regarding an allegedly "white-washed and racist" depiction of biblical figures in a recent movie. Putting aside Hollywood or possible racial agendas, do we really need to be concerned about what color Bible characters are depicted as? Or could history provide potential answers in this area?

Question:

I've been interacting with a lot of punk rockers on facebook and on occasion one will post something anti religious and I've been making some gentle answers.  However, I am hoping you can help me with the question below. Do you either have verses for me to cite or some short hand answers for this list of complaints?  If it's not too much trouble, I'd really enjoy it.  I know this is right up your alley: "I don't care what the Bible says about gay people, the Bible condones slavery, child abuse, misogyny, war, and rape-marriages, and should not be considered a "moral guidebook".  And until you actually prove that God even exists, your argument is irrelevant."

I look forward to your answer.

Question:

Does the Old Testament apply to Christians today or is it only the New Testament that really matters?

Question:

Hi, Dr. Oakes. I have a question about apostle martyrdom. It has been asserted by people like Bart Ehrman that the evidence for the martyrdom of the apostles is not very strong. I hope this is not true. For which apostles do we have the best evidence that they were martyred, and what are the sources for these?

Thank you very much!

Question:

In 2 Samuel 24:13 God told David that he could choose seven years of famine, but in 1 Chronicles he could choose three years. Is this a contradiction?

Question:

Hello!  In my biological anthropology classes at university, the argument of unintelligent design has cropped up a couple of times. In a lecture on primates, the example that came up was that our spine is designed to be horizontal so when primates moved to being bipedal due to erectness it led to many spinal problems. Another example came up in my anatomy class which was that our retina is inside out which forces a number of complex adaptations and gives us a blind spot. I have done a little bit of research on this argument and found many more cases which could be seen as 'unintelligent design'.   I was wondering what your rebuttal to this argument would be? Thanks! 

Question:

Is implicit knowledge of Christ saving? Specifically, is it necessary to have explicit knowledge of Christ or is it enough to have faith in God (belief in one leads to the other)? If explicit knowledge is necessary for salvation, what is the soteriological effect of being unable to adequately describe the nature of the Trinity without falling into a heresy of either modalism or subordinationism? Is C.S. Lewis correct in asserting that "there are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it?" What is the role of prevenient grace in non-Christians, given that a recent study suggested that three billion in the world have not heard the Gospel? Was Karl Barth correct in writing: "Where Christians are unwilling to love men, how can they say that God loves them or that they are loved by God? They can only prove thereby that they are not too sure about this themselves, and perhaps that they are not even aware of it. For they themselves are only man, and they are always non-Christians as such. As the friends of God they are also His enemies, as believers godless. If they are aware and sure of the fact that God has loved them as such, they must also be aware and sure of this fact in respect of others too. The decisive presupposition in respect of every man can be only that Jesus Christ has died for his sin too, and for his salvation. They must regard and approach every man from this angle. Hence they can never be against men?"

Question:

As a disciple of Christ, I want to understand the expression "religious tolerance?" We live in a country [editor's note: the questioner lives in Russia] where we have a lot of the world's religions. On the one hand we need to preach the truth, and on the other hand we need to be tolerant. Where is the line when a person loses this tolerance and becomes intolerant of other religions? Can we say that Jesus is tolerant of other religions? Many of his statements do not seem tolerant at all. And in general, is it good to have such a quality as religious tolerance, as the world understands it?

Dr. John Oakes taught a class on the commonly-held doctrine known as “Once Saved, Always Saved,” also known as Perseverance of the Saints. The class was taught in San Diego, California on November 6, 2014 at the Mission Center of Hope.