Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Frequently Asked Questions

  • Does God Desire That All Be Saved?

    3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4  They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But

  • Van Til and starting with the self

    I’m posting this here because the blogger I’m responding to has a character limit on his blog comments. The original post can be found here, and my initial comment can be found here. Here is my response.

    “Yes, Van Til distinguishes between “mystery” of modernism and the “mystery” of Christianity.”

    Then perhaps you should have made the separation clear in your conclusion. It didn’t seem to be clear – it seemed to be confusing “mystery in general”, and/or conflating them.

    “Yes, to Van Til, the “mystery of modernism” is irrational, while the “mystery of Christianity” is rational.

    So

  • 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.…

  • 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

  • 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 …

  • New: FAQ section

    As some of you may have noticed already, there’s a new button on our top navbar. This will take you to our new “frequently asked questions” page. We also address “common objections”, as well. As it says, we’re still working on it, so please forgive any changes you may see over the next few months. As it also says, if you’d like to submit any questions you find yourself commonly asked, or commonly ask presuppositionalists, avail yourself of the contact form. A new subject line should be added shortly 🙂…

  • The Unfortunate Case of the Missing Argument

    I’m not going to link all of Paul’s posts in this – they’ve been linked ad nauseum from here, already. His blog is Patient and Persistent – I trust our readers are more than capable of finding these comments of his 🙂

    There are times when I’m engaged in an exchange with someone and I’m not sure if I’ve understood them correctly. That’s how I felt reading Chris Bolt’s stuff. It turns out that I did understand him correctly.

    Note: Paul does not here explain 1) What he understood correctly, or 2) How it is the case that he understood …

  • Doubt, Unbelief and Antithesis

    For some reason, doubt is seen by many to be a positive thing.  There is not a single hint of any such principle in Scripture, of course, but it remains the case that there is some idea in popular thinking that God encourages doubt.  I was informed the other day that “doubt leads to questions, questions lead to truth.”  I’m sorry, but that is absurd.  What is another name for doubt?  Unbelief.  Please feel free to stop by the channel if you choose to energetically disagree with that assessment, incidentally. I’d be more than happy to discuss it. Believe me. …