Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: RazorsKiss

  • Copan’s Folly

    Dr. Paul Copan’s “critique” of presuppositionalism has started a minor furor over at TGC, with my response as only the first of many.

    Steve Hays
    Copan on Presuppositionalism
    Does Presuppositionalism Begs the Question
    Paul Copan on Common Ground

    James Anderson
    Does Presuppositionalism engage in question-begging?

    James White

    K. Scott Oliphint
    Answering Objections to Presuppositionalism…

  • Questioning Copan

    The Gospel Coalition is running a series on apologetics, and today’s entry was by Paul Copan, entitled “Questioning Presuppositionalism”. What struck me, while reading his take on the subject, was how superficial and inaccurate it was. He introduces Van Til, and then says that Gordon Clark supposedly “generally followed” his methodology, along with Bahnsen and Frame, and then called it “variegated”. Well, given that he’s simply wrong concerning Clark, and that Frame consciously departed from Van Til as well, I’d supposed that’s an assumption guaranteed to result in a certain conclusion, wouldn’t you? It is not the case that …

  • William Edgar – What is Presuppositionalism?

    Good, basic intro post.

    Can be found at TGC, here.…

  • We’ve Got Mail: The Glory of God and Grounding Objections

    Pat Mefford writes:

    Recently, I’ve been fascinated by this concept of doing things for the glory of God. It’s an interesting answer to the question, “Why does the Creator bother to create?” but glory is an extrinsic property, one that God cannot ground by himself (one needs an ontologically separate thing to properly glorify that which deserves glory). How does the Presuppositionalist account for a property that God cannot ground but yet, seems dependent on?

    While the question is interesting, the assumptions inherent in the question interest me more. First is the odd idea that seems to express that God …

  • A Breath from Heaven on Dry Bones

    It is upon a field of the dead that the Sun of righteousness has risen, and the shouts that announce His advent fall on deaf ears: yea, even though the morning stars should again sing for joy and the air be palpitant with the echo of the great proclamation, their voice could not penetrate the ears of the dead. As we sweep our eyes over the world lying in its wickedness, it is the valley of the prophet’s vision which we see before us: a valley that is filled with bones, and lo! they are very dry. What benefit is

    …

  • Oliphint on Covenantal Apologetics and the Doctrine of Scripture

    Can be found at TGC, here.…

  • Theology Determines Apologetic: Van Til

    “All Protestants will agree with one another that the doctrines of Protestantism must be defended as over against Romanism. But not all agree that there is a distinctly Protestant method of defending Christianity as a whole. Some hold that Protestants should first join the Romanists in order with them to defend the doctrines that they have in common. All Christians, we are told, believe in God. All believe that God has created the world. All Christians hold that God controls the world by His providence. All believe in the deity of Christ. These and other doctrines may therefore be defended

    …

  • Jingle Bells and the Money Man

    We had a fabled metaphysical subjectivist in channel recently. They are quite fascinating. He took the time (quite wastefully) to object to our conception of God, express his moral outrage at the conception of God as judge over creatures, et al. It was quite an interesting exercise in utter confusion.

    It reminded me of some things one of my children used to do. My now 11 year old used to have an imaginary friend with the festive name of “Jingle Bells.” Along with all the usual hijinks a young man has with an imaginary friend, they were quite regular chess …

  • Van Til’s Argument Part II

    In our last post, we dealt with the claims made over at The Gospel Coalition Blog that Van Til did not make an argument while setting forth his methodology. “Roberto G” made that claim, and we dealt with that sufficiently for the time being. Now, we will deal with Doug Perry’s assertion that Van Til’s “legacy” has “given us the school [of] circular reasoning held by most presuppositionalists”. His sentence is rather garbled, and none too clear, but it seems to be saying that transcendental argumentation is circular, as far as I can tell. Now, even if this isn’t precisely …

  • Van Til’s Argument Part I

    In the comment section of Justin Taylor’s post, we have already seen perhaps the most common claims made by opponents of the covenantal apologetic. By “Roberto G”, we have the claim that Van Til didn’t make an argument; and by Doug Perry, we have the claim that the argument is circular. To head off any claims that I misunderstand what they have to say, let me quote the two gentlemen in question on the specified topics, and then I’ll deal with their comments as a whole in later posts, as I’ve decided to make this a short series, to …