Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: attributes of God

  • 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.

  • Sermon: The Morality of Knowledge

    I was once again invited to preach at Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Slidell. This week’s sermon was on Rom. 1:26-2:16. It is, additionally, the second installment of my adaptation of the paper in the first edition of In Antithesis.…

  • Augustine and Calvin on the Language of Corruption and Incorruption

    Mortality, which in general, is the state of being susceptible, or of being subject to death, should be defined precisely, clearly, and unequivocally, if we are to speak on the subject. Not doing so will result in confusion, dissatisfaction, and eventually, error. This also requires us to speak to what this state presupposes, in order to be meaningful, or intelligible. Death, likewise, must be clearly, precisely, and unequivocally defined should we wish to deal with it.

    “Now every fault injures the nature, and is consequently contrary to the nature. The creature, therefore, which cleaves to God, differs from those

  • Propitiation, Wrath and Substitution

    What is propitiation? That was one of the central elements of the Reformation of doctrine, and one of the most problematic issues in the modern Evangelical movement today. It has to do with many, many areas of theology, and we can’t possibly cover them exhaustively in a single blog post. But in a nutshell, what is it? In a nutshell, it is the “turning away of,” “appeasement” or “satisfaction for” the wrath of God due sinners. It is, therefore, intimately bound up to our notion of what the wrath of God actually is. It is bound up with sacrifice, atonement, …

  • Exploratory Questions For Chris Date #2

    I asked some other exploratory questions here, previously.

    1) Do unbelievers suffer in the Lake of Fire?
    2) If so, are they then annihilated by or after this experience?
    3) Why are they thus annihilated?
    4) What is the significance of salt in Old Testament sacrifices, and what is the relevance to being “salted with fire” in Mark 9:49?
    5) Do you believe that the Reformed doctrine of the immortality of man is of Greek origin?
    6) What is death, per your position?
    7) What sense does “eternal punishment” have when without respect to an object of that punishment?…

  • Perspicacity and Ignorance

    If I assert that there is a black cat in the closet, and you assert that nobody knows what is in the closet, you have virtually told me that I am wrong in my hypothesis. So when I tell Mr. Black that God exists, and he responds very graciously by saying that perhaps I am right since nobody knows what is in the “Beyond,” he is virtually saying that I am wrong in my hypothesis. He is obviously thinking of such a god as could comfortably live in the realm of chance. But the God of Scripture cannot live in

  • Sermon: The Knowledge of God

    I was given the opportunity by the ever-gracious Eddie Exposito of Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Slidell, to preach in Romans 1 this morning. I appreciate the opportunity. It is, for those who follow the site regularly, an adaptation of my paper on Romans 1 that appeared in the first edition of In Antithesis. It also includes, for more recent followers, a bit of a discussion on the topic of my upcoming debate, and should be interesting in that vein as well. I will have further opportunity to preach again next Sunday. Again, I was most appreciative of the opportunity, and …

  • 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

  • The Second Paragraph of The Fire That Consumes

    “In the public square, fire and brimstone are definitely out of vogue. Hell shows up in conversation often enough, but generally as an expletive rather than as a serious subject. Hell is not unique in this regard – the same can be said of Jesus Christ. More troubling than hell’s absence from secular society is its general disappearance from many Christian pulpits. Interestingly, although nearly all evangelical pastors and teachers firmly believe that Jesus will ‘come to judge the living and the dead,’ a considerable number of them cannot remember when they last preached or taught on the subject. Might

  • 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