Posts

Irony in Action: How a Progressive Christian Leader Fails to Live by His Own Standards

Irony: when you complain about others supposedly creating division and refusing to accept correction after you create division and refuse to accept correction. Caveat : Some may think I’m mean here, and that’s okay. But am I right? That’s the important question. I think Keith was mean in his post, but I’m far more concerned about whether he’s right than whether he’s polite. Caveat : I’m not addressing all Progressive Christians, but this does reflect my experience with some of them; it also reflects my experience with some orthodox Christians. In particular, however, I am addressing one of their leaders: Keith Giles, in his recent publishings.  Caveat : I have debated Keith Giles twice, and both times he spoke well of me; we had become decent friends, to some extent, but then he blocked me for unknown reasons. I am saying this to acknowledge my own potential bias and to add backstory for why this isn’t just some random person to me. So, what irony am I talking about? In a recent ar...

Abraham, Archaeology, and Vladimir Putin

Growth and Frustration Engaging in Facebook threads for apologetics has provided a wide variety of opportunities to grow in grace and wisdom, through which I have often been challenged in what I believe and forced to dig even deeper. Other times, however, I can be amazed at people’s confidence, people who then demonstrate they have no clue what they are talking about. Today, I would like to talk about one such recent experience. Today’s issue is a case of whether we have archaeological evidence for Abraham, the patriarch in Genesis. We can say several things about that, but I want to focus on the philosophy of the question, rather than archaeology directly, to demonstrate a larger principle that you can use in a wide variety of other situations.  The argument given is that we have no reason to believe the accounts of Abraham in the Bible because we have no archaeological finds supporting the accounts. I want to mention that, directly, it’s factually true: we have no archaeological ...

A church without apologetics is a church without Scripture

Rephrased: A church that doesn’t actively include apologetics in their ministries and preachings is a church that doesn’t teach and follow all Scripture. Others have said that one can tell whether a pastor engages in evangelism by how passionate they are for apologetics. The life of apologetics in church history: 1000, 100, 50 years ago, society generally believed that God exists, and church leaders just needed to teach them what to believe about God. There wasn’t as much need to defend the existence of a deity that most people believed existed. Those days are long past. These days, most people either don’t believe God exists or that belief has no impact on their daily life. Even many today who say they believe in God actually believe in a deity of their own creation, and either don’t know or can’t tell the difference. Despite those historical societal points, apologetics was still taught: Tertullian, Augustine, Anselm, Pascal, Aquinas, Greenleaf; these leaders of the faith, and many m...