REVIEW In our last blog entitled Why Does It Matter If God Exists?, we examined atheistic existentialism and the fact that it results in “absurdity”. The term “absurdity” was defined by existentialist Albert Camus as a loss of meaning, values and purpose in life. If there is to be meaning in our lives, Jean-Paul Sarte told us that, even though … Read More
Bible (Part 3): Can Scripture Be Inspired, Authoritative And Confluent?
REVIEW Of these three, we said that the revelation of Jesus Christ was the most important. Jesus is the living word of God and primary source of all truth. Because we believe in the divinity of Jesus, we also believe in the divine authority of scripture. He taught that scripture is the authoritative word of God, and we believe what … Read More
Miracles (Part 3): Were Strauss, Barth And Bultmann Correct In Presupposing That Miracles Were Impossible And That the Bible Needed To Be “Demythologized”?
THE AFTERMATH OF SPINOZA AND HUME In our last two blogs on miracles, we said that Jewish pantheist philosopher Benedict Spinoza of Amsterdam and the Scottish atheist philosopher David Hume each had a profound influence in the fields of philosophy and theology, and especially Hume whose views are echoed in major universities all over the world today. Spinoza attempted to … Read More
Miracles (Part 2): Was Hume Correct In Presupposing That The Uniform Experience Of Humanity Supports The Laws Of Nature Rather Than Miracles?
INTRODUCTION In our last blog, we said that one of the most significant obstacles for some people to overcome is the fact that Christianity is a religion of miracles. The idea of miracles and the supernatural are a little hard to swallow for some people. Why is that? The Enlightenment and Newtonian physics caused a reexamination of views that had … Read More
Miracles (Part 1): Was Spinoza Correct In Presupposing That The Laws Of Nature Were Immutable And Miracles Were Impossible?
REVIEW Five Reasons To Believe In God In presenting these arguments, Christians bore the burden of proof or evidence. Four Objections Answered In each of these objections, atheists must bear the burden of proof because these are their reasons for saying that God does not exist. Now we will address a fifth objection that is commonly raised: the alleged impossibility … Read More
Bible (Part 1): We Believe In Jesus Christ, Therefore We Believe In The Reliability Of Scripture
REVIEW Special Revelation The Deity and Teaching of Jesus For these reasons, there is a good rationale to believe in the resurrection of Christ, his claims of deity and his teachings about the gospel. You can come to understand all of the above facts about Jesus of Nazareth without believing in scripture at all. A simple historical inquiry using the … Read More
What is “Special Revelation”?
REVELATION GENERAL REVELATION We also mentioned that general revelation is information about God that should be readily apparent to any person through the witness of nature and conscience. Through general revelation, God is vaguely understood as being the creator of the universe who has planted his moral law in our hearts, but not much more than that is known about … Read More
Resurrection (Part 5): What About Competing Theories That Attribute Jesus’ Resurrection To Natural Means?
SPECIAL REVELATION We previously said that the term “revelation” can be understood in its broad sense as a “communication from God” or its narrow sense as the “disclosure of something previously unknown.” The most important of these is the revelation of Jesus Christ. This includes the understanding that Jesus of Nazareth was more than a good man or wise teacher: … Read More
Resurrection (Part 4): There Was No Existing Tradition In The Jewish Culture Of That Day About An Individual Resurrection
SPECIAL REVELATION We previously said that the term “revelation” can be understood in its broad sense as a “communication from God” or its narrow sense as the “disclosure of something previously unknown.” The most important of these is the revelation of Jesus Christ. This includes the understanding that Jesus of Nazareth was more than a good man or wise teacher: … Read More
Resurrection (Part 3): Were There Post-mortem Appearances Of Jesus To Various Groups Of Witnesses?
SPECIAL REVELATION We previously said that the term “revelation” can be understood in its broad sense as a “communication from God” or its narrow sense as the “disclosure of something previously unknown.” The most important of these is the revelation of Jesus Christ. This includes the understanding that Jesus of Nazareth was more than a good man or wise teacher: … Read More