christian
Sunday Quote!- Modern Warfare and the Power of God
Every Sunday, I will share a quote from something I’ve been reading. The hope is for you, dear reader, to share your thoughts on the quote and related issues and perhaps pick up some reading material along the way!
Modern Warfare and the Power of God
I’ve been reading through Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem
Modernity is arguably no less brutal than the ancient world for conducting a secularized, technologized, indiscriminate form of war that excludes God from the kill zone on principle, thereby seducing the strong into believing that they are masters of their own destiny. Indeed, the biblical witness unblinkingly confronts modernity most sharply right at this point: “Assyria will not save us; we will not ride upon horses; we will say no more, ‘Our God’ to the work of our hands'” (Hosea 14:3) (66, cited below)
The so-called secularization of war has not somehow cleansed it of evil, but rather made the work of our hands the sole credit and often reason for war. Salvation comes not from others, but we turn to the work of our hands–cruise missiles, drone strikes, and the like–to wage war for resources, land, money, and the like. Has war become more or less justified? Is it somehow sanctified through “secularization”? I think this quote speaks powerfully to these notions. I’m about 1/3 of the way through the book now and I really have enjoyed it. It hasn’t quite been about the topics I expected, but it’s been more challenging and expanding in its vision for that reason.
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!
Sunday Quote– If you want to read more Sunday Quotes and join the discussion, check them out! (Scroll down for more)
Source
Stephen Chapman, “Martial Memory, Peaceable Vision: Divine War in the OT” in Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem
SDG.
Really Recommended Posts 8/15/14- Christians and Romans, Bible Measurements, Robin Williams, and more!
Here I have another go-round the web as we survey a posts on creationism, early Christianity, measurement in the Bible, interactions between men and women, and Robin Williams. Let me know what you thought of the posts in the comments, and be sure to leave a comment on those whose posts you enjoyed!
Book Plunge: “The Christians as the Romans Saw Them”– Nick Peters reviews a book which seems to be really interesting, because it is about how the Romans viewed the Christians in the early periods of Christian development. The topic should be of interest for those interested in apologetics, church history, history, and sociology.
All the biblical units of measurement– the “Overview Bible” has become one of my favorite sites. It’s value lies in both clear examples and posts but also in its generally denominationally neutral approach to the Bible. In other words, it’s a great site for general Bible knowledge. Here, there is a chart with every single biblical unit of measurement and a modern equivalent. It’s enormously helpful!
5 Ways Married Men Can Act Like Adults Around Women, Single or Not– This post has some satire in it as the author is responding to the notion that men are somehow incapable of controlling themselves around women.
NH Notes- Bent Rock on Display: The Sidelong Hill road cut– how might rocks bend? Must we attribute such bent rocks to the biblical Flood? Check out this post which has some great pictures and discussion of these topics. See my debate review between a young earth and old earth Christian in which this very topic came up.
Robin Williams, Matt Walsh, and Choice– Stephen Bedard offers some very good insight into Christianity and mental illness, along with a response to Matt Walsh’s comments about how Robin Williams’ suicide may be reduced to a choice.
On the Death of Robin Williams-A great reflection on Christianity, mental illness, and hope in the midst of suffering. Check out this thoughtful post.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” – Chaos, “Human” Nature, and the “Good Guys”
“Guardians of the Galaxy” has been a smash hit at the box office, and it has also received critical acclaim. It’s been branded as a happy-go-lucky film. That said, every story has a worldview. What might we find in “Guardians”? Here, we will analyze the movie from a Christian worldview perspective. There will be SPOILERS in what follows.
Chaos and “Human” Nature
Chaotic is a great word to describe the “Guardians.” Each has personality quirks which make them uniquely set up, it seems, to conflict. The fact that this ragtag band of people manages to save the galaxy (or at least a planet) is part of the fun of the film.
The characters’ personalities, however, seemingly also reveal much about “human,” or at least “personal” nature. Each has a background which haunts them individually, whether it be Starlord’s lost childhood or Rocket’s internal struggle to define himself, they each have difficulties. It is this which makes the characters seem more relatable than they otherwise may have been.
It is easy to feel separated from the world of the superheroes due to their general portrayal as otherworldly powers with little connection to Earth other than finding it as a place for their conflicts. In “Guardians,” it is almost the reverse: the characters are grounded in realistic pasts and limited in their power (each overshadowed by Groot’s power, but simplistic mind), but their battle takes place out in the Galaxy, away from home. By subtly shifting the perspective and powers of the heroes, the filmmakers reverse the paradigm of superhero flicks and are able to put together this story of a motley crew just barely managing to succeed.
I think this tells us something about ourselves as well: we relate better to characters with flaws. Our lives as humans have given us complex pasts with parts we often regret. The question, then, is where we may find redemption? How might we make sense of our lives in the broader scheme of things?
Good Guys
There is a lot of gray area when it comes to evil in “Guardians.” The characters themselves are involved in shady schemes, which leads one to wonder who the “good guys” are. That question, though, is one which brings us around full circle to the question of human nature. From a Christian perspective, there are none who are without fault, and salvation history in the Bible reflects God using imperfect people like Samson (womanizer) and Paul (persecutor of the church) to bring about redemption.
Similarly, the characters in “Guardians” are each flawed, but they work together to defeat great evil. Thrown together in the chaos of a universe with much evil, they make their own way. In “Guardians,” evil happens to be defeated almost by luck, but in reality, such things are not mere happenstance.
Rebirth
There is a real sense of “rebirth” throughout the film. Each character undergoes a transformation from a life of relative lax to one in which, at the end, they seek to defend the galaxy, even if that means breaking a few rules along the way. Groot, of course, undergoes the most literal rebirth as he is fragmented (to death?) in order to protect the other Guardians, only to then be reborn as a single stick. Starlord’s own rebirth is more subtle, as he goes from a ne’er-do-well rogue to trying to actually lead a ragtag band of people to defend the galaxy.
Conclusion
“Guardians of the Galaxy” is a distinctly unconventional superhero flick, as it stars a group of people who can hardly be classified among the “good guys” who just so happen to defeat the worst evil in the galaxy. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, they band together and triumph in a good (?) vs. evil story. It is similar, as I noted, to the notion in the Bible that we are a community of sinner saints and people who have questionable paths may still be used for great good by God.
There is more we could discuss from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” so please do join the discussion in the comments below.
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!
Guardians of the Galaxy– Check out Anthony Weber’s take on the movie, which is always worth reading. Be sure to follow his blog, as it is one of the best in the business.
Movies– Read other posts I have written on the movies. Scroll down to see more!
The image is a movie poster for the film and I use it under fair use.
SDG.
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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.
Young Earth Creationism Does Not Have Historical Pedigree
Young Earth Creationists often claim that their view has been the position of the church since its earliest period. Here, I will challenge that notion and argue that, instead, modern creationism is unrecognizable in historic Christianity. Thus, my contention is simple:
Modern young earth creationism has no historical pedigree.
It is impossible to go through a comprehensive survey of early Christian teaching on creation, so my discussion here will be necessarily brief. Further reading may be found in the sources cited, below. I note that if someone wants to contradict my contention, above, they must present evidence showing that the claims about Flood Geology, etc. are all present in early church writings, or indeed any church writings before around 1600.
Now, it is a simple fact that for much of church history, theologians held that the Earth was only a few thousand years old. Do not take this sentence out of context. Recall that we’re talking about modern young earth creationism, not just a belief that the Earth is young. To say that because, for example, some church fathers held the world was a few thousand years old and allege that proves they held to modern creationism is a blatant historical anachronism for several reasons.
First, the reason many of these early teachers of the church held to this view is because their view of overall history was such that the 6 days of creation should match up with 6 “days” of thousand year periods of all of history, culminating in the second coming. The literature on this is quite easy to find, but here are a few choice examples:
“the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a Thousand years… in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things will be finished…” – Epistle to Barnabas, (quoted in Young and Stearley)
“for in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded.”- Irenaeus (quoted in ibid, 35)
“[Because] in six days God made all things, it follows that 6000 years must be fulfilled.” – Hippolytus (quoted in ibid, 35)
These quotes could be (and are, in the literature) multiplied. The simple fact is that the earliest interpretation of the Genesis text was yes, that it took place in 6 days, but also that those 6 days were important because they outlined the 6000 years of all of Earth’s history, which would end in a seventh day rest of 1000 more years.
Does that sound like modern young earth creationism to you? It shouldn’t. I don’t know of any modern creationist who holds that the Earth should have already ended because it is more than 6000 years old now, or that the days in Genesis correspond strictly to days of 1000 year lengths that define the history of creation.
Second, even the early thinkers who resonate most closely with modern young earth creationism would not have recognized it as it exists now. Early flood theories often had the water simply get placed on earth miraculously and then destroyed by God, held to a “tranquil flood” theory in which the global flood didn’t make any impact on the surface of the planet, held that fossils weren’t actual vestiges of previously living organisms (an interesting piece of geological history), and the like.
Why is it that YECs take these writers out of their historical contexts? It would be easy to say it is due to a project of quote-mining to find support for one’s view in the past–and I’m sure this is part of it–but perhaps a lot of it is just mere ignorance. The volumes of writings we have from the church fathers, for example, would take years to read, and lifetimes to become well-versed in. Many haven’t even been translated. Thus, it is more expedient to simply find the quote that supports one’s view and use it.
But that’s not at all how we should construct historical theology. The fact is that the constant parade of claims made by YECs that their position is that of the early church is only possible because of a lifting of quotes from church fathers out of their context in order to support the position. Moreover, the people quoted themselves, though they would support the notion of a “young earth” would do so for theological reasons tied to their view of the whole of human history–one which I know of no modern YEC buying into. To cite them as supporting modern YEC, then, is a kind of baptism-by-decontextualization. Only by ignoring the very reasons the early church held their views and the theological worldview that the early church operated under can a YEC find support for their view.
An analogy might be helpful here. To say that the early church agrees with modern young earth creationists would be like saying the early church agrees with modern modalists. Why? Because, after all, many modern modalists claim to be able to uphold the Apostles’ Creed, which, after all, never speaks of distinction of persons in an explicit enough way so as to exclude modalism. Thus, a modalist could say “Our view is from the Apostles’ Creed.” Now of course this is an extreme example, and one could argue at length as to whether the modalist is actually agreeing with the historic Creed, however, the point is that simply finding a single point of doctrine with which one agrees does not mean that one holds to an historic Christian view. It is instead to treat a system of doctrine as something which may be broken apart piecemeal into individual affirmations and then find one of these affirmations with which one agrees. But that doesn’t show one agrees to the system, only to one decontextualized part.
Thus, the best a modern YEC can claim is that the early church also felt the Earth was only a few thousand years old. But to leave it at that is disingenuous, because it paints a picture as though the early church believed this for the same reasons the modern YEC does, but that is not the case. Or perhaps instead it is to, as noted above, just break apart doctrinal systems into component parts and just pick what suits oneself. In either case, it is a mistaken way to approach the question.
The reason the early church held to the young earth was because, as noted above, of their view of the history of the Earth corresponding to 6 days of 1000 years each, not because of alleged geological evidence for a global, catastrophic flood. Although some of the early writers did not hold to this 6 – 1000 paradigm, it is very clear from their writings that there was absolutely no familiarity with the kind of “the Flood did it” reasoning which is so pervasive in YEC today. Modern creationism is founded upon Flood Geology, an absolutely foreign concept to the earliest church teachings.
Indeed, the notion that the early church would have even recognized modern YEC is a bit absurd. Modern YECs use the Noachian Deluge to explain the fossil record, stratification, and the like. But up until John Ray’s time period in the late 1600s, it had been assumed fossils were simply tricks of the rock, not vestiges of once-living organisms (for some interesting reading on this history, check out this post on John Ray). Thus, someone living earlier would simply not have understood what was meant by saying fossils were due to the Flood, let alone knowing what fossils even refer to! Moreover, stratification as a studied feature of geology didn’t really begin in earnest until the 1800s. Again, to then attribute Flood theories back to the early church is wrongheaded.
The Bottom Line
To put what we’ve reviewed above all together: modern young earth creationism does agree with the historical church broadly on the age of the Earth. That’s it. But the categories of thought in which the church has historically envisioned the history of the universe–the very context which YECs try to link their views–have no points of contact with modern creationism. Indeed, they would have been baffling to the early church because these points of contact with Flood Geology simply do not exist. The reasons the early church believed in a “young earth” were linked to their own faulty reading of Scriptures, and an eschatology not shared by modern YECs. In short, Modern Young Earth Creationism has no historical pedigree.
The Young Earth Challenge, Restored
‘Ah!’ one might exclaim. ‘That means that, at least, the early church held to the notion that the Earth was young.’
Well yes, it does mean that. But that hardly justifies belief in modern YEC. Modern YEC is an invention intended to unify the geologic record with an interpretation of the Bible. It is itself an entire system. This interpretation, which leads to speculation about the way the flood formed the geologic record, is not found in the early church. If you disagree, find it for me. Demonstrate that, say, Irenaeus when he wrote about the entire history of the Earth as corresponding to 6 days of 1000 years each, was actually speaking of how Noah’s Flood shaped the geology of the planet in order to layer sediment one atop the other. If one cannot do this, they should not claim to garner support for YEC from the early church.
Once more, YEC has no historical pedigree.
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!
“Oceans of Kansas,” Unexpected Fossils, and Young Earth Creationism– I discuss the alleged findings out out-of-sequences fossils in the fossil record and how YEC explanations fail to show they are attributable to a global catastrophic Flood.
What options are there in the origins debate? – A Taxonomy of Christian Origins Positions– I clarify the breadth of options available for Christians who want to interact on various levels with models of origins. I think this post is extremely important because it gives readers a chance to see the various positions explained briefly.
Source and Further Reading
Davis A. Young and Ralph F. Stearley, The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth
Stanley L. Jaki, Genesis 1 Through the Ages (New York: Thomas Moore Press, 1992).
SDG.
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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.
Sunday Quote!- Questioning Exegesis Through Discovery?
Every Sunday, I will share a quote from something I’ve been reading. The hope is for you, dear reader, to share your thoughts on the quote and related issues and perhaps pick up some reading material along the way!
Questioning Exegesis Through Discovery?
One area that evangelical theologians must weigh is the notion that exegesis should line up with reality. Thus, how might one balance an interpretation between some apparent readings and the findings of certain scientific discoveries? Must they even be balanced at all? Davis Young and Ralph Stearley’s magisterial work on the age of the Earth, The Bible, Rocks and Time, provides an interesting historical background for how discoveries led to the questioning of exegesis of certain texts:
[In the 17th Century…] foundations were gradually being laid for questioning the accepted opinion about the age of the Earth [that being a few thousand years]. Advances in the study of fossils and rock strata were both necessary before such questioning would come about… (47, cited below)
Thus, historically, there has been an interplay between scientific discovery and exegesis of key texts of Scripture. Without certain scientific advances, received opinion on certain features of the natural world remain unquestioned. However, once scientific advances made it possible, these opinions were challenged and often abandoned in the face of extrabiblical evidence. The book provides a great overview for how the interplay between discovery and exegesis played out.
What are your thoughts? Should new discoveries be allowed to challenge received interpretations? How might we best deal with discoveries in the natural world which apparently clash with our reading of the text?
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!
Sunday Quote– If you want to read more Sunday Quotes and join the discussion, check them out! (Scroll down for more)
Source
Davis A. Young and Ralph F. Stearley, The Bible, Rocks and Time (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008).
Really Recommended Posts 8/8/14- 666 and the Beast, Evidentialism, Pascal, and more!
I have set up another round of great posts for your reading pleasure, dear readers! Check out posts on eschatology, egalitarianism, apologetics, creationism, and more! Let me know if you liked a post in the comments below, and if you liked theirs, be sure to let them know! Comments keep us going! This edition is an “owl post” because I’m watching Harry Potter while I write this.
The Mark of the Beast Demystified; or, “I’ve got 666 problems but the rapture ain’t one of them”– A post which discusses the various interpretations of the “Mark of the Beast” among various eschatological views. A very good read!
Different but Equal? Giving Words their Real Meaning– What is entailed by a position which suggests that men and women have different but equal roles in marriage and the church (and society)? Check out this evaluation of the position.
Why I’m a Christian Evidentialist– J. Warner Wallace explains the benefits of an apologetic method like evidentialism and the reasons he chose this method over any other. It’s a fascinating post with some solid insights. While you’re at it, why not answer the “Question of the Week” about your own favorite apologetic method?
Ken Ham’s Ark Adventure to Usher in a Modern Reformation?– Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis was recently in the news for his views on aliens, but he’s also been working to build Noah’s Ark, kind of. Check out this post which analyzes Ham’s comments about this project and the history of creationism.
Betting on Pascal’s Wager, Kind of– Pastor Matt Rawlings explains Pascal’s Wager in a brief, basic way. I recently also outlined and defended a version of the Wager, which I think has more credence than many people grant it.
“The Measure of a Man” – Star Trek: The Next Generation and Personhood
Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favorite television series. I’ve been rewatching it recently with my wife and I got to the episode called “The Measure of a Man” (check out my plot recap and review here). This episode brings up some issues I felt were pretty relevant for discussing here. We will explore only two major aspects of this episode: personhood and self-sacrifice. There will be SPOILERS for the episode in what follows.
Personhood
The episode centered around the question of whether Data could be property. Properly speaking, it seems the episode was centered around whether Data was to be considered a “person” in the legally relevant sense. The arguments brought up regarding this question were interesting, particularly for those of us interested in philosophy of mind.
Data’s conversation with Maddox, the scientist who wishes to disassemble him in order to build more of him, centers around phenomenal consciousness. Data argues that although he has no doubt Maddox could preserve the content of his memories by simply downloading the, erm, data from his brain, he thinks there is something more to these thoughts and memories than simple facts. There is a “feel” to thoughts which have a kind of aboutness that is ultimately beyond the facts and into the realm of experience.
Frankly, this is a stunningly complex argument to make for a television show. It reflects a kind of appeal to phenomenology: the content of thoughts and the “aboutness” or taste of them. Some philosophers of mind (and I would agree with them) argue that there is a real notion of this phenomenal aspect of thought which goes beyond the simple facts. Indeed, this very aspect of thoughts and feelings–the ability to have an “about” aspect to them–is the very criterion for consciousness which some philosophers appeal to. In context of the episode, if Data really has this “aboutness,” I would say it is indisputable that he would be a person (not to say that consciousness is required for personhood, but surely a self-aware, conscious being would by necessity a person be).
Ultimately, the episode climaxes in an argument over what is it that determines someone as human or a person, and Maddox summarizes the standard definitions well by appealing to self-awareness and consciousness–though again this is disputable: surely I am a person even when unconscious!–and the arguments center around this question. These are interesting and necessary questions and I think they get at the depth of the philosophical debate surrounding this issue.
Self-Sacrifice
Interestingly, this episode also clearly focuses on the concept of “self-sacrifice.” William Riker does not want to prosecute the case against Data, but he is forced to in order to save his friend. In one epic scene, he ends up flipping Data’s power switch off and as Data collapses he says “the strings are cut” referring to Pinocchio. The final scene shows Data finding Riker staring out into space, clearly pensive over his actions and hurt over his own seeming attack on his friend. Data, however, states that although Riker knew his actions would “wound” him, Riker still prosecuted the case because he knew the alternative would be, for Data, at least akin to if not literally death. Thus, Data says, Riker “saved me.”
This kind of self-sacrifice is found exactly at the heart of the Christian message. Christ was wounded for our transactions, and, as Riker does here, Jesus came knowing that such wounding would happen. These wounds were borne for our sake.
Conclusion
“The Measure of a Man” is one of those rare episodes of a serial TV show which forces viewers to take a step back and think–really think–on a topic. Whether you agree with the conclusions of the episode or not, it must be admitted it raises a number of interesting topics to explore. What do you think of this episode? What additional themes did you pick up in it? How do your favorite shows resonate with your worldview?
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!
Star Trek: TNG Season 2, “The Measure of a Man” and “The Dauphin”– Check out my ongoing recaps and reviews of Star Trek: TNG episodes at my “other interests” site, Eclectic Theist. Here, I review this episode and the following one. More recaps may be viewed here or by searching on that site.
The photo in this episode was a screenshot capture of the episode. I claim no rights to it and use it under fair use.
SDG.
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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.
Sunday Quote!- The Gullibility of Religious Experience?
Every Sunday, I will share a quote from something I’ve been reading. The hope is for you, dear reader, to share your thoughts on the quote and related issues and perhaps pick up some reading material along the way!
The Gullibility of Religious Experience?
My discussions of the Argument from Religious Experience here have led to any number of challenges, many of which center around the notion that if we were to accept religious experience as a way to discern reality, why not also accept UFOs, Bigfoot sightings, and the like? In other words, the charge is that if we accept REs, we are somehow made gullible regarding other, non-desirable situations. Caroline Franks Davis, in her tour de force work on the argument from religious experience, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, confronts this charge head on:
[T]he challenges to certain types of experience (e.g. dreams) and to experience of certain types of entities and phenomena (e.g. elves, ‘auras’) are so widely successful and so well-known that claims based on such experiences have come to be regarded by adults initially with suspicion rather than with credulity. (101, cited below).
The point is that in cases like those she lists, and others like UFOs, Bigfoot, etc., the challenges to such observations are indeed successful (i.e. an airplane light interpreted as a UFO) and well-known that we have an a priori reason to treat them with suspicion. However, it remains to be shown whether there are such successful and well-known rebuttals for the case of religious experience. Indeed, the majority of Caroline Franks Davis’ work is dedicated to showing that this is, in fact, not the case. Moreover, her argument in this section is more complex, and should not be reduced merely to this quote (which I have only done for the sake of this post!).
What are your thoughts? Do you think this is a successful rebuttal? How might we distinguish between credible cases and non-credible cases?
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!
Sunday Quote– If you want to read more Sunday Quotes and join the discussion, check them out! (Scroll down for more)
Source
Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience
SDG.
Question of the Week: Which apologetic method do you prefer?
Each Week on Saturday, I’ll be asking a “Question of the Week.” I’d love your input and discussion! Ask a good question in the comments and it may show up as the next week’s question! I may answer the questions in the comments myself.
Apologetic Method
There are a number of different apologetic methods, such as evidentialism, presuppositionalism, classical apologetics, cumulative-case apologetics, Reformed Epistemology, and some even consider forms of fideism to be a type of apologetics.
I’m curious as to what your preferred apologetic method is:
Which apologetics method do you prefer? Do you consider it to be the only method which is viable?
There are some who argue that, for example, presuppositionalism is the only biblical apologetic method. Others (like myself) prefer an integrative approach which uses aspects of as many different approaches as possible. What are your thoughts? How have you used your apologetic approach most effectively? Let me know in the comments!
Links
Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more.
Question of the Week– Check out other questions and give me some answers!
SDG.
Really Recommended Posts 8/1/14- Marriage, Biblical Songs, Confucius, and More!
Here’s another go-round of great posts for your perusal, dear readers! As always, let me know what you thought, and be sure to drop a comment on those you enjoyed!
Co-Leadership in Marriage: Who’s in Authority?– A question which often comes up in discussions about egalitarianism–the view that men and women have equal authority in the church and home–is how one is supposed to determine who’s in charge in marriage. Here’s a solid post answering that question.
Man’s Fallible Ideas vs. God’s Infallible Word– It is often said that we should harbor some sort of distrust towards “Man’s Fallible Ideas.” Here, Luke Nix examines this claim and sees how it may be applied to issues like creationism.
The Two Most Overlooked Apologetics Verses in the Bible– There are many verses in the Bible which are commonly referenced when it comes to apologetics. Here, Tom Gilson brings up two which are not often referenced in terms of apologetics. I originally found this over at The Poached Egg, which is a site well worth you following!
All the Songs in the Bible [Infographic]– Here, there is an outline and explanation of every single song in the Bible. It’s pretty interesting to see them all written out and explained. Frankly, I find this to be one of the more interesting and helpful sites on the web related to general Bible knowledge. Be sure to follow it for some more excellent general Bible knowledge posts.
How Confucius proves Jesus– Did Jesus exist? How we approach this question should be consistent. How do we explore other historical questions? Check out this post, which explores the question.
J.W. Wartick - Reconstructing Faith 