The Apologetics Study Bible, Ted Cabal, General Editor, Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishing, Hbk, 2007. At the risk of showing my age, I can remember a time when considering which Study Bible to purchase was an easy affair. One had only a few to choose from: Scofield, Thompson, Nave, and a few more. Well, those days are well and truly gone.What is one to make of the current situation?Options fill out the pages of Bible catalogs.Within the long lists of …
Category: Apologetics
D. Jesus as the Word Even though the teaching of the “Word” or “Logos” appears prominently and explicitly in the prologue to John’s Gospel, the theme runs through the whole of the Gospel.[1] John stresses the words of Jesus as having special significance as words: Rhemata is used nine times for His words (5:47; 6:63, 68; 8:20;10:21; 12:47, 48; 14:10; 15:7), and three times for the words of God spoken by Jesus (3:34; 8:47; 17:8). John employs logos three times …
C. The Roles of the Logos Although the wording is brilliantly simple, an examination of the Prologue furnishes for us a great deal of help concerning what might be called the “roles” of the Logos. To begin with, the prologue places in front of us these facts: The Logos is a Person (1:3, 4, 14). There are three relations of Christ the Logos recorded in these opening verses. First, there is His relation with the Father “In the …
It may sound somewhat unseemly for any theologian to refer to the Lord Jesus Christ as “the Logos of God,” but to conceive of Him (momentarily) in this abstract way opens up new lines of inquiry that are harder to see under His personal name. And, after all, the Apostle John was the first to do it. If one comes to the term “Logos” with the mindset of the ancient Greek philosophers, the best thing that could be extracted from …
As many of you are well aware, the past year or so has been a period of rejuvenation for atheism. Four big selling books, by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris have made a splash, and, I think, caught some evangelicals napping. Not so Douglas Wilson, who among other things is Head of a Christian college that focuses on “the lost tools of learning,” and the editor of the respected Credenda/Agenda magazine. His new book, Letter from a Christian Citizen responds …
Below is a short response to a rather vitriolic missive from a person who evidently did not appreciate my Thoughts on the Dawkins/Lennox debate. Dear Kam, I’m not sure how much of this reply you will get around to reading. Your response does not exactly fill me with assurance that you read the whole of my original article. In that post I already pre-empted most of what you wrote, minus the vitriol. However, I shall treat your remarks as …
In 1994 the evangelical historian Mark Noll published The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.[1] The book is not much more than a sustained lambast against two conservative subtraditions, Young Earth Creationism and Dispensational Premillennialism. Howbeit, Noll rightly laments “the generations-long failure of the evangelical community to nurture the life of the mind.”[2] In fact, he admonishes his peers because, “fidelity to Jesus Christ demands from evangelicals a more responsible intellectual existence than we have practiced throughout much of our history.”[3] …
I visited Richard Dawkins’ website the other day to see if he had an audio of his recent debate with Dr Jon Lennox. He did indeed, although it is my understanding that it won’t be available for too long. Here are my thoughts about the debate, particularly about Prof. Dawkins’ contributions. First, I should say that in my personal opinion Lennox won the encounter. He scored some important points on the limitations of science (E.g. “Science can tell you that …
The Wisdom books provide us with a great deal of profitable information to help us live wisely and piously in the midst of our age of uncertainty. Here is a brief attempt to construct a worldview oriented to the perspective of these books. a. Foundation for Thought. Throughout these three books (but especially in Proverbs) there is to be seen a clear antithesis between God-centered (Theistic) thinking, and man-centered (Anti-theistic) thinking. To “fear the Lord” (Prov. 1:7; Job …
Cornelius Van Til was one of the truly great thinkers that the LORD gave to the Church. His books, as I am well aware, abound in unusual phrases and difficult combinations of words, but the depth of his insight and the implications of his theological-philosophical thought are, I believe, revolutionary. I think John Frame is correct to call Van Til “the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.” Van Til taught that God has flooded the creation with clear revelation of …
