Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: Presuppositional Apologetics

  • Dr. James White Interviews Dr. Oliphint on the Janet Mefferd Show

    Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries does an excellent job interviewing Dr. K Scott Oliphint about his new book Covenatal Apologetics. Check out the show here or download the mp3 here.…

  • Christ the Center review of the Oliphint/Jaros discussion.

    Christ the Center reviewed the Dr. Oliphint/Jaros discussion that they had “Unbelievable?” Check it out here: http://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc288…

  • Dr Scott Oliphint Fields Questions on Unbelievable?

    That’s right, it was an inquisition! Ok, not quite that bad. Dr. Oliphint was on Unbelievable? to talk about Presuppositional/Covenantal Apologetics. He ended up having to spend the entire time defending it from Kurt Jaros who clearly doesn’t understand the Theological underpinnings of the method, or their implications. However, because of this, there are some very good explanations that Dr. Oliphint gives that I think are very helpful. One that stands out in my mind is confusion between the fact that non believers are irrational yet we can also reason with them. Listen carefully for these great answers Dr. Oliphint …

  • For the Love of God and Philosophy

    One of the biggest roadblocks to accepting the Bible as the Word of God is putting biblical theology in terms of philosophy (and by this I mean modern philosophy, or the formulation of thought in the tradition of the popular philosophers), rather than putting philosophy in terms of biblical theology. The philosophical categories, which have largely been fabricated in ignorance of the Bible, are often insufficient to expound the doctrines of the Bible. At the same time, many of the modern philosophical categories are created with intent to circumvent the implications of biblical theology. This same deference to man’s philosophy …

  • Unintelligent Design?

    Allow me, for a moment, to explain some of my initial thoughts concerning what denial of God’s existence entails with respect to Design. If you hold that there is no God, and that there is no Design to the universe, there are a few things that follow. If there is no Designer, and if there is no Design, then there are no “designers” and there are no individual “designs.” None, at all, anywhere. I will now proceed to explain the same thing in probably too many ways and in probably too many words.

    There is only cause and effect. “Intention” …

  • On God’s “Evil” Actions

    Probably one of the most common objections to Christianity that we hear is one that relates to the Problem of Evil. While the problem of evil asks, “How can an Omnipotent, Good God exist with evil in the world,” this particular one asks, “How can God be ‘good’ if he has done all these evil things?” Men will object to Christianity saying that God has done evil things. And from this they conclude God either doesn’t exist, or if he does exist he is not worth believing.

    We answer the former problem by demonstrating from the Bible that the …

  • Problems With Authority in Classical and Evidentialist Apologetics

    To the extent that attempts are made in order to distinguish between the “evidentialist” and “classical” schools of apologetics, in an effort to salvage the “classical” method, these distinctions nevertheless fail to dodge the criticisms leveled at evidentialism by Van Tilian presuppositionalists. It shouldn’t strike us as very coincidental that the problem presuppositionalists have with the classical/evidentialist methods primarily concerns the presuppositions of these methods. Furthermore, that practitioners of either the classical or evidentialist methods borrow aspects from presuppositionalism (which I would argue is inevitable as long as the practitioner is at least to some extent devoted to sola scriptura…

  • When Contra Munda isn’t All About You

    Back in the third century of the church, as I’m sure some of our readers are aware, there was a bishop named Athanasius – his tenacious defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, in opposition to the swiftly growing heresy of Arianism gave rise to the statement “Athanasius contra mundum” – Athanasius against the world. In a sense, this wasn’t quite true – there were other defenders of the Trinity around, but none so prolific, and none who were targeted nearly so heavily as Athanasius, who was ejected from his church five times, and was only vindicated after his death. …

  • Falsificationism And Christianity

    Another difficulty with religious language (and hence, Christianity) that non-religious people have concerns itself with “falsifiability,” or the aspect of any claim which states it must, in principle at least, be capable of subjecting to certain scientific criteria by which it can conceivably be proven false, in order to be considered meaningful. Like Verificationism, Falsificationism assumes an empiricist worldview, and so is subject immediately to some of the criticisms of Verificationism, including for instance, the seeming arbitrariness of the foundational principles undergirding it. Falsificationism was articulated as a way to circumvent the problems inherent in Verificationism. While Karl Popper …

  • Addressing a Common Evidentialist Retort

    My brother-in-law went to school with an atheist who excelled in virtually every subject he studied. This particular atheist was a sharp thinker. He was also firm in his atheistic convictions. But he liked to drink. A lot. One night he had a bit too much. By the end of the night he was weeping and crying out about how there has to be a God. Plenty of his friends witnessed the event. They brought it up later. His response was to grumpily tell them not to talk about it.

    My old Sunday School teacher had a friend who came …