Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: method

Various and Sundry Issues to Recap

Last week, my comment at Aporetic Christianity resulted in a bit of a firestorm – of posts, and sometimes fiery discussion. I’d like to use this opportunity to make a few comments on this exchange, and exchanges in general. In the exchange between Paul, myself, and BK, some might consider the “tone” in places to be overly harsh. While I think Paul may have thought at one point that I was objecting to the tone, I think we’ve come to at least a partial understanding of the other’s goals. That being said, there’s a balance to be had in the …

April 14, 2011
James Anderson's Response to David Reiter on TAG

Some time ago I linked to a summary of and posted some Initial Comments on the Reiter Article.

Shortly thereafter I heard that two different philosophers who have been influenced by Van Til were working on responses to the Reiter article. However, the response is now complete, and was posted today by James Anderson. If I am not mistaken this is the first positive, “peer reviewed journal entry” on the Transcendental Argument for God. I know, I know, some people will argue that Philosophia Christi is not one of the journals that critics of TAG have had in …

March 8, 2011
Apologetic Mirror Objection

David Byron recently commented on this post which concerns TAG and Islam. Rather than letting a rather lengthy comment linger on an old post I have decided to post it here in full. Part of being a good apologist is being aware of common objections to one’s methodology and arguments. This leads to further study and a stronger apologetic. It also equips the apologist to be able to at the very least recognize a particular objection in the context of an apologetic encounter. Byron writes out a helpful description of what has elsewhere been labeled the Apologetic Mirror Problem (AMP). …

February 28, 2011
ZaoThanatoo Answers the Argument from Horrific Suffering 2 (Guest Post)

The Argument from Horrific Suffering for the Non-Existence of God

The Argument from Horrific Suffering for the Non-Existence of God (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering (Chris) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering 2 (Chris) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering II (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering 3 (Chris) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering III (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering 4 (Chris) / ZaoThanatoo Answers (ZaoThanatoo) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering IV (Mitch)

I will provide a brief rebuttal to Mitch’s response and grant him the …

January 25, 2011
How about a little offense? by defectivebit (Guest Post)

In the thirteenth chapter of Always Ready Dr. Greg Bahnsen states

“The Christian cannot forever be defensively constructing atomistic answers to the endless variety of unbelieving criticisms; he must take the offensive and show the unbeliever that he has no intelligible place to stand, no consistent epistemology, no justification for meaningful discourse, predication, or argumentation.”[1]

I have often wondered why it is that in most debates I watch between a Christian and a non-Christian that the Christian spends very little time on the offensive side of the battle. This affinity to a defensive posture was also made clear to …

January 19, 2011
Dear Eldnar

The following comment and response may be found on this post.

Hi there,

Some would take a leap and state that “this cause is God”, but such a leap is unwarranted.

*GASP* I’ve only heard two people *ever* try to say that the uncaused cause is not God, and you are the second of the two. Here’s what happened to the first person:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCUE10dY3Rc

There is nothing in the premises of the argument that necessarily leads to the conclusion that the cause of the universe is God.

True. But it points to God “beyond reasonable doubt”. A person can
…

January 16, 2011
Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black V

These posts contain lengthy quotations from Defense of the Faith, by Cornelius Van Til – this post will deal with pages 319-323. In the previous post, Van Til dealt with the unbeliever’s state before God, his self-deception, suppression of the truth, and the proper apologetic methodology to use with the unbeliever. Beginning here, he begins to answer the charge that a covenantal apologetic is “circular reasoning”, or has no “point of contact” with the unbeliever.

The one main question to which we are addressing ourselves in this series of articles is whether Christians holding to the Reformed Faith should
…

January 15, 2011
ZaoThanatoo Answers the Argument from Horrific Suffering (Guest Post)

Argument from Horrific Suffering

The Argument from Horrific Suffering for the Non-Existence of God (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering (Chris) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering 2 (Chris) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering II (Mitch) / Answering the Argument from Horrific Suffering 3 (Chris) / Bolt and Horrific Suffering III (Mitch).

Chris Bolt and Mitch Leblanc have been carrying on a discussion surrounding J. L. Schellenberg’s Antitheistic Argument from Horrors. The full exchange (to date) is linked here. As I’m occasionally wont, I’d like to throw my hat …

January 13, 2011
Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black IV

In our last post, we examined the Romanist, “evangelical,” and putatively “Reformed” apologetic methods, as advanced by Jacques Maritain, Dr. Carnell and Charles Pinnock, and Dr. Sproul, and applied them to our discussion. In this section, we address Mr. Black, and begin to examine in greater detail the difference in approach that Mr. White and Mr. Grey have in their apologetic. This section comes from pgs 317-319 of Defense of the Faith.

So also with Mr. Black. He daily changes the truth of God into a lie. He daily worships and serves the creature more than the Creator. He
…

January 10, 2011
On Using Logic In Apologetics

As I have noted before, every once in a while it is necessary to make plain one’s disagreement with even those closest to oneself in terms of thought for the sake of clarity and development of a topic. I have received a number of questions and comments concerning a recent post by Jamin Hubner called Lessons in Logic and Argumentation: Propositional and Symbolic Logic and Their Place in Apologetics. Since there are some points in the post that pertain to future posts I’d like to write on TAG and since the post essentially would lump me together with skeptics …

January 10, 2011