Apologetics to the Glory of God

Choosing Hats

  • Is it sinful to call evidentialism…sinful?

    Recently I was directed toward a blog post found here:

    http://calvindude.com/dude/blog/2008/08/on-the-%E2%80%9Cappropriate%E2%80%9D-apologetic-method/

    I must confess that I am unfortunately not familiar with this particular writer.

    In his post Calvin Dude presents a number of arguments against the use of the presuppositionalist method in certain contexts. The arguments look as though they are almost wholly based upon misunderstandings of the presuppositional method. As best I can tell this writer’s concerns are dealt with directly in most presuppositionalist literature.

    The author of the entry begins by taking issue with an apologist who claims that presuppositionalism is the only valid method of apologetics, which …

  • A Study of “Always Ready” – Part 2

    waYesterday afternoon, three of us here at Choosing Hats conducted our second Study of the book “Always Ready” by Dr. Greg Bahnsen. This time we kept it under an hour!

    Click on the link below to hear our study.

    Skype-recorded Audio of Study

    By the way, please feel free to leave any comments or questions you wish after listening to the audio. We would love to hear from you!

    — BK…

  • A Study In The Nature Of God’s Word (Authority) – Part 3

    The foundations of knowledge

    Philosophers have been debating the foundations of knowledge for centuries. And we shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t all agree on just what it means when we say we “know” something! One thing they do agree upon, however, is that our process of knowing things must have a foundation – a starting point, if you will.

    Let me illustrate.

    I could make the claim that there is a UFO hovering overhead at this very moment. Some of you would probably question my sanity if I said this. But let’s say I claimed to know this – …

  • The Problem of Evil – Part 2

    The Argument Formalized

    Sometimes it is useful to formalize an argument in order to work through it. The argument we have presented already can easily be placed in such a form as follows:

    a) God is all powerful
    b) God is all loving
    c) God knows that evil exists
    d) Evil does exist
    e) Therefore, God does not exist

    What we can see here is that the first three premises seem to describe a being that knows evil exists, wants it to go away, and is able to make it disappear. Therefore, the introduction of the fourth premise, that evil …

  • Zoroastrianism, Part 2

    The contributors to https://choosinghats.org/ make an apparently radical claim: People cannot know anything if God has not revealed Himself to them. Certainly then, people cannot know God without revelation. Our epistemology is revelational; we start with the presupposition that God has spoken and stay there throughout our thoughts and actions. Finite, fallible, sinful humanity can know nothing of God apart from His revealing Himself to us, hence Christian apologists who desire to move from some would-be autonomous position to the conclusion that God exists engage themselves in futility. Likewise for those who wish to prove the existence of some …

  • The Problem of Evil – Part 1

    The Problem of Evil

    One of the most common complaints against Christianity is the Problem of Evil. This particular complaint has plagued Christian apologists for literally thousands of years. For as long as evil has existed in the world, mankind has questioned why a God who is seemingly able to rid the world of such pain and suffering, does not choose to do so.

    It was the18th Century Scottish philosopher David Hume who popularized the Problem of Evil to the world as “proof” that God does not exist; at least the Christian God of the Bible. But even if …

  • A Conversation with “Blast”

    The other day I had a very interesting conversation with an unbeliever in an IRC discussion room I frequent. I wanted to share it here because I think it is a fairly good representation of how to put the presuppositional method of apologetics into practice.

    The conversation lasted about an hour. There was no repentance – no conversion – nothing remarkable like that. In fact, I heard later that the individual “Blast” might not have even been genuine in his side of the discussion. No matter, I think that God was glorified as the gospel was shared and it was …

  • The Myth of Neutrality

    Is it important to be taught in a distinctively Christian way? Does it make a difference to know Christ first before knowing the “facts”? Our first study in the Always Ready Study Group (ARSG) was focused for the most part on the idea of “neutrality.” This is easy for Christians to accept when it comes to “spiritual” issues: as a sinner either you trust in the work of Christ, or you accept the full wrath of God as punishment for your sins, but when it comes to mathematics, history, and science that’s different…right?

    Truth: Correspondence or Coherence?
    In Van Til’s …

  • A Study of “Always Ready” – Part 1

    Yesterday afternoon (or yesterday evening, depending on whether you live in Norway or not) the four of us here at Choosing Hats conducted our first Study of the book “Always Ready” by Dr. Greg Bahnsen. For those unfamiliar with the book, this is really the seminal work in presuppositional apologetics. Although the book doesn’t go down too far into the details, it definitely gives enough to get started with.

    We thought we would try out a little experiment with this study, and so decided to record our conversation. Since we all live in different parts of God’s great big world, …

  • In the Church but not of it…

    Sometimes it is as if no matter where I go, I cannot cease to be in the world.

    Duh.

    Where else would I be? Now, certainly I could lock myself up in my house or my closet…maybe move to Phoenix, Arizona and be an ascetic (oh wait, people actually LIVE out there!), but for the most part I am going to be in the world. That is not the difficult part of the little cliche, “We are to be in the world, but not of it”.

    Being in the world does not mean living ungodly, saying stupid things, mutilating your …