Category: Intro to Covenantal Apologetics
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 13 – Sufficiency of the Christian worldview.
By C.L. Bolt
It has been emphasized that there are ultimately only two worldviews though there are of course disagreements within the non-Christian worldview resulting in various manifestations of the non-Christian position. Here we focus briefly upon the Christian worldview and will in the following part of this introduction explain how it relates to transcendental argumentation and in particular the nature of a transcendental view.
The Christian believes that God has revealed Himself in His creation. We are created in the image of God, and Scripture is His special revelation to us. God has gifted us with the faculties of …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 12 – Transcendental argumentation.
By C.L. Bolt
We have said that the apologetic encounter involves a clash of worldviews which are opposite one another and are held at the deepest level of thought determining how evidence, argumentation, and even fundamentals and concepts like possibility and logic etc. are thought of and interpreted. We have said also that the unbeliever suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and that objections to the Christian faith could not even be raised were it not for the unbeliever knowing God. We might plainly assert all of these things, but they do not thereby constitute an apologetic argument. How then might …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 11 – Unbeliever’s suppression of the truth.
By C.L. Bolt
It follows from what has been said especially in the last part of this introduction concerning Romans 1 that something rather strange is going on with those who in some form or fashion deny the existence of God. First, those who deny the existence of God in any way do so even though they know God to the extent that they have no excuse for doing so. Given that if God exists, He is known by everyone, then anyone who rejects that he or she knows God must take a “hard” atheistic stance against God. That is, …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 10 – Unbeliever’s knowledge of God.
By C.L. Bolt
The God of the Bible is knowable. Throughout all of Scripture God never presumes Himself to be unknown or unknowable but rather known. The Bible contains no proofs in the strictest sense for the existence of God. The Bible starts out with a declaration that God exists and assumes His existence throughout. The Bible teaches throughout that people can and do know God. The Bible never offers anything like the traditional proofs considered earlier in this introduction. God is assumed at the beginning of the Bible and makes Himself known throughout the remainder of its pages. There …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 9 – Standards of presuppositions.
By C.L. Bolt
The apparent implication of some of what we have said is that there is some sort of relativism with respect to objective arguments. Whether or not arguments have true premises, are valid, etc. appears to be completely dependent upon one’s worldview. But the Christian will want to reject this relativism! Of course, we are not proposing that the unbeliever is right to view things as she does, and there is objective truth. But it must be understood very clearly that when we are speaking to people we are dealing with entire worldviews and presuppositions that are completely …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 8 – Role of the Holy Spirit and reason.
By C.L. Bolt
The answer to the enslavement of the unbeliever to anti-Christian presuppositions is not to throw up one’s hands and walk away. It is true, very true, that the Holy Spirit must regenerate the unbeliever in order to give her new presuppositions. None but the Holy Spirit can persuade. As they say, no apologetic argument has ever converted anyone, and this much is true.
But there is a very real sense in which apologetic argument has served to convert people. We might want to think of this whole touchy matter in terms of reason and cause. There are …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 7 – Moral and intellectual objections of the unbeliever.
By C.L. Bolt
Objections to the evidence and traditional proofs for the existence of God or truth of Christianity or whatever other Christian tenet is in question are rejected or at any rate called into question by the unbeliever because of their fatalities and weaknesses in terms of the arguments themselves. Some are rejected simply due to persuasion; they are not persuasive to unbelievers. There is, after all, a difference between proof and persuasion. One can offer a perfectly sound proof and yet still have people who are not persuaded by it. The unbeliever has generally valid complaints with respect …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 6 – Arguments that Christianity is true refuted.
By C.L. Bolt
Believers often take traditional proofs for the existence of God and other evidences as proving much more than they were intended or take them to function apologetically when the proofs may have never been originally intended to function that way. We believe in any given Christian tenet because that is what the Word of God says, and not upon the basis of any piece of reasoning or natural theology alone. Natural theology here just means some piece of reasoning or argument that is based off of observations of the world around us or some other a priori…
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 5 – Arguments that Christianity is true.
By C.L. Bolt
There are many arguments that Christian tenets are true. For example, we believe that everything that begins to exist has a reason for its coming into being. Intuitively we believe that something cannot come from nothing, and so everything that comes about must have a cause for its coming into being. If there were no conditions to be met through a cause before something could start existing, then it seems that things would pop into being right away and saturate the entire universe with entities of all shapes and sizes. We are impressed by performing arts magicians …
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An Informal Introduction to Covenantal Apologetics: Part 4 – Evidence that Christianity is true.
By C.L. Bolt
Sometimes presuppositionalists place so much emphasis upon presuppositions that others think we must assume that evidence is just useless. While it is not useless, sometimes evidence simply will not convince people that their position is wrong. This is because their presuppositions prevent them from taking some evidence seriously. For example, Jesus told a story where a man was told that even if someone should rise from the dead, the man’s family would not believe. Instead, the man’s family had Moses and the prophets. Not even the evidence of the miracle of a person raised from the dead …