Category: apologetics

Categories
apologetics christ godhead hermeneutics history scripture spirit the father

The Author to the Hebrews vs. Kenotic Arian View of Scripture

Due to their opponents embracing a faulty anthropology, Evangelicals have often been accused of having a Docetic view of Scritpure. “Come now! Scripture is a human book,” their opponents say “and that necessitates error—not only because humans are sinful (a minor point) but because humans are finite and necessarily make mistakes!”

An obvious fallacious conflation of categories: why conflate bad breath and miscalculations with affirming erroneous beliefs—indeed, even morally wrong beliefs (which they may use examples as slavery, monarchism or patriarchies)?

Yet, this question about the ontology of a human as it relates to a human product cannot be so easily brushed away when one approaches the letter to the Hebrews. The author looks beyond the human author to establish all his arguments—and this refutes the Nestorian(1), or even Kenotic Arian(2), view of Scripture.

Continue reading “The Author to the Hebrews vs. Kenotic Arian View of Scripture”
Categories
apologetics

Euthyphro, Accommodation and The Good

Unlike Calvin, who states that God (in His goodness) accommodated Himself to people by talking in baby talk (thus becoming understandable—which is a matter of how he communicates, not the content of the communication) there are a group of people that I’d call New Accommodationists who, borrowing the same language, state that God, because of His goodness, condescends to the morally dubious (I’m being generous with the use of the term since they’re more likely to use the word “evil”) situation of men . This is group denies the inerrancy of Scripture because, although God is good, he affirms things that are actual morally wrong.

For example: when God makes commands about slavery, he speaks into the situation of the people without ever correcting the morally dubious action. He gets his hands dirty, as it were, to pull humans up out of the mud and thus demonstrates his love via condescension. So this inerrancy isn’t about mistakes as much as God, in Scripture, affirming moral wrongness.

Enter Euthyphro’s dilemma.

Continue reading “Euthyphro, Accommodation and The Good”
Categories
apologetics christ

John (Rather Christ) on Presuppositions

John tells a story that overlaps three spheres of interaction with people: the first sphere in the family, the second sphere in the crowds of Jerusalem, and the third sphere in the intelligentsia of Jesus’ day. In each sphere he underscores something about the people involved that each points at the root problem of presuppositions.

It is underscored almost explicitly in John 7:24 “Do not judge according to appearance but judge with righteous judgment.” The people have the evidence, they acknowledge the goodness of the works, they have some real theological theories, but they put it all together in such a way that explains their already embraced knowledge.

It’s sort of like the agnostic evolutionist who has all the same evidence as the proponent of intelligent design, but winds up with a different conclusion because he has the pre-knowledge that a designer is totally improvable.

Continue reading “John (Rather Christ) on Presuppositions”
Categories
apologetics history

Doctrine for Everybody: On Revelation and Authority

On the first post of Doctrine for Everybody, I gave a definition of Doctrine—(1) What the church believes and (2) what the Church teaches. But it generates a real question about how the Church even  gets to that point. I mean, does the Church believe and teach such and such because the Church made it up? Or maybe the Church believes this-or-that because of some random accident? Even better, the Church teaches this bric-a-brac because they voted (and the majority won by a slim margin!)?

These are all false; they don’t even work in the real world.

Continue reading “Doctrine for Everybody: On Revelation and Authority”
Categories
apologetics

Doctrine For Everybody: On Doctrine

When teaching doctrine, people get really huffy and start wondering what some young buck is going to come up with. Who is this guy, of thirty something years, thinking on writing anything on doctrine at all? How dare he?

And that person would be right. I don’t like doing it. I like staying close to the text, and within that context, and maybe writing what exists there with whatever application might be sifted. I don’t necessarily like doing any sort of systematic studies because I think that sometimes those systems are way too contrived.

Continue reading “Doctrine For Everybody: On Doctrine”