Confessions of a Seminarian

How Ironic

This Red vs Blue clip emphasizes how sometimes we use words that carry different meanings to different people. When we discuss heavy topics, we are often doing so with some very loaded terms. What are some terms that you have frequently seen misunderstood?

The New Testament In Five and Half Minutes

This video is my attempt at capturing the flavor of the New Testament in a short video. I will obviously have to skip over some things, but in many ways this will likely be a controversial video because there are probably many ideas as to what the main point of the New Testament is. Feel free to leave any comments, questions and discrepancies here and we can dialog further on the issue. Also, I go so quickly that I may not have articulated my point as well as if I had, say, 20 minutes. So if any clarification needs to be given, let me know.

Extreme Apologetic Approaches

From the apostle Paul at the Areopagus to William Lane Craig, Christians have defended their faith using many tactics. This defense of the faith is commonly called apologetics. However, as with many other issues, Christians have not always agreed about the proper method of apologetics. I have always been aware of this to some degree, but have never questioned my apologetic approach or compared it to recent Christian philosophers. This post will look at two common, and what I believe to be, extreme views of apologetics.

Natural theology is the attempt to prove, by way of reason, God’s existence and His attributes. Natural theology reigned supreme in the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. You may be familiar with Aquinas (considered the greatest philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages) and his five proofs for the existence of God using natural theology. Colin Brown, author of Philosophy & The Christian Faith, summarizes natural theology as a two-step process. First, philosophy forms the foundation. Then Christianity is introduced.

In natural theology, there is total neutral ground. The Christian and the non-Christian can reason together with no differences in their worldviews because philosophy is the groundwork, not the Bible. Although Christianity is not contrary to logic, and I believe it is logical, one must admit that natural theology does not lead to the God of the Bible. Cornelius Van Til was opposed to natural theology, he felt “natural theology lead to the idea of an impersonal first cause which falls short of the living God of the Bible and experience” (Brown, 246).

While natural theology sees the playing field of interaction between Christians and non-Christians as all encompassing, some apologists believe there is no overlap. That is, a Christian worldview and a non-Christian worldview must totally oppose one another. Cornelius Van Til was a Calvinist who believed everyone, deep down inside, already knew that God exists, they knew that they are sinners, and they knew that they should repent of their sins (The Intellectual Challenge of the Gospel, 5).

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