Apologetics to the Glory of God

Search results for: “certainty”

  • Full Assurance, Epistemic Certainty, and Christ

    Much to my dismay, there have been those who would consider themselves  in the camp of Presuppositional/Covenantal  apologetics that have moved away from the idea that we can be epistemically (having to do with knowledge) certain of our faith. Contrary to their claims, the Apostles knew nothing of an uncertain apologetic. This has been argued many times by Presuppositionalist/Covenantal apologists such as Dr. Greg Bahnsen.

    I appreciated how Dr. Lane Tipton defined the distinctive of The Westminster approach to apologetics (i.e. The reformed, biblical, covenantal approach) in a Youtube video entitled “Christ-Centered Apologetics”

    Where I think our distinctive

    …

  • Certainty, Possibility, and You

    I was directed today to a post by C. Michael Patton, posted roughly a month ago, entitled “Why I am not Completely Certain that Christianity is True“.

    In the podcast to follow, he describes today as “an age of scientific, enlightenment discovery, and scientific methodology for inquiry, and discovery.” He goes on through the podcast to explicate his view of certainty and possibility. “From a scientific standpoint, many of us look at knowledge, and see it as something very cut and dry, very black and white; it’s either true or not true, and that’s it. 2 + …

  • Responding to the Argument for the Possibility of Foreknowledge from Transcendence (By Brian Knapp, Founder/Contributor Emeritus)

    If God foreknows person P will make choice C at time T, then it is not possible for this choice to not be made. After all, if P does not choose C at T, then God’s foreknowledge was incorrect, in which case God actually did not foreknow this choice would occur at all as truth is a necessary component of foreknowledge. Stated differently, if it is not true that P chooses C at T, then God could not have foreknown that they would. So, when we say that God foreknows that P will choose C at T, there is no …

  • What is the evidence for the existence of God? (1/3)

    This would probably be a very easy question to answer, and yet at the same time, a fairly lengthy question to answer.

    I will try to keep this as accessible as possible, and translate a lot of the jargon that gets used when talking about these things into more readily understandable ideas and explanations.

    The easiest answer is: everything.
    (Rom 1:20: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.)

    Everything is evidence for God’s existence. And not …

  • Refuting The Priests of Molech

    I’m sure many of you reading this have noticed that there are a few recurring themes in the coverage of the Planned Parenthood fiasco.  This post is an attempt to deal with those themes and show you how to respond to them. These are the major categories:

    1) It’s a Hoax
    2) The video was edited
    3) The means were dishonest
    4) Look at all the good we do, and those horrible people over there want to take that away!

    There are major issues with each of these, but we’ll give examples of each, so you can see how they …

  • A Common Thread

    Needle with thread on jeans materialThere seems to be a common thread in presupp encounters all across the web these days. I’ve seen it on Twitter, in chat rooms, in FaceBook discussion groups, and on podcasts.  It’s everywhere, and it’s growing, which is what concerns me.  That thread is the use of a stunted, limited, incomplete apologetic.  It frustrates the unbelievers we use it against, but not for the right reasons.  It causes presuppers to be seen as irrational tricksters who don’t have anything valid to bring to the discussion.  It is philosophically vacuous and ultimately does not honor God.

    Before looking at the problem, …

  • The Haberdashery of Bruce Gerencser

    I have been watching, with interest, the stream of attempted rebuttal flowing from Bruce’s virtual pen today.  We began the day with the assertion that yesterday’s post was a “deconstruction” of Bruce’s story.  I found that odd, myself.  Especially since I am the author of the post, after all.  When you intentionally include such sentences as “See, Bruce doesn’t need to inflate his resume” or, ” I don’t have any concern with rewriting his story”, or even ” What is actually relevant is whether your resume has any bearing on what you actually have to say.”  Now, I understand …

  • A Necessary Distinction

    In the midst of the turmoil which controversy creates, it is always refreshing to encounter an irenic, yet firm response in the midst of a variety of hasty and conjectural surmises.  That irenicism was, of course, the response of Mike Robinson, who many will know from his books and posts on a variety of subjects related to apologetics. When his response was brought to my attention, I was excited to see that he had commented on the situation.  Unfortunately, his post was in response only to the initial statement, which was intentionally designed to bring attention to the general …

  • If one is uncertain; one is certainly an evidentialist?

    Someone pointed me to the following quote on facebook yesterday:

    The Baptist is inherently an evidentialist. They must look to subjective always changing evidence to prove covenant membership.

    A Presbyterian assumes an objective, universal standard for membership that can be known with certainty.

    A Baptist cannot claim certainty.

    Granted, this is a non-sequitur in its own right as it stands. It seems to be a post meant to start what those of us who have been around Internet discussions a while call a “flame war” about the subject of baptism in some purported presuppositionalist sub-group. I choose to ignore that …

  • Infallibilism, Knowledge, Attenuated Presup and Unwitting Clarkianism

    So, I was involved in a bit of a dustup with some folks yesterday. Essentially, the bone of contention was concerning knowledge. The position of our antagonists, essentially, was that knowledge, to be knowledge, must be “infallible.” There are a variety of issues with this stance, but chiefly, my concern is from theology proper, as we will explore; although we will address a few other issues along the way as well.

    My response is first to the notion of infallibility being applied to “knowledge” in the first place. Fallibility, obviously, means an ability to fail. Well, to fail, one has …