The following are notes that a student took during a lecture I gave in May 2001. They are short and contain few examples and illustrations, but there is enough here that may be some help for those interested in the rudiments of presuppositional apologetics. My thanks to Ryan Kidd for taking these notes. Continue reading…
Theology
There are a variety of topics in our current discourse, such as racial linguistic reference, and the question of the desirability of integration in church or state, to which our disputants often have a ready argument: “there will be no race in heaven; therefore we should operate as if that were the case now.” As will prove to be the case again and again, both the major and minor premises of modern truisms are generally dubious. Here I wish to analyze a premise that functions as the “minor” in that argument, and is taken as “obvious” even by intelligent people today. Namely, the idea that “there will be no race in heaven.” Continue reading…
Paul Schneider was a German Reformed minister whose early ministry coincided with the ascendancy of the National Socialist movement in the 1930s. His critique of the folk’s movement in view of the Word of God as well as a series of stands for the independent rights of the church vis-à-vis the state led to continual conflicts with Party functionaries, and penalties of increasing severity. At length, the conflict culminated in consignment to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where his life ended. Continue reading…
Everyone expects me to say “Predestination” or something. But that’s so far down the list that I’ll forget to even mention it.
There are three things that prevent me from becoming a Methodist. Continue reading…
Roger Williams, because of his views of freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state, and the fact that he was able to implement them in Rhode Island, is celebrated as the founder of American liberties by writers as diverse as nineteenth-century Democratic historian George Bancroft (History of the United States, vol 1, p. 255), Southern Presbyterian theologian Robert L. Dabney (Lectures in Systematic Theology, p. 880) and the writer of the article on Roger Williams at Wikipedia. Continue reading…
Philip Jacob Spener wrote this initially as a preface to an edition of some sermons by J. Arndt; it became popular in its own right and subsequently was published by itself Continue reading…
Whenever I meet a Baptist or other Independent in a context where discussion of a slightly confrontational nature is permitted, I always ask, “how do you know you are part of Continue reading…
Johann Arndt (1555-1621) was a Lutheran minister that was troubled by formalism or dead orthodoxy among the German people. He wrote this book, True Christianity (Wahre Christenthum) to counter this trend, arguing that mere assent to correct doctrines Continue reading…
In many traditional discussions of the church, a host of definitional distinctions are brought out right away: the church invisible vs. visible; triumphant vs. militant; representational vs. lay; and so forth. All of these distinctions have their place, and in their place are very important. Here, however, I propose to start with the primary lexical meaning of the Hebrew qahal or Greek ekklesia as “the called,” which, in the biblical context, connotes a people called out of the sinful mass of humanity to be the people of God, to worship him in truth, and be constituted as the corporate body identified with the living and true God. Continue reading…
Review of Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988). BT 819.5 .B35 1988
Under the rubric of apocalypticism, this book weaves together a story about views of time and history, eschatology, astrology, magic and secret societies in Lutheran Germany in the century following the Reformation.
Prof. Barnes (of Davidson College) defines apocalypticism as a view of the future combining prophecy and Continue reading…
In the comments section to a previous post, somebody asked if Continue reading…
The following article is from the current edition of Faith for all of Life, the bi-monthly publication of Continue reading…
The following is an letter I wrote to a friend who had questions about the reformed doctrine of “limited Continue reading…
The following article was part of the Minority Report of the Committee to Study the Framework Hypothesis for the Presbytery of Southern California of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, October 15-16, 1999. It is also found in Kenneth L. Gentry and Michael R. Butler, Yea Hath God Said: The Framework Hypothesis/Six-Day Creation Debate (Eugene Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002). Continue reading…
My colleague has done some very important work that answers several of the standard criticisms of vantillian apologetics.
In my opinion, the most important one is the so-called “uniqueness” claim. That is, the question arises, how does the presuppositional method prove Christianity in its concreteness, as opposed to merely showing that something like Christianity– say, affirming a Quadrinity rather than a Trinity– is a necessary precondition of thought?
This is reprinted from a chapter in The Standard Bearer.
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