Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Anthropology

  • The Unbeliever’s Problem

    A former classmate who serves as a professor at the college level sometimes has students who come to his office expressing doubt about the existence of God. Before engaging them in any sort of intellectual conversation, he wisely asks such students, “What sin are you currently struggling with?”

    The problem of unbelief is first spiritual, then moral, and only then intellectual. While a Reformed anthropology should take the human as a whole, analytic abstractions require an emphasis upon the spiritual aspect of doubt. The unbridled irrationality of spiritual waywardness ruins the moral uprightness and intellectual acuity of the individual. All …

  • Point of Contact – Life, Death and Theology

    Dealt with approximately 25 minutes of audio from three lengthy Theopologetics podcasts on annihilationism, the presuppositional commitments that are brought to the text, and on the basis of that reading, affect the theology they teach. Had Ben, Matthias, and Justin in with me at various points. We didn’t get to all of it, as we had a near catastrophic recording failure toward the end, where you will hear the audio quality/texture change, and I then make some comments specifically to Chris. Thankfully, it was recovered, and all was then right with the world. Take a listen.

    Also, see this post

  • Material for Tonight’s Planned Podcast

    Tonight, we’re planning on doing a pre-debate episode of “Point of Contact”, dealing with various theological issues encountered in past Theopologetics podcasts, episodes 72, 73, and 74, on the subject of annihilationism. The clips we’ll be interacting with are listed below, and are symptomatic of a common problem we’ve highlighted in response to various ~CT positions over the past several years – a seeming inability to consistently argue from – and against – a systematic theology as a unit.…

  • You Don’t Want to be a Fish?

    50:46 Joey: You know, parables! As I bring up here. Some of the parables have almost nothing in them that actually transfers over. I bring up the parable of the fish, in Matthew 13:47-50. In that parable, it’s very brief, it speaks of a fisherman, he catches fish, the bad fish he throws away, the good fish he keeps. Now, the good fish represent the saved, but you do not want to be a fish! (Laughs) Just think about it, either way you get killed. And in fact, though I don’t know what fishing culture was like back in the

  • How does Scripture describe punishment and death?

    (44:23) Chris: So what do you make of it? Is it the case that punishment, by definition, is consciously, ongoingly experienced?

    Ronnie: Well, I mean obviously not. Well, the punishment for some sins is pain, the punishment in certain contexts is some sort of suffering. Scripture describes many different types of punishments for sin, so you have people being struck blind, you have people being made barren, you have people’s entire family line being wiped out, you have entire nations being wiped out. Yeah, so there’s many possible types of punishment, and Scripture describes a number of those punishments. The

  • Think of how an Atheist views death…

    “Think of how an atheist views death, and what happens when we die; like, you don’t have a mind, you can’t think, you can’t feel, you have absolutely no conscious[ness] or awareness of anything, you’re simply a corpse. That’s essentially what we’re saying happens to people. They can’t be tormented, because, like if you poke a corpse with a knife, or set it on fire, no matter what you do to it, it’s not going to feel pain, or think, or anything. It’s just inert matter. That’s all that we necessarily are saying; now, whether the atoms are destroyed, like,

  • Annihilationism, Conditionalism, Monism, et al.: The “Musty Canard” of the Alleged Platonic Dualistic Interpretive Lens

    Adherents to a number of theological positions that are often related to annihilationism posit that the vast majority of Christians throughout history have incorrectly read the anthropological and eschatological teachings of Scripture through the Greek lens of Platonic dualism such that they have also settled upon unbiblical conclusions regarding the constitution of the human being, the intermediate state, and the eternal punishment of the wicked.

    Even Greg Bahnsen gave some credence to this accusation (http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pa143.htm), though he continued to hold that there is an immaterial aspect to the human mind, an intermediate state in virtue of a temporary …

  • Sermon: The Morality of Knowledge

    I was once again invited to preach at Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Slidell. This week’s sermon was on Rom. 1:26-2:16. It is, additionally, the second installment of my adaptation of the paper in the first edition of In Antithesis.…

  • Augustine and Calvin on the Language of Corruption and Incorruption

    Mortality, which in general, is the state of being susceptible, or of being subject to death, should be defined precisely, clearly, and unequivocally, if we are to speak on the subject. Not doing so will result in confusion, dissatisfaction, and eventually, error. This also requires us to speak to what this state presupposes, in order to be meaningful, or intelligible. Death, likewise, must be clearly, precisely, and unequivocally defined should we wish to deal with it.

    “Now every fault injures the nature, and is consequently contrary to the nature. The creature, therefore, which cleaves to God, differs from those

  • Perspicacity and Ignorance

    If I assert that there is a black cat in the closet, and you assert that nobody knows what is in the closet, you have virtually told me that I am wrong in my hypothesis. So when I tell Mr. Black that God exists, and he responds very graciously by saying that perhaps I am right since nobody knows what is in the “Beyond,” he is virtually saying that I am wrong in my hypothesis. He is obviously thinking of such a god as could comfortably live in the realm of chance. But the God of Scripture cannot live in