Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: TAG

  • My Opponent’s Position, as Stated

    (22:14)First, I fully hold to the orthodox essentials of the faith and other important doctrines; I believe in the Trinity, the deity and virgin birth of Christ, the total depravity of man and salvation by grace through faith alone; Sola Scriptura, the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. I’m not a Seventh Day Adventist, a Jehovah’s Witness, or a member of any other questionable denomination.

    Second, I have no emotional or philosophical problem whatsoever with eternal conscious torment; everlasting suffering has never seemed to me to be incompatible with the love and justice of God, nor does it today.

    …

  • Islam: Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai on the Knowledge of Allah (2)

    In my previous post on Islam I began to address the attempt that Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai (ASMHT) makes to argue for the necessity of his god Allah through natural theology (123). ASMHT offers a rational argument that takes the subject of knowledge as its most basic assumption and speaks of three objects of knowledge in the very first sentence of his argument for Allah which are human beings, god, and the world. In order for him to make a successful argument, ASMHT must connect the subject of knowledge with these objects of knowledge.

    I asked …

  • Islam: Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai on the Knowledge of Allah (1)

    In Shi’ite Islam, Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai (hereafter ASMHT) attempts an argument for “The Necessity of God” through natural theology (123). There are many different understandings of what exactly natural theology is and what it actually accomplishes, but in this particular passage ASMHT attempts to prove the existence of the Muslim god Allah through a simple, straightforward natural theological proof (123). This attempt is made at the very beginning of a chapter on the knowledge of ASMHT’s god, so it is clear that the argument he presents is pre-dogmatic in nature and possesses even an apologetic function. Since …

  • Book Recommendation: Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God

    4. What a folly and boldness is there in sin, since an eternal God is offended thereby! All sin is aggravated by God’s eternity. The blackness of the heathen idolatry was in changing the glory of the incorruptible God (Rom_1:23); erecting resemblances of him contrary to his immortal nature; as if the eternal God, whose life is as unlimited as eternity, were like those creatures whose beings are measured by the short ell of time, which are of a corruptible nature, and daily passing on to corruption; they could not really deprive God of his glory and immortality, but they

    …

  • What exactly is it that we presuppose?

    Covenantal apologists frequently encounter an objection in their own mind if it is not raised by someone else in the form of the question, “What exactly is it that we presuppose?”

    Perhaps it is God who is presupposed, but then God as divorced from His Word is a concept without Christian content.

    Perhaps it is Scripture which is presupposed, but then Scripture as divorced from its Author is a document without authority.

    So both of the above must be presupposed, but is that enough? Not if we are to avoid an implicit disconnect between the two. Not if we are …

  • Initial Thoughts on the Upcoming Debate

    I’m finding lots of commentary by folks who want to somehow separate the doctrine of the soul’s immortality from the doctrine of eternal punishment. Since, after all, we believe in Sola Scriptura, that necessarily includes “Tota Scriptura”, and the necessary relation of every doctrine to the others. This is a fundamental point of Reformed theology. No doctrine exists in isolation. The denial, or modification of one doctrine will quite necessarily have an effect on a host of others, due to the nature of Scripture, and the theology we affirm from it. In the introduction to Van Til’s Christian Theistic Evidences…

  • Debate: Annihilationism, with Chris Date

    Chris Date is the host of the Theopologetics podcast, and says that he has been convinced over the past year of the truth of annihilationism, sought out the best arguments he could find, and found them lacking. He will be defending the following:

    Resolution: “The final punishment of the risen wicked will be annihilation, the permanent end to the conscious existence of the entire person.”

    The debate is tentatively scheduled for June, with a fairly standard debate format, to include Q&A from questions submitted beforehand.

    Format:

  • 20-minute opening affirmative
  • 20-minute opening negative
  • 10-minute rebuttal affirmative
  • 10-minute rebuttal negative
    • …

  • Opening Statement from my debate with Michael Long

    My debate with Michael Long may be found here – https://choosinghats.org/2011/08/is-there-good-reason-to-believe-that-the-christian-god-exists

    See some of my debate preparation here – https://choosinghats.org/2012/03/behind-the-scenes-notes-from-my-debate-with-michael-long

    Debate Opening Statement

    I. Introduction

    Thank you Mr. Knapp, Mr. Long, my wife Kerri. Most of all I thank the Triune God of Scripture who chose, redeemed, and sealed me concerning the Gospel through which I am being saved by grace through faith; that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-5) I have personally experienced the reality of forgiveness of my sins …

  • 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

    …

  • 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 …