Apologetics to the Glory of God

Choosing Hats

  • Lex Lutheran and Caleb Keith Discuss Presuppositional Apologetics

    “He who wishes to philosophize by using Aristotle without danger to his soul must first become thoroughly foolish in Christ.” – Martin Luther (29th Thesis, 1518 Heidelberg Disputation)

    Disclaimer: Ben Woodring made me promise to be nice in this post.

    Inerrancy

    On the most recent episode of the newly named Wittenberg Project podcast featuring Caleb Keith from 1517 Legacy and Thinking Fellows, the presuppositional apologetic method is described as making arguments from a presupposition that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.…

  • Friendly Discussion with a Former Atheist

    Me: So…wait, are you just examining Christianity?

    Former Atheist: Yes, very much so.

    Me: Ah.

    Former Atheist: I’m examining a lot of stuff actually.…

  • Why Should I Believe Christianity? by James N. Anderson

    It goes without saying that I’ll recommend pretty much anything written by James N. Anderson of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC.

    Here’s my summary of his most recent book, Why Should I Believe Christianity?, available to members of Books At a Glance.

    (You may also be interested in the summary of A New Kind of Apologist edited by Sean McDowell.)

    Go ahead, sign up for an account! You know you want to.

     …

  • De-mythologising the mythology of Joseph Campbell.

    Recently I was directed to a short video of Joseph Campbell giving an interview to give comment and know what my thoughts were. This is the video in question.

    I found there to be a few issues with the kind of philosophy that was being proposed, certainly from that proposed in the video, and other aspects given elsewhere.

    Mr Campbell proposes that the mind is a secondary organ, and that it must not be in control, lest it fall victim to following a particular kind of ‘system’. One could only speculate how he knows this is the case – is …

  • When Possibility is Impossible: Answering a Rawlsian Ruse with Radical Retortion

    In 1971 John Rawls wrote his famous A Theory of Justice in which he presented what is known as ‘The Original Position.’ The OP is a hypothetical state of affairs in which an individual operates from behind a ‘Veil of Ignorance’ in order to establish principles of justice for society apart from considerations of ethnicity, class, gender, and the like. This thought experiment stems from the radical autonomy present in Immanuel Kant’s work.

    Enough about Rawls. Cornelius Van Til was a Christian apologist who likewise drew from Kant’s work, taking the transcendental method developed by Kant (and many others before …

  • Peripatetic 33 – Hypothetical Inception – Spencer Toy’s conversation, but with a real presupper

    What would this conversation look like with a real presupper? Sorta like this.…

  • A Fundamental Problem With A Fundamental Problem with the Presuppositionalism of Cornelius Van Til

    Before anyone gets too excited by Haines’ upcoming critique of Van Til at SES (including Haines himself, I might add), it might be useful to point out a common mistake he has made in discussion of Van Til thus far.

    The philosopher or apologist who is well acquainted with the modern and post-modern philosophy of Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger will recognize that Van Til’s system of apologetics is very much dependent upon these sources.

    He notes this in the body of his announcement for his SES talk – but it might be illustrative …

  • What is the evidence for the existence of God? (3/3)

    In part 2, we had a look at a practical example, and briefly went over the “in practice/ in principle” distinction, as well as some criteria for evaluating worldview’s, however, it may be worth expanding these ideas themselves into another post to look a bit more in-depth at them, as well as some others.

    In practice / In principle:

    Why is the “in practice / in principle” distinction important? Well, it normally arises in response to an objection similar to this hypothetical:

    “If God didn’t exist, you couldn’t know how to balance your budgets!”

    To which an unbeliever could …

  • What is the evidence for the existence of God? (2/3)

    Please read Part 1 here

    So, as we saw in part 1, there is no such thing as neutrality – everyone has a bias, everyone has a worldview.

    The question now becomes what we do next? Do we simply say to an unbeliever, I don’t like your worldview and how you are interpreting the evidence, and you don’t like mine and how I interpret the evidence, so we will never be able to be in agreement about the facts, so lets just go home and leave this all behind us?

    Definitely not.

    What does scripture say?
    4Do not answer a …

  • What is the evidence for the existence of God? (1/3)

    This would probably be a very easy question to answer, and yet at the same time, a fairly lengthy question to answer.

    I will try to keep this as accessible as possible, and translate a lot of the jargon that gets used when talking about these things into more readily understandable ideas and explanations.

    The easiest answer is: everything.
    (Rom 1:20: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.)

    Everything is evidence for God’s existence. And not …