Author: C. L. Bolt
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Summer Reading Suggestions
Here are some books I have found helpful for various reasons. They are not covenantal or presuppositional books per se, nor will you agree with everything in them. Far from it. But they will help you think deeply and critically about theology, philosophy, and apologetics even though most of them are written on an introductory level.
A Shot of Faith to the Head – http://www.amazon.com/Shot-Faith-Head-Confident-Believer/dp/1595554343/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338582505&sr=1-1
Where the Conflict Really Lies – http://www.amazon.com/Where-Conflict-Really-Lies-Naturalism/dp/0199812098/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338582587&sr=1-1
Our Idea of God – http://www.amazon.com/Our-Idea-God-Thomas-Morris/dp/1573831018/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338582547&sr=1-1
Divinity and Humanity – http://www.amazon.com/Divinity-Humanity-Incarnation-Reconsidered-Theology/dp/052169535X…
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Moral and Cultural Apologetics
Note the following research:
HT: Steve Hays
But note also an apologetic work premised on the same sort of argument:
It seems to me that an apologetic which points out the moral and cultural failings of unbelievers coupled with the moral and cultural solidity of Christians is precisely the type of apologetic which will do the most damage to the so-called New Atheism. I’m not talking about an air-tight argument, nor do I think that the argument can or should stand on its own, but let’s face it: non-Christians don’t have much going for them in terms of …
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Reasonable Doubts and Childish Bigotry
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We’ve got mail: Are the senses reliable?
…I do not know if this is the right place to ask this question but regardless, I have a question regarding presuppositional apologetics and how the Christian knows what she/he knows. I have been studying apologetics (classic/PA) for a while and I feel as though I have come to somewhat of a roadblock in epistemology. So here’s my question. Does the Vantillian approach to apologetics rely on sensation and if so, how does it account for the reliability of sensation. Usually when I ask this question the answer is “God has made our senses reliable” but I am equally aware
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Rhology Responds to Reasonable Doubts (part 2)
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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 …
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Rhology responds to Reasonable Doubts (part 1)
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“If the existence of God is so obvious, then why do we debate it?”
Atheists sometimes make the rhetorical point that if the existence of God were so obvious as many Christians hold it to be, then we would not have to hold debates about His existence. We don’t go around having debates about the existence of particular people, or certain types of animals, or various aspects of the world that are immediately present to our sensory experience, so why do we have them about something or someone who is supposed to so obviously exist? Is God just incapable of revealing Himself clearly enough that we might believe in Him the way we believe …
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“How do you know that for certain?”
A quick qualm…
I’ve noticed a slew of presuppositional apologists on the Internet basing the entirety of their apologetic around the issue of certainty in knowledge.
That has its place. Richard Pratt does something similar here – http://www.amazon.com/Every-Thought-Captive-Defense-Christian/dp/0875523528/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337572150&sr=8-2
But not all knowledge claims are claims to certainty.
And not all knowledge is certain.
Enough about certainty itself though; that is not the subject of this post.
Rather, when the apologist is engaged with an unbeliever it needs to be pointed out not merely that the unbeliever cannot know anything for certain, but that the unbeliever cannot know anything at …