Tag Archive for: CerebralFaith

By Evan Minton

Molinism is a view of soteriology. It has much in common with Arminianism. It teaches that God wants every human being to come to Christ in order to be saved (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy 2:4), that Jesus died for every human being God has ever created or will create (John 3:16-18; 1 Timothy 2:6; 1 Timothy 4:10; 1 John 2:2; Hebrews 2:9), that human beings are totally depraved, that is, incapable of coming to Christ on their own, because Jesus said that no one can come to the Father unless the Father who sent Him draws them to Himself (John 6:44; John 6:65), and because of this inability to come to Christ in our own strength, God sends the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin (John 16:8) and to draw every person into a relationship with Himself (John 12:32). Molinists also believe, like Arminians, that humanity has libertarian free will. Libertarian Free Will is different from compatibilism because it asserts that we are not causally determined to do what we do (there are no determining factors, although there are certain things that influence our decisions), and also that there is the possibility of doing the opposite. So if I choose A, I didn’t have to choose A. I could have chosen B. There was nothing to prevent me from holding back from choosing A and choosing B instead. Molinists believe that because of the enabling grace mentioned above, we have a choice to make. We can either receive salvation or reject it (Deuteronomy 30:15-19; Joshua 24:15).

Molinism differs from Arminianism in a small number of ways. This is a view called Middle Knowledge. What is Middle Knowledge? According to the Molinist, God has three kinds of knowledge. The first is God’s knowledge of necessary truths or natural knowledge. These are truths that are independent of God’s will and are non-contingent. This knowledge includes the full range of logical possibilities. Examples include statements like, “All bachelors are not married,” or “X cannot be A and not-A at the same time, in the same way, in the same place,” or “It is possible for X to happen,” or “It is impossible for squares to be triangular.” The second is called “Middle Knowledge” and contains the range of possible things that would have happened given certain circumstances, for example, “If Evan Minton chose to eat fish at this particular restaurant instead of a hamburger, he would get food poisoning and have a miserable weekend,” or “If Evan’s dog broke its leash and started chasing a squirrel, he would chase it.” The third type of knowledge is God’s free knowledge. This type of knowledge consists of contingent truths that are dependent on God’s will; that is, truths that God causes. Examples of this would include, “God became incarnate in the first century B.C.,” or “God created the universe.” This is knowledge that God possesses because he has chosen to cause it.

So according to the Molinist, God not only knows what will happen and what could happen, but He also knows what would happen. God literally knows everything there is to know about everything. He even knows the counterfactuals, (“If X happens, then Y would happen after it.”). This was beautifully illustrated in the Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life in which God shows George Bailey what the world would have been like without him. It’s a Wonderful Life shows God’s middle knowledge in that while God knew George Bailey was indeed going to be born when he was, He nevertheless knew what the world would have been like without him.

William Lane Craig calls Molinism “one of the most fruitful theological ideas ever conceived, for it would serve to explain not only God’s knowledge of the future but divine providence and predestination as well.” Under it, God retains a measure of divine providence without impeding human freedom. Since God possesses middle knowledge, He knows what an agent would freely do in a particular situation. So agent A, if placed in circumstances C, would freely choose option X over option Y. Therefore, if God wanted to bring about X, all God would do is, using His middle knowledge, actualize the world in which A was placed at C, and A would freely choose X. God retains an element of providence without nullifying A’s choice, and God’s purpose (the actualization of X) is accomplished.

This is a very profound insight into how God can accomplish His purposes without violating our free choices. God can get us to do what He wants us to do without causally determining us to do it.

I gave this explanation of what Molinism is again because there are many people who are not aware of it. Many Christians know about Arminianism and Calvinism, but Molinism seems to me to be the forgotten middle child of the soteriological family. Maybe that is not an accurate perception, but I think it is one I have because the name is not mentioned very commonly in debates about soteriology. It is usually presented as “Arminianism vs Calvinism” rather than “Arminianism, Molinism or Calvinism.” Maybe it is because Molinism is so similar to Arminianism that the two are mixed together. But in any case, even though I have already explained what Molinism is in a previous blog post, I wanted to do it again for those who are new to the perspective and/or have not read my previous post about it.

Anyway, since God can get us to do something freely by placing us in a set of circumstances, this presents a question.

Couldn’t God simply put everyone in circumstances where they would believe and be saved?

There is no single Molinist answer to this question. There are several. One answer is called Transworld Damnation, in which God saves all who would freely respond to his grace in any circumstance. The corollary of this is that all those lost would be lost no matter what set of circumstances God put them in or no matter what grace God provided. In Transworld Damnation, the answer is “no”—God could not have arranged things in such a way that everyone would end up saved, because some would freely not believe. I, however, find this view extraordinarily implausible. Do you expect me to believe that there is no circumstance, no world that God could actualize in which Christopher Hitchens would become a born-again Christian and be saved? Is there no circumstance in which God could put Caiaphas in which he would plead for Jesus and not Barabbas? Was Judas Iscariot destined for hell in any world that God actualized? I find this view to be stretching the boundaries of plausibility quite a bit. I mean, I suppose it’s possible that this is the case for some individuals . There are certain things that each of us would never do under any circumstances. But to say that this is the case for all the unsaved is a little hard to swallow.

Here is my perspective: Even though God desires all human beings to be saved and Jesus died for all, I do not think there is any world that God can actualize with as many people as this one has where every individual chooses to repent. It may well be the case that God cannot put every individual in just the right circumstances where God knows that if they were put in those circumstances, they would freely choose to repent and be saved. It may be impossible to produce every one of these circumstances in a single world. So while I believe that God desires that none should perish, it may not be possible to produce every circumstance in which God knows would stimulate a free response from all. It may even be the case that some circumstance in which one person is saved is a circumstance in which someone else is lost. For example, I read an article recently written by someone who said that it was through reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion that he decided to convert to the Christian faith. Why? It was because he said that the arguments against God and for atheism were so shoddy, so bad, that he concluded that atheism was indefensible. This prompted him to read works in favor of Christianity to see what they had to say about these issues, and that was enough to convince him that atheism is a sham. Now, what if this world is one in which Richard Dawkins became a Christian, say, at the age of 17? If that were the case, then he would never have written The God Delusion . And if that were the case, this person would never have read it and concluded that atheism is indefensible and that theism was a welcome alternative.

In this case, if Dawkins were saved, this other fellow might not have been. If this fellow were saved, it may be the case that this world is one where Dawkins is never saved.

So it could well be the case that no matter what world God chooses to create, there will be circumstances in which God knows that people will freely reject Him, while some will repent.

However, since we have libertarian free will, and our circumstances do not causally determine us to do what we do, no human being has any excuse for not repenting. All can be saved. People can act differently in the situations in which they are placed. God simply knows that they will not act differently. It is a would/would not situation and not a can/cannot situation. So no man can stand before God on the day of judgment and say, “If only you had put me in a particular situation, then I would have repented. But because you did not put me in that particular situation, I did not repent, and now here I stand before you condemned. So it is all your fault, God.” God will say, “No, you had the freedom to choose me or reject me. It was possible for you to do either no matter what situation I placed you in.” God gives prevenient and resistible grace to every individual (as Jesus said in John 12:32). This overcomes his inability to come to Him, mentioned by Jesus in John 6:44 and John 6:65, So even though there may be a possible world where Richard Dawkins is a born-again Christian, it is entirely possible for him to be [born again] in any world God actualizes, It is up to him whether he is or not.

In summary , I just said above that a) God wants all people to be saved; b) God has given man libertarian free will; c) even though God has put us in circumstances where He knows how we will act, there is a possibility to do otherwise. It’s not that I couldn’t reject Christ in the situation God put me in. It’s that God knew I wouldn’t; d) God gives prevenient and resistible grace to every human being so that their salvation would at least be possible; e) Whatever world God actualizes where man has free will in the libertarian sense, He cannot guarantee that every individual will accept Christ as their Savior.

 


Evan Minton is a Christian apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith ( www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com ). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has participated in several debates which can be viewed in the “My Debates” section of Cerebral Faith. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

[Original English blog not available]

Translated by Raul Jaramillo de Lira

By Evan Minton

When it comes to investigating the evidences and arguments for and against worldviews, we need to realize that we human beings are not mere thinking machines; only considering the facts and logic, and generating conclusions based on hard, cold rationality. We’re not perfect, and one of the effects of the fall said by theologians is said to be “The Noetic Effect,” that the sin nature affects our ability to reason properly. Sin doesn’t completely debilitate us from reasoning. If that were the claim, it would be self-refuting in nature for we could ask, “Did you use your reason to come to the conclusion that you cannot trust reason?”

Nevertheless, we need to be aware that biases, emotional like or dislike of implications, and other things can lead us away from the truth. None of us is immune, whether we are Christian or Non-Christian, and each one of us needs to do deep introspection when we’re evaluating competing systems of thought. In this blog post, I will mention 5 questions we need to pose to ourselves and meditate upon when it comes to evaluating whether Christianity is true or false.

Question 1: If I Knew Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Christianity Were True, Would I Follow Christ? 

The first thing you need to decide is whether or not if Christianity were demonstrated to be true beyond a reasonable doubt, you’d become one of Christ’s followers. If you knew God existed, would you worship Him? Would you try to live the life that God wants you to live? Would you give up anything in your life that He considers sin? If you hesitate or if your answer is no, then your problem is not with regards to the strength of the evidence for Christianity or lack thereof, your problem is either emotional or moral. In other words, you simply don’t want Christianity to be true. If Christianity were true, then you would have to repent or else face judgment. Rather than live life in open rebellion against God knowing that Hell awaits, they comfort themselves by talking themselves into believing that The Bible is nothing but a book a fairy tales. It’s much easier to live your life in sin if you can convince yourself that there isn’t someone who’s going to hold you accountable beyond the grave.

If Christianity is true, then several implications follow. It means that if you’re living in sin, you’ll have to repent. Jesus said that if you even look at a woman with lust, you’ve committed adultery in your heart (Matthew 5:28), and adultery is one of the things God said not to do (Exodus 20:14). If you like to spend your evenings downloading and looking at pornography, you’ll have to get that out of your life or answer to God for it (2 Corinthians 5:10). But porn watchers don’t want to do that. Watching porn is fun! It’s exciting! Porn watchers don’t want to give up porn because they enjoy it too much. Others may want to sleep around, bouncing from woman to woman.

According to Hebrews 13:4, this is a no-no. If someone engaged in this behavior doesn’t repent, they’ll be facing judgment. Romans 1:26-28, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:9-11 prohibit homosexual relationships. Some people don’t want Christianity to be true because it means they’ll have to stop having sex with their same-sex partner. 2 Corinthians 6:14 prohibits a believer marrying an unbeliever. Some people may not want Christianity to be true because they know that if it is, they need to become Christians, or else they face Hell, and if they’re Christians themselves, they’ll be prohibited from marrying their boyfriend or girlfriend who is also an unbeliever.

For many people, it’s a purely intellectual issue. Merely being presented with the evidence for Christianity, as I’ve done in several posts on this blog and as I’ve done in my books, will be sufficient to persuade them to become Christians. For others, they will talk themselves out of any argument, no matter how compelling it otherwise would be. They have to. Their autonomy is at stake.

This is why the Christian Apologist and Oxford mathematician John Lennox said: “If religion is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark, then atheism is a fairy tale for those afraid of the light.”[1] Lennox was echoing the words of Jesus; “This is the verdict; that light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will come nowhere near the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” (John 3:19-20).

Ask yourself, am I suppressing the truth in my unrighteousness? Is my love of sin overriding my love for finding the truth? Do I love truth when it enlightens me, but hate it when it convicts me?[2]

Love of sin is not the only non-intellectual “reason” you might have for rejecting Christ. Perhaps, like Charles Darwin,[3] you know that if Christianity is true, someone you loved who died as a non-believer is in Hell. If you can convince yourself there is no God, and there is no Hell, you don’t need to walk around with that uncomfortable thought. But, our feelings do not determine truth. How you feel about Christian doctrine is irrelevant to whether or not it’s true.

Question 2: What Evidence Would I Expect There to Be If Christianity Is True and Is This Expectation Reasonable? 

The second question you need to ask yourself is how what kind of evidence you would expect to find if Christianity were true? What kind of evidence are you looking for that would lead you to say there is or is not any evidence?

For me, a universe with an ex nihilo beginning that is impeccably fine-tuned to permit life to exist on both the cosmic and local levels, the existence of the moral law, the modal possibility of the existence of a Maximally Great Being, and five historical facts about Jesus’ death and what happened afterward and the fact that only the resurrection can account for all five of those facts is exactly what I would expect if Christianity were true.

If Christianity were false, the universe should have always existed, the possibility of biological life should be way more probable, we should have no moral law written on our hearts, a Maximally Great Great Being should be conceptually incoherent, and Jesus’ tomb should have remained occupied with all of his disciples moving on with their lives as they did before they even met Jesus. But we don’t live in that kind of world.[4]

However, that’s just me. What kind of evidence are you looking for? If you say “there’s no evidence,” you must either have not encountered the aforementioned evidence, or else they don’t fit your definition of evidence. Moreover, is what kind of evidence you’re looking for reasonable to expect if the Christian worldview is true?
Perhaps your epistemology is too restrictive. There are those who hold to a view called Scientism. This view asserts that the only truth that can be known is what can be tested by science. If this view is true, then supernatural entities like God, angels, demons, souls, et al. cannot be known since they cannot be tested by science. Although, I do think that science can provide evidence in a premise in a philosophical argument for God’s existence (e.g. The Kalam’s premise that “The universe began to exist”).

If scientism is your epistemology, then it’s no wonder why you aren’t convinced by philosophical arguments for God’s existence or the historical evidence for Jesus’ divine self-understanding and resurrection from the dead. This is because philosophy and history aren’t scientific enterprises. Science is great, and it has provided us with much knowledge of our world over the past several centuries. However, it is fallacious to say that science is the only path towards truth. Think about it. Can the statement “Only science can provide knowledge” subject to scientific testing? Can you put the claim “Only what science can establish as true is true” underneath a microscope or a super collider? No! These are philosophical statements not subject to scientific testing. Since they cannot be verified through science, and only that which can be verified through science can be known, then the epistemology of scientism cannot be known! Scientism is self-refuting. It collapses under its own criterion.

Question 3: Am I Setting Too High of a Standard of Proof? 

How much evidence is enough evidence? You need to reflect on whether or not you’re setting the bar too high. Are you a skeptic or a hyper-skeptic? What’s the difference? I’ll never forget a Facebook post my friend Luke Nix made several years ago. He said, “Hyper-Skepticism is having to drink an entire carton of milk before concluding that the milk is bad and should have been thrown out after the first sip.” 

The fact is that the vast majority of the conclusions we reach, even in our daily lives, are based on probability, not absolute certainty. I don’t even have 100% certainty that I’m sitting at my desk right now typing up this blog post. It’s possible that I’m just a brain in a vat of chemicals with electrodes hooked up to my brain, and there’s a scientist sending stimulates into my brain to make me experience the sensation of sitting at my desk, typing up a blog post. There is a possibility that that is the case, but that possibility is so unfathomably tiny that I don’t give such a scenario any serious consideration. I am 99% certain that I am not a brain in a vat, but I still can’t get up to 100% certainty.

If you can’t believe with 100% certainty that you are not a brain in a vat of chemicals, yet you still give mental assent to the claim that the external world is real, why wouldn’t you give mental assent to the truth claims of Christianity?

J. Warner Wallace wrote that,

“In legal terms, the line that must be crossed before someone can come to the conclusion that something is evidentially true is called the ‘standard of proof” (the ‘SOP’). The SOP varies depending on the kind of case under consideration. The most rigorous of these criteria is the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard that is required at criminal trials. But how do we know when we have crossed the line and are ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’? The courts have considered this important issue and have provided us with a definition:

‘Reasonable doubt is defined as follows: It is not a mere possible doubt; because everything relating to human affairs is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. It is that state of the case which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of the jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge.’

This definition is important because it recognizes the difference between reasonable and possible that we discussed earlier. There are, according to the ruling of the court, ‘reasonable doubts,’ ‘possible doubts,’ and ‘imaginary doubts.’ The definition acknowledges something important: every case has unanswered questions that will cause jurors to wonder. All the jurors will have doubts as they come to a decision. We will never remove every possible uncertainty; that’s why the standard is not ‘beyond any doubt.’ Being ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ simply requires us to separate our possible and imaginary doubts from those that are reasonable.”[5]

Question 4: I Find Theological Position X Unreasonable. Is This a Central Tenet of Christianity or Is This Debated Within the Church? Can I Be a Christian and Still Reject X? 

Just can’t bring yourself to believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old? Don’t believe a good God would causally determine people to sin? Don’t think a just God would leave people in eternal conscious torment? It’s possible that these seem unreasonable because they are unreasonable. And guess what? Many Christians would agree with you. Not every position you find a Christian defending is central to the Christian worldview. Some are. You can’t be a Christian and not believe that God exists, that God is one being who consists of three persons (The Doctrine of the Trinity), that we’re sinners in need of salvation, and that Jesus died on the cross and bodily rose from the dead. However, other issues are debatable, such as how to interpret Genesis 1, whether humans have free will or whether God causally determines all things, and whether or not God lets human experience eternal conscious torment or whether God annihilates the condemned from existence (a view known as Annihilationism).

Don’t reject Christianity simply because you find some secondary doctrine unreasonable. I myself find two of the three secondary issues mentioned above unreasonable. That’s why I’m an Evolutionary Creationist and a Molinist rather than a Young Earth Creationist and a Calvinist.

Conclusion

These are 4 questions that everyone who’s investigating the truth claims of Christianity needs to ask themselves. More importantly, you not only need to ask them to yourself; you need to reflect on them. Do introspection. We can be our own worst enemy. Don’t let yourself trip you up! Eternity is at stake!

NOTES

[1] I can’t find a written source for this quote anywhere. Evidently, it was something Lennox uttered publicly in a debate with Stephen Hawking, but this quote was never put into writing.

[2] I’m alluding to a quote attributed to St. Augustine that goes, “We love the truth when it enlightens us, but hate it when it condemns us.” Whether Augustine was the original person to say this is, like so many quotes often attributed to him, debatable. Certainly, someone at some point said it, and I have found it to be one of many true statements about humanity.

[3] Charles Darwin didn’t become an atheist because of his theory of evolution. In fact, Darwin may rightly be called the very first evolutionary creationist. He believed God used evolution to create life. I believe two things caused Darwin to turn away from God, the death of his father and the death of his
daughter, and the doctrine of Hell amplified the power of the former. Darwin wrote “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the [New Testament] text seems to show that the men who do not believe, & this would include my Father, Brother & almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” — Charles Darwin, as cited in the online article “The Evolution Of Darwin’s Religious Faith,” October 20, 2016, | By Ted Davis on Reading the Book of Nature – http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-ofnature/the-evolution-of-darwins-religious-faith#sthash.g2ZJUuV0.dpuf

[4] Check out my book The Case for The One True God: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Case for The God of Christianity, where I go into these arguments and evidence in far more detail, even in more detail than I do in the articles on The Cerebral Faith website, which I linked to in the paragraph this footnote proceeded.

[5] J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity, Kindle Locations 2163-2195, David C Cook.

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2YUBdAL

By Evan Minton

I discovered a YouTuber called “Rationality Rules” very recently. One of his many videos is “The Kalam Cosmological Argument Debunked – (First Cause Argument Refuted)” which you can watch here. One of my patrons brought this video to my attention and requested that I respond to it, so here we go.

For the uninitiated, The Kalam Cosmological Argument is formulated as follows:

1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2: The universe began to exist.

3: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Let’s look at each of Rationality Rules’ rebuttals.

Objection 1: The Argument Doesn’t Support Theism 

Rationality Rules (RR) says “Even if the Cosmological Argument were accepted in its entirely, all it would prove is that there was a cause of the universe, and that’s it. It doesn’t even suggest, let alone prove that this cause was a being, and it certainly doesn’t suggest that that cause was a being that is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, personal and moral. That is one hell of a leap. Hence, even if accepted, the argument doesn’t even remotely support theism.” 

I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Has RR even paid the slightest bit attention to apologists’ defenses of The Cosmological Argument? This is patently false. Given that everything that has a beginning has something that caused it to come into being, and since Big Bang cosmology, the second law of thermodynamics, and the two arguments against actual infinites establish that the universe came into being out of nothing a finite time ago, it follows that a cause transcendent to matter, energy, space, and time must have caused matter, energy, space, and time (i.e the universe) to come into existence. Now, granted, the syllogism doesn’t define this cause as “God”. It only asserts “Therefore, the universe has a cause”. However, in every defense of The Kalam Cosmological Argument I’ve ever heard given, this is not where the argument stops. Once it is established that the universe a transcendent cause, the apologist (William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, Myself) do a conceptual analysis of what it means to be a cause of the universe. The conceptual analysis part of the argument is being totally ignored by RR.

When you do a conceptual analysis of what attributes or properties the universe’s cause must have, you do indeed end up with a being heavily resembling God.

The cause must be

Spaceless – Because space came into being and did not exist until this cause brought it into existence, the cause cannot be a spatial being. It must be spaceless or non-spatial. You cannot be inside of something if you are that something’s cause. You cannot be inside of something if that something did not exist until you brought it into existence.

Timeless – Since time did not exist until The Big Bang, the cause cannot be inside of time. It must be a timeless being.

Immaterial – The cause’s non-spatiality entails immateriality. How so? Because material objects cannot exist unless space exists. Material objects have mass and ergo occupy spatial dimensions. If there is no space, matter cannot exist. This means that because the cause is non-spatial, it is therefore non-material.

Unimaginably Powerful (if not omnipotent) – Anything able to create all matter, energy, space, and time out of absolutely nothing must be extremely powerful, if not omnipotent.

Supernatural – “Nature” and “The universe” are synonyms. Nature did not begin to exist until The Big Bang. Therefore, a natural cause (a cause coming, by definition, from nature) cannot be responsible for the origin of nature. To say otherwise would be to spout incoherence. You’d basically be saying “Nature caused nature to come into being.”

Uncaused – Given that the cause of the universe is timeless, the cause cannot itself have a beginning. To have a beginning to one’s existence entails a before and after relationship. There’s a time before one existed and a time after one came into existence. But a before and after of anything is impossible without time. Since the cause existed sans time, the cause, therefore, cannot have a beginning. It’s beginningless.

Personal – This is an entailment of the cause’s immateriality. There are two types of things recognized by philosophers that are immaterial: abstract objects (such as numbers, sets, or other mathematical entities) or unembodied minds. Philosophers realize that abstract objects if they exist, they exist as non-physical entities. However, abstract objects cannot produce any effects. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number 3 isn’t going to be producing any effects anytime soon. Given that abstract objects are causally impotent, it, therefore, follows that an unembodied mind is the cause of the universe’ beginning. Two other arguments for the personhood of the universe’s cause can be given, and I’ve unpacked these in my book The Case For The One True God: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Case For The God Of Christianity available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle.

Whatever begins to exist has a cause, given that the universe began to exist, if follows that the universe has a cause of its existence. The cause of the universe must be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, supernatural, uncaused, personal Creator.

This being that is demonstrated to exist by this argument is consistent with The Christian God. The Bible describes God as spaceless (see 1 Kings 8:27, 2 Chronicles 2:6), timeless (1 Corinthians 2:7, 2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 1:2), immaterial (John 4:24, 1 Timothy 1:17, 1 Timothy 6:16), powerful (Psalm 62:11-12, Job 9:14, Matthew 19:26), uncaused (Psalm 90:2, Isaiah 57:15, 1 Timothy 1:17, Revelation 1:8), supernatural, and is a personal being (John 1:12, James 4:8). Moreover, The Bible credits Him with being the Creator of all physical reality (John 1:1-3).

Additionally, as I point out in my book The Case For The One True God: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Case For The God Of Christianity a study of comparative religions demonstrates that only 4 religions are consistent with the Cosmological argument’s conclusion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (that’s why Ghazali defended it), and Deism. All other religions involve either an eternal cosmos that have God or gods bringing order out of the eternally existing matter, energy, space and time, or else their god is the universe itself (pantheism). Therefore, if you’re picking a view about God based on the cosmological argument alone, your list of options consistent with the evidence is limited to just 4 options, Christianity being among them. Only the Abrahamic religions (and Deism) teach that a God like the one described above brought all physical reality into existence from nothing.

Rationality Rules complains that the argument doesn’t demonstrate the omniscience, omnipresence, or the moral character of the universe’s cause, but the argument was never designed to get those qualities. Richard Dawkins made this same complaint about the argument. Dawkins said it like this “Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts.”[1] and Dr. William Lane Craig responded to it thusly:

“Apart from the opening slur, this is an amazingly concessionary statement! Dawkins doesn’t dispute that the argument successfully proves the existence of an uncaused, beginningless, changeless, timeless, spaceless, and unimaginably powerful personal Creator of the universe. He merely complains that this cause hasn’t also been shown to be omnipotent, omniscient, good, creative of design, listening to prayers, forgiving sins, and reading innermost thoughts. So what? The argument isn’t intended to prove those things. It would be a bizarre form of atheism, indeed an atheism not worth the name, which admitted that there exists an uncaused, beginningless, changeless, timeless, immaterial, spaceless, unimaginably powerful, personal Creator of the universe who may (for all we know) also possess the properties listed by Dawkins. So we needn’t call the personal Creator of the universe “God” if Dawkins finds this unhelpful or misleading. But the point remains that such a being as described by this argument must exist”[2]

This is just a pitiful objection to The Kalam Cosmological Argument.

Objection 2: It Doesn’t Prove The Universe’s Cause Was The First Cause. 

I facepalmed even harder at this objection than I did the previous one. Rationality Rules said “A second problem that even we accepted the argument. It wouldn’t prove that the universe itself was without a cause. Or in another words, it wouldn’t prove that first cause existed, which for a first cause argument is pretty damn ridiculous. To be fair, the proponents of this argument do indeed offer additional arguments in an attempt to assert that the cause of the universe must be without a cause. But the point that I’m trying to make here and now is that The Kalam Cosmological Argument, by itself, is pretty damn trivial. And hence, the proponents of this argument almost always employ additional arguments to reach their conclusions including the likes of Craig” 

There are good reasons given as to why the cause of the universe must be uncaused. I’ve given one of them above. I wrote “Given that the cause of the universe is timeless, the cause cannot itself have a beginning. To have a beginning to one’s existence entails a before and after relationship. There’s a time before one existed and a time after one came into existence. But a before and after of anything is impossible without time. Since the cause existed sans time, the cause, therefore, cannot have a beginning. It’s beginningless.” Another reason is that if you do not allow for an uncreated Creator, if you insist that God must have a Creator, you get thrown into an infinite regression. For God to come into being, His creator must have come into being, and before that creator could come into being, the creator before him had to come into being, and before that creator could come into being, the creator before him had to come into being, and so on back into infinity. No creator could ever come into being because there would always have to be a creator before him to bring him into being. In fact, no creator in the entire infinite past series of creators could ever come into being because each would have to be preceded by a previously created creator. And since no creator could ever come into being, the specific creator that brought our universe into existence couldn’t have come into being. But obviously, here we are. This suggests that there wasn’t an infinite regression of creators begetting creators. But if there was no infinite regression of creators begetting creators, then that logically brings us to an uncreated Creator, a Creator without beginning.

Even Rationality Rules admits that Kalam proponents back up the assertion that the cause is uncaused by arguments, as you can see in the quotation above. However, he doesn’t dispute the arguments. He doesn’t even say what the arguments are. He seems to think that merely having to bolster the conclusion “the universe had a cause” with additional arguments is an invalid move. But why think a thing like that? Yes, the syllogism by itself only gets you to “The universe had a cause”, but why take Christian Apologists to task for unpacking the implications of that conclusion with additional arguments?

The question RR should be asking is not whether additional arguments are needed, but whether the additional arguments given are good. RR’s objection is pretty damn trivial.

Objection 3: It Commits The Fallacy Of Equivocation

Rationality Rules indicts The Kalam Cosmological Argument for committing the fallacy of equivocation. What is the fallacy of equivocation? The fallacy of equivocation is when an argument uses the exact same word, but employs two different definitions of the word. It would be like if someone argued “God made everything. Everything is made in China. Therefore, God is Chinese”. The word being equivocated on here is the word “everything”. In the first premise, it means literally everything that exists, whereas, in premise 2, it only refers to everything that American consumers purchase.

Rationality Rules says that in the second premise, what we mean by the term “Universe” is the scientific definition of universe (i.e all matter, energy, space, and time), whereas in the conclusion, we employ the colloquial usage of the term “Universe”, meaning literally everything that ever was, is, and ever will be. Thus, RR says that steps 2 and 3 of the argument employ the same words with different meanings.

This objection is just as underwhelming as the previous two. For one thing, why isn’t “all matter, energy, space, and time) not synonymous with “everything that ever was, is, or will be”? Perhaps RR is assuming The Mother Universe theory whereby The Big Bang was not the absolute origin of all material objects, but only the birth of one of many “baby” universes” that come into being inside of a much wider Mother Universe. In that case, the origin of our universe would indeed not be “everything that ever was, is, or will be”.

But as I argue in my blog posts “Does The Multi-Verse Explain Away The Need For A Creator?” and “Is The Universe A Computer Simulation?” not to mention chapter 1 of The Case For The One True God, this Mother Multiverse scenario cannot be extended into past eternity. The Borde-Guth-Velinken Theorem, as well as the impossibility of traversing actual infinites, bring us to an absolute beginning of literally everything at some point, whether that be the beginning of our universe, The Mother Universe, The Grandmother Universe, or whatever.

This leads to my next point; we do mean literally everything in both steps 2 and 3. We mean all matter, energy, space, and time that ever was, is or will be in both steps 2 and 3. Now, RR can dispute whether premise 2 is true, but if I, William Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, Frank Turek, Hugh Ross, etc. mean literally everything in both steps, then a charge of the fallacy of equivocation cannot stand. We mean the same thing by “universe” in both steps 2 and 3.

Objection 4: Nothing Has Ever Been Demonstrated To Come Into Being From Nothing 

RR says “And this brings us comfortably to another critical flaw with the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It asserts that something can indeed come from nothing – a concept in philosophy known as Creatio Ex Nihilo (creation out of nothing), when this has never been demonstrated to occur. In fact, to the contrary, everything we know about cause and effect overwhelmingly and unanimously tells us that when a new thing is created it is due to the rearrangement of energy and matter that already existed… that is, everything is the result of Creatio Ex Materia (creation out of material).”

Another underwhelming objection. Before I give my response, let me inform my readers that I distinguish causes via Aristotelian Causation. The ancient philosopher Aristotle recognized that there are different types of causes. A “material cause” is the stuff out of which something is made. For example, a chair’s material cause is the wood gathered from chopped down trees. An efficient cause of the chair would be the carpenter who fashioned the chair from the wood. Another type of cause Aristotle identified was Final Causality. This is the teleology, the purpose or end goal of bringing something into being. In the example of the chair, the final cause would be the purpose of sitting. But for this discussion, only efficient and material causes need to be distinguished.

The objection here is that the inductive evidence is overwhelmingly against the idea that things can come into being without a material cause. The conclusion of The Kalam Cosmological Argument is that the universe came into being via an efficient cause (God), but with no material cause. God didn’t use previously existing material to manufacture the universe.

Now, I would agree that our experience shows us that whenever something comes into being, it had a material cause as well as an efficient cause, thus rendering us with as much inductive evidence for material causation, but this inductive evidence can be overridden if we have powerful evidence that all physical reality came into being out of nothing a finite time ago. The Big Bang demonstrates just that. To look at the evidence, see my blog posts “The Kalam Cosmological Argument” and “Is The Big Bang The Origin Of The Universe?”

As I explain in the above blog posts, we do in fact have powerful scientific evidence as well as philosophical arguments which show us that the whole of physical reality (space, time, matter, and energy) had an absolute beginning.

Objection 5: Special Pleading Fallacy 

RR says that Kalam proponents commit the special pleading fallacy. What is that? The Special Pleading Fallacy occurs whenever you make an exception to an established rule without justification. RR says “they [Kalam proponents] assert that the cause of the universe didn’t begin to exist and therefore it didn’t have a cause, without adequately justifying why this cause is an exception.”

My face is hurting from all the facepalming I’ve been doing throughout watching this dude’s videos. First of all, there’s no exception to even be made! The argument is that “Whatever begins to exist has a cause.” The Kalam proponent would only be special pleading if he or she said that God began to exist, but made him the exception by saying he came into being uncaused. However, all proponents of The Kalam Cosmological Argument hold that (A) God is uncaused, uncreated. And (B) we give arguments for that. I’ve given arguments for that above.

Objection 6: Argument From Ignorance

Of course. The overused “God Of The Gaps” objection. This is not based on what we don’t know. It’s based on what we do know. As I explained in subheader 1, the cause of the universe must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, uncaused, and personal. And I didn’t just arbitrarily assign these attribute’s to the universe’s cause, I gave positive arguments for why the universe’s cause must have these attributes. I, nor has any proponent of this argument ever said, “Scientists can’t explain how the universe came into being, so it must be God” or anything of that sort. One must suppose that atheists continue to illegitimately accuse the Kalam of committing this fallacy because they just don’t pay attention when it is explained to them. If you keep falling asleep in class, it’s no surprise that you don’t know what you’re talking about when it’s time to do your essay.

As for being the specific God I believe in, I’d recommend a look at The Case For The One True God. I admit that The Kalam doesn’t get you to the uniquely Christian conception of God, but it does get you to a conception of God that doesn’t match the majority of the ones most religions out there. Abrahamic religions and Deism are consistent with this argument, but polytheistic, animistic, and pantheistic religions are not. And atheism certainly is not consistent with the argument’s conclusion.

Conclusion 

When my patron Kevin Walker, asked me to make a response to this video, I was actually bracing myself for some pretty hard-hitting rebuttals, if not refutations. I was like “Boy, I hope I can handle these responses.” I never expected the pitiful, flimsy objections RR put forth.

Notes 

[1] Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion” p. 158.

[2] William Lane Craig, “Deconstructing New Atheist Objections To The Arguments For God,” https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/short-videos/deconstructing-new-atheist-objections-to-the-arguments-for-god/

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference to The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source:  http://bit.ly/2VrWpAg

By Evan Minton 

In the comment section of one of the posts on the Cerebral Faith facebook page, Sam Burke commented “If I found out Christianity was true, I would do everything in my power to stop people from having kids so that more people don’t go to Hell. According to Matthew 7:13 only a few people will find the way to Heaven. Almost everyone who is born will end up being burned in eternal conscious pain for eternity according to the Bible. A trillion years and the person will not be a second closer to being out of Hell. Any parent who truly believes and understands this, and knows their kids will statistically probably end up in Hell and has kids anyway hates them. Having children violates “love your neighbor as yourself” on that viewpoint. If Hell, then Anti-Natalism.

And not to mention if the Age of Accountability is true we should conceive kids just for the sake of aborting them and therefore “populating Heaven.” And I am Pro-Life!! Or infants are damned unless they accept Jesus as their savior from the time they are born. Christianity is utterly hopeless, depressing, etc. No compassionate person could want Christianity and all that it entails to be true.”

Is this the case? If Christianity is true, does it entail that you should either abort your children or refrain from even having them? I’ve already dealt with the Age-Of-Accountability-Entails-That-Abortion-is-ok argument in this blog post here and in chapter 4 of my book A Hellacious Doctrine: A Biblical Defense Of The Doctrine Of Hell. So I won’t rehash those answers here. Rather, I’ll address the more modest argument that if Christianity is true, and if more people statistically end up in Hell instead of Heaven, then it’s basically our moral obligation to refrain from even conceiving!

First, God Has Made Salvation Available to All, Anyone Damned Has Only Themselves to Blame

Jesus said that “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son so that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Everyone who believes in Him will not perish but whoever does not believe in Him is already condemned because he has not believed in God’s one and only son.” – John 3:16-18 (emphasis mine).

God The Father gave up God the Son (i.e., Jesus) to die for the sins of the world! The Greek word translated “world” here is kosmos, and it is most often used to either describe all of humanity, the entire planet, or the entire physical universe. If you are a part of the world, then God loves you and became a man to atone for your sins. I’m a part of the world. You’re a part of the world. Adolf Hitler was a part of the world. Osama Bin Laden was a part of the world. The random person who drove by my house yesterday is a part of the world. Every human being is included in this passage. Moreover, whosoever out of the group that God loved (i.e., the world) who places their faith in Jesus will not perish but have eternal life. Jesus said that God didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn it, but to save the world through him.

Because “God so loved the world”, he therefore “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). As a result of this love and desire, He “gave his only begotten son” and by that is meant that Jesus “gave himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Timothy 2:6, cf. 1 John 2:2, Hebrews 2:9).

God offers this salvation to all. We’re not able to accept it on our own (see John 6:44, John 6:65), so God sends His Holy Spirit to enable us and persuade us to receive His offer of salvation at the preaching of the gospel (Acts 16:14, John 12:32). This grace can be resisted (Acts 7:51), resulting in the persons own damnation if they continue to resist God’s grace until they die (John 3:36). The choice is up to you. Will you resist The Holy Spirit or will you yield to Him?

God became incarnate, died on the cross to take the punishment we deserved and then rose from the dead. God sends grace to all people to draw them to salvation. Some choose to resist God’s grace and others choose not to. The ones who resist cannot indict either God or their parents for the choice they made. They have no one to blame but themselves. This is why it is often said that God doesn’t send people to Hell, but rather, people send themselves. No one who ends up in Hell has to be there. Their damnation could have been avoided.

Secondly, He Is Assuming That Parents Have No More Say in The Eternal Destiny of their Children Than Birthing Them. 

Sam Burke is assuming that parents have no more say in the eternal destiny of their children than merely birthing them and letting them decide for themselves. However, Proverbs 22:6 says “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

It is generally true that if you raise your child right, he’ll grow up right. Theologically, one should expose their children to sound doctrine at a young age, and teach them apologetics from a young age. You can start with having them read books like “The Case For Christ For Kids” by Lee Strobel, “The Case For Faith For Kids” by Lee Strobel, “The Mystery Of The Picture: Where Did The Universe Come From? Did It Come From Nothing?” by Mary Katherine Mammen and Neil Mammen, and “The Awesome Book Of Bible Answers For Kids” by Josh McDowell and Kevin Johnson. When they enter high school, you can move them on to more advanced material like the regular “The Case For Christ” by Lee Strobel, “My Redeemer Lives: Evidence For The Resurrection Of Jesus” by Evan Minton, and others. See my blog post “Teach Your Children Apologetics” for a larger list.

While your kids should look at the evidence for Christianity’s truth, You should be a well-informed Christian and be able their questions as well. As J. Warner Wallace once said, you are the first apologist your child will ever be exposed to. I think fewer young people would leave the church if we were prepared to make a reasonable case for Christianity instead of emphasizing feeling based experiences, and (this especially goes for youth pastors) entertainment. When I become a father, I will ensure that if my child grows up and apostatizes, it won’t be for intellectual reasons (John 3:19-20).

The answer to the problem of your offspring going to Hell isn’t to refrain from having them, but to make sure that they know the Living God.

Thirdly, While Jesus Said More Would Be In Hell Than Heaven, He Never Gave Exact Numbers

You have no idea the ratio of damned to saved and neither do I.  It’s difficult to read Matthew 7:13-14 and not get the idea that Jesus said there would be more damned than saved. However, Jesus didn’t give an exact ratio. For example, Jesus never said that for every 1 person who is saved, 100 are lost. For all we know, for every 1 saved, only 2 or 3 are lost. You can’t calculate the probability that your offspring will, by the end of his life, have spurned The Holy Spirit. We’re not in a position to tally the exact number of saved to lost. All Jesus said is that many would enter the death gate and few would enter the life gate. That’s not exactly what I’d call mathematical precision.

Revelation 7:9 observes, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.” Millions and millions of people will be in Heaven from all over the world.

Finally, Annihilationism Is an Option

Burke’s criticism presupposes a very specific view of Hell; the Eternal Conscious Torment view. However, what if Annihilationism is true? Annihilationism is the view that the damned do not, in fact, suffer eternal conscious torment. Rather, on some forms of annihilationism, they suffer for a little while are eventually annihilated, or they annihilated immediately upon being judged by God. Thus, annihilationism is absolutely no different than Atheism and Deism concerning the afterlife. The only difference is that Atheists and Deists believe that everyone is annihilated, whereas the Christian annihilationist only believes some are.
Since I do not adhere to annihilationism, I have tried to respond to Burke’s argument while presupposing ECT. However, in the case that Burke or others find my response unsatisfying, I would advise them to look into the case for annihilationism. I don’t want Burke or others to reject Christianity on the basis of a secondary doctrine that I could be wrong about. If I did that, I’d be no different than Christians who require people to give up assent to Darwinian Evolution. If I’m wrong and annihilationism is true, then it has even less force than it would on ECT.

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference to The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine”. He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2tXr0Wu

By Colin Burgess

“Philosophy is everybody’s business.” – J. Mortimer Adler.

Aristotle opened his opus on philosophy, The Metaphysics, with, “All men by nature desire to know.” Nothing could be truer; when one begins to ask the ‘why’ questions, one is taking intellectual responsibility for constructing their weltanschauung, or worldview. No longer are they taking their thoughts or beliefs for granted, but are rebelling against their upbringing and are no longer espousing beliefs by means of dogma, adopted as a child, through upbringing and indoctrination, but are making these beliefs their own as they categorically examine them. This is not to say beliefs passed onto us from early childhood are wrong, but those who examine them carefully seek to provide some sort of justification for them. It is by philosophy we can have a discussion with long-dead thinkers, like Plato, Marx and the Apostle Paul, and as we represent their views, as accurately as possible, we can see what they were saying as though they were sitting right in front of us. By carefully doing this we can abandon the politics and religion of our parents, or examine them further and make them truly our own.

Often it is said that children are the best philosophers. Perhaps this is because they ask the most honest and uncensored questions. As we grow older our thoughts tend to reach a state of entropy, and we no longer seek justification for beliefs but are content to think only as much as necessary to get through our daily routine, and our minds begin to atrophy. Too often we let celebrities, politicians, clergymen, and newscasters tell us what to think, rather than learning, for ourselves, how to think, as we eat our TV dinners. Is this what Socrates meant when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living?” He didn’t mean to say that those who don’t examine their thoughts should kill themselves, but that those who do not live an examined life are living without intent, they are basically marking time, waiting to die.

Maybe we will wake up from our intellectual slumber long enough to seek justification for defending certain social views we hold, or at election time when we defend our voting decisions to ourselves, our family and friends, but then once the dust has settled, many of us are too busy or content to fold our hands and resume life as normal. Surely this is not because of stupidity, many of these people are our doctors and lawyers, or highly skilled people in the trades. Perhaps it is because we are not in a “food for thought” economy, no one has given me a penny for my thoughts, so we do not pursue the art of ordering our thoughts simply because there are bills to pay and our children are hungry, and in the absence of a philosophy factory being built there is little chance many of us, except the chosen few, will ascend to the heights of academia where we will pay them a penny for their thoughts. Some may fancy themselves philosophers or have taken a module or two in philosophy, as part of an academic requirement, but many see philosophy as being difficult, or even boring.

Many have a misunderstanding of what philosophy is, without even realizing we are all philosophers even if we aren’t acquainted with the terminology; many think philosophy has to do with scratching our flea ridden beards, sitting around and pondering obtuse questions which have no ultimate answer. While such has been the case in the history of philosophy, this is certainly not the normative. While there is no consensus in the discipline of philosophy on many issues, philosophers seek to deal with very real issues which affect our society today, such as in the fields of ethics and medical research, there are political philosophers which examine political ideas and their effects on society. The discipline of law is built on philosophy, and many lawyers are required to study this, so they may reason through a set of premises and formulate a well-reasoned argument. In the sciences philosophy functions as a tool for defining what science is and how we ought to think about the world being studied.

One doesn’t have to do philosophy out of thin air, many philosophers today are standing on the shoulders of giants, and we can see how thinkers in the past dealt with similar issues facing us today, saving us the effort of reinventing the wheel, and allowing us to pick up where they left off.

To put philosophy in a nutshell, it can be summed up in 4 major periods, the ancient philosophers, the pre-Socratics, the Socratics, and the Medieval philosophers. All of these philosophers dealt with their experience of the world, and if one reads a tome on the history of Western Philosophy, they can get a comprehensive picture, after the fact, how they sought to wrestle with issues of their time. These philosophers, ranging from Aristotle to Nietzsche, wrestled with issues pertaining to metaphysics (what is real), epistemology (theory of knowledge), ethics (how we ought to behave), existentialism (who we are) and logic (how we ought to think). How one answers these questions will determine their views on God, politics and many other aspects of life, and if one opens up an introductory text to the philosophy, they will eventually see similarities in their views or thoughts to how the ancients thought, to some degree.

This is not to defend any particular view of ethics, metaphysics or religion but is to defend and encourage the art of thinking carefully and ordering our thoughts and becoming more aware of our beliefs, so they may be held with a greater degree of intentionality and justification and not taken for granted.

For those who want to briefly examine philosophy without committing to an expensive book on the subject, Douglas Groothuis has written an excellent and concise book summarizing the most famous philosophers and their famed sayings, in “Philosophy in Seven Sentences,” and for those wishing to further explore, I found ‘Philosophy for Dummies’ to be very informative and accessible. While Bertrand Russell has written an excellent history of western philosophy, Anthony Kenny has written a “New History of Western Philosophy,” which covers more contemporary philosophers as well as older ones.

 


Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3gm5JkR

By Evan Minton 

You’ve just been introduced to Christian Apologetics and have discovered that there are many good arguments and evidence that demonstrate that Christianity is true. However, you’re not sure that you’re smart enough, have enough free time, or have the financial means to learn this material yourself so that you can be a better witness for Christ.

How To Become a Self-Taught Apologist

Can you afford to go to seminary and be trained formally in philosophy and theology? If so, by all means, do that. If you can’t either because you can’t afford it or your current career won’t allow you to go back to school, don’t worry. You don’t have to go to seminary to be a good apologist. Sure, you need letters after your name if you want to read papers at ETS or EPS conferences and if you want your name published in academic journals, but if all your after is the knowledge and the training necessary to win skeptical souls over to Christ, you can do that without ever setting foot on a campus.

I am 100% self-taught in apologetics. Everything you read on my blog, listen to on my podcast, hear in my debates, and see in my social media debates came 100% from reading books, reading blogs, listening to podcasts and lectures, and watching debates. While I would certainly like to have a career in apologetics, as long as I’m winning souls for Christ and equipping my fellow believers, I consider my time as an apologist a success. It may be God’s will for me to just have a blog, write some books, and do a podcast. That’s fine. As long as there will be fewer people in Hell because of the work I’m doing, it is well with my soul. Now, because of my lack of degrees, when I touch upon subjects, I have to heavily cite expert sources and witnesses to back up what I’m saying since I’m not an official authority in these fields. But that’s more of a lesson on how to be, what I call “a credible layman.” I have plans to write an article on that in the future. Right now, I want to give you advice on how to educate yourself so that you can be an effective apologist.

You Are Smart Enough To Learn

First thing’s first. You need to do away with this “I’m not smart enough” mentality that a lot of people have when they encounter apologetics for the first time. I was introduced to apologetics in August of 2010 when I was just 18, but I didn’t put forth the effort to learn the material until the winter of 2011. Why? Because as I watched Lee Strobel’s “The Case for A Creator,” as I listened to William Lane Craig unpack The Kalam Cosmological Argument on YouTube, I thought to myself “This stuff is way too complicated. There’s no way I can remember all of this stuff”. When I would witness to unbelievers and fail to answer their challenges, I would go into my bedroom and pray “God, please send someone like Lee Strobel or William Lane Craig into these peoples’ lives to show them the evidence that you exist, and that Jesus really did die on the cross and rise from the dead.” My game plan was to just preach the gospel, and if anyone brought up hard questions, I’d just pray for God to send a smart person into their path to answer them.

Eventually, God got a hold of me. One day when I was praying for one nasty atheist who badgered me on Twitter when I said: “God, please send them someone to show them the evidence.” I felt God say to me “I want you to show them the evidence. Now, this wasn’t an audible voice, and I’m not one of those “I heard a word from God today that said….” kind of guy. But if God does speak to hearts, that moment was definitely one of them. I was confused. I struggled so much to even unpack The Kalam Cosmological Argument in the most basic way, and I could barely regurgitate design arguments. I thought “God. You’ve got the wrong guy. You need to pick someone with a higher IQ.” The very next day as I was scrolling my Facebook timeline, I saw a picture that was captioned “God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.” At the moment, I realized that while I wasn’t qualified to share my faith, I could get qualified.

Below is what I did to get to where I am today.

Rule 1: Consume The Same Material Over and Over

It is said that it takes 1,000 hours to master a craft. Don’t get discouraged if you read a book and only get the gist the first time around. The books I bought, I read dozens and dozens of times. I was determined to hammer that content into my head until I could articulate the arguments as well as the authors could. Several of my oldest Christian Apologetics books are falling apart due to overuse. My copy of William Lane Craig’s On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision is one rugged book. My copy of Hugh Ross’ The Creator and The Cosmos has a broken binder, and some of the pages just fell out! My copy of Frank Turek’s and Norman Geisler’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is likewise falling apart. In fact, when I had Norman Geisler autograph this book at the 2017 National Conference On Christian Apologetics, as Dr. Geisler was signing the book, his wife remarked: “You’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that book, haven’t you!” My copy of The Case for The Resurrection of Jesus written by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona is likewise falling apart. Neil Mammen’s Who Is Agent X: Proving Science and Logic Show It Is More Rational to Believe That God Exists and all of Lee Strobel’s books are holding up pretty well, but you can see some wear on them as well.

I read these books over and over and over and over until the material was burned into my mind. I did this not only with the books that I read but with the lectures and podcasts I listened to. I would listen to lectures I downloaded from the Apologetics 315 website and listen to them on my MP3 Player while I did housework and yard work. I would listen to the same MP3 files over and over and over.

Rule 2: Focus On One Topic At A Time

You won’t get very far if you bounce from subject to subject. Fix your eyes on one or two particular subjects and pursue that one (or two) subjects into the ground. Once you feel that you’ve got a good grasp on those topics, you can move onto another subject. When I first started, the subjects I pursued into the ground were Natural Theology (i.e. arguments for God’s existence like the Kalam and Fine-Tuning arguments) and the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. After I felt I could defend those arguments decently, I studied soteriology and debated the Calvinism issue with my fellow Christians. Eventually, I moved onto investigating Theistic Evolution and then (finally!) eschatology.

Nowadays I revisit all of these subjects frequently, but when I was first trying to learn them, I focused exclusively on them.

Rule 3: Don’t Learn, Train. 

In his book, Forensic Faith, J. Warner Wallace writes “Stop teaching your young people. We’ve got lots of great teachers in the church and lots of concerned parents who want to teach their kids. We’ve been teaching young people for generations. But this teaching has obviously become ineffective if the current statistics related to the departure rates of young people in their college years are even remotely accurate. We’ve been teaching, and students have been leaving. It’s time to stop teaching and start training.[1] (emphasis in original).

Wallace goes on to say not to get him wrong and that The Bible certainly tells us to teach. Wallace cites 2 Timothy 3:16 which says “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction.” and notes that Paul told Timothy he should use the Scripture to teach, reprove, and correct, but he didn’t stop there. Paul identified another important use for
God’s Word:

2 Timothy 3:16–17

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man
of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

Wallace wrote “Paul made a distinction between teaching and training. It’s time for us to make a distinction as well. We’ve got to understand the role of teaching within the broader context of training. Teaching is focused on imparting knowledge. Training is focused on preparing for a challenge (“equipping” ourselves “for every good work”). Boxers and MMA fighters train. First responders train. Military personnel train. Why? Because they’re eventually going to deploy in the ring, in the fighting cage, on the street, or on the battlefield. These people know they’re going to be challenged and tested. Unless they prepare for this inevitable reality, they’re going to get hurt.”[2]

Wallace goes on to note that when boxers know that showdown is imminent.

They’ve marked it on their calendars. They know exactly when the showdown is going to take place, they train and train hard. They train relentlessly until the night they step into the ring. Wallace mentioned how he did this with witnessing encounters. In one part of the book, he talked about how he and a group of students made plans to go to Utah on a specific date to engage Mormons. The students didn’t know anything about Mormonism and didn’t know any of the challenges they might be met with when trying to share the gospel with them. But Wallace said, “On this day, we will witness to Mormons.” So the whole time leading up to the trip, the students studied and researched and prepared themselves for the encounters they knew were going to occur. Wallace said that when the time arrived, the students did splendidly!

I can speak from personal experience how Calendaring my showdowns helps me become a quick learner. You know those debates you can watch on this site’s “My Debates” page? I trained for each of those debates. I didn’t always have the same amount of prep time, but whatever prep time I had, I put to good use. The one I had the most prep time was my debate with Nathan Reese on “Did Jesus Really Rise from The Dead?” and a debate with a man named Anthony B called “Are There Sound Arguments for God’s Existence” which got canceled. After those two debates, in particular, I found that I could defend the Cosmological and Fine-Tuning Arguments as well as the historicity of the resurrection better than I ever could before that. Calendaring my showdown caused me to train myself to defend these arguments. The pressure leads me to master the subjects faster. Not that I wasn’t good at defending these arguments before (if that were the case, I wouldn’t have agreed to the debates), what I’m saying is that I was twice as skilled after the month of prepping!

In Forensic Faith, J. Warner Wallace gives us a good acronym to go by T.R.A.I.N

T – Test

Challenge each other to expose our weaknesses.

R – Require

Expect more from each other than we sometimes think we can
handle.
A – Arm

Learn the truth and how to articulate it.

I – Involve

Deploy into the battlefield of ideas.

N – Nurture

Tend to our wounds and model the nature of Jesus.

Rule 4: Be Good at Time Management 

You need to learn to use your time wisely. All of us only have 14 hours that we’re awake. Depending on what kind of job you have and what kind of life you lead will depend on how much time you can devote to studying these topics. Now, the one excuse you should not have is “I don’t have time to learn this stuff.” Yes, you do. We all have free time. Maybe some of us have more free time than others, but we all have points in time during the week in which nothing is pressing on us.

The issue is not having enough free time. The issue is what you’re willing to sacrifice in place of what you normally do during your free time. For example, instead of watching 3 hours of television when you get home from work, open up a William Lane Craig or Lee Strobel book (or…an Evan Minton book). Listen to a podcast or watch a debate on YouTube. Instead of spending Sunday afternoon watching football, devote that time to study.

Before I got into studying apologetics, theology, and philosophy, what I did in my free time was watch anime and play video games. That’s how my “Me time” was spent. I have sacrificed those things to a significant degree to become a better ambassador for Christ. Now, I still play video games, and I still watch anime, but I’m not able to do it as much as I would like. Sometimes when I get burned out on studying, I take a little break and do these things in their place. Sometimes I can devote only one hour to a game or a show. This is, in fact, the primary reason why I’m very far behind on many of the shows I like. Instead of spending my evening hours in front of the TV, I spend it in front of an open book. I generally binge my TV shows on the weekends to catch up.

If you’re a trucker and spend most of your time on the road, audiobooks and podcasts are PERFECT for you. You can just plug in your MP3 Player to your truck’s radio and listen and learn while you’re delivering. If your truck is old though, you might need to use a cassette adapter. But, in this case, while you may not have a lot of time for reading, you will have a lot of time for listening. And hopefully, the upcoming Cerebral Faith Podcast will be one of the things you listen to.

I mentioned the trucker vocation because a few of my friends in apologetics do precisely this. If you don’t have time to read, you might have time to listen. And even if you’re not a trucker, you might still be able to listen to podcasts and audiobooks depending on what you do. Janitors are notorious for wearing earphones. If you’re a businessman and do a lot of traveling, your plane flights would be the perfect time for both reading and listening.

If you still have trouble making sufficient time to learn, pray about it. God will help you work out a schedule suited to your lifestyle.

Conclusion 

Hopefully, you find this article helpful. Remember, you won’t learn this stuff overnight. I sure didn’t.

NOTES 

[1] J. Warner Wallace, “Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for A More Reasonable, Evidential Faith” page 87, David C Cook

[2] J. Warner Wallace, “Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for A More Reasonable, Evidential Faith” page 88, David C Cook

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference to The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2rYatjU

By Evan Minton 

So you’ve just gone to the bookstore and got a stack of books you really want to dive into. However, you are also a dedicated Christian who wants to nourish yourself on God’s holy, inspired, inerrant word. But, there are only so many hours in the day and the free time you do have is, for the most part, spent reading. When you want to study The Bible, but you also have other books you want to read, it can be difficult to manage your reading time. You don’t want to neglect the word of God, but you also don’t want to let your other books sit on the shelf collecting dust until you can somehow get around them. What to do? Here are some tips.

Option 1: Read One Book Of The Bible In Between Your Other Books

The Bible is not simply one whole book. It’s an entire collection of 66 books and letters put together and written over time periods spanning thousands of years. Therefore, you could have your reading plan planned like this: read one book of The Bible (e.g., Numbers). When you’re finished, pick up that novel or non-fiction theology book you’ve been chomping at the bits to get to. When you’ve finished with your novel or whatever it is you want to read, go back to The Bible and read The Bible’s next book (e.g., Deuteronomy). Once you’ve finished with that book, go to another non-divinely-inspired book.

This way, you can get through The Bible and those books you stuffed your bookshelf with at an even pace.

Option 2: Put The Bible On Hold For A Little While Until You Complete Your Stack.

Depending on how fast you can get through a book, how many books you need to get through, you may want to try this option. If all you’ve got is 2 or 3 400 page books, and like me, you can burn through books of that length over 2 days (reading 4 hours at a time), then in taking this option, you won’t be putting scripture on hold for an immense amount of time.

Option 3: The Bible During The Week, Other Books On The Weekend

Another option you can choose is to read The Bible every weekday and reserve your weekends for reading novels, apologetics books, theology books, science books, etc. I suspect this may be the most appealing for many of this blog’s readers. For Monday through Friday, read The Bible at your usual pace. Once Saturday comes along, you can put The Bible away to read a non-inspired work like A Hellacious Doctrine: A Biblical Defense Of The Doctrine Of Hell by Evan Minton ((shameless plug)). Once Monday comes along, put the book God didn’t write back on the shelf and continue with The Bible.

Option 4: Read The Bible And A Non-Bible Every Day.

Let’s say you have 4 hours of free time every evening. You can read The Bible for those first two, and a non-biblical book for the second two. Or if you only have 2 hours, read The Bible for one hour and the non-Bible for the second hour. This way, you kill two birds with one stone.

One con with this option is that it’s difficult to digest and meditate on the content of both books at once. This is why I’m a “One book at a time” kind of guy. If you’ve just read The Bible, you’re going to want to take a while to reflect on what you’ve read. As I always say “Reading The Bible without meditating on it is like eating food without digesting it.” Martin Lloyd Jones used the illustration of a man walking by a fire but not stopping to warm himself by it. Of course, you also want to reflect on what you read in non-biblical books too.

As for myself, I prefer this option the least. But if it appeals to you, go for it!

Option 5: Wait Until You’ve Finished Reading The Bible

You could just say to yourself: “These books I got at Barnes and Noble I will definitely get around to, but not until I’ve finished reading The Bible.” In other words, you could just simply go through the entire Bible and once you’ve read the last chapter of the New Testament, go through your non-inspired books. Once you’ve finished with all the non-inspired books you’ve read, go back to The Bible.
This is the option I take most of the time. For me personally, I choose to open The Bible and read it from Genesis to Revelation. It takes me several months to do this, but then when I’m done, I close the Bible and go on to other books. This means I read The Bible once a year like most people, but I get it done in about 4 months time (usually from the beginning of January to the end of April). However, I’m not liking this option at the moment, for the reason you’ll see below.

Conclusion 

I wrote this blog post as a result of a strong inner conflict. Having just come back from the 2018 ETS conference, I have a big stack of books I’m really eager to dive into. However, while these are theology books, books about The Bible are no substitute for The Bible, any more than cookbooks are a substitute for eating. I’m not sure which of these options will be best suited for me, but number 5 isn’t going to work for the time being. I haven’t gone through The Bible from cover to cover in a while, and I am starving for God’s Word. I am thinking of choosing options 1 or 3.

I think Charles Spurgeon was correct when he said; “Visit many good books but live in The Bible.” Hopefully, this short blog post gave you feasible strategies to carry that out.

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2qYHc8h

By Evan Minton 

This is a question that many, many atheists have asked Christians whenever Christians try to argue for God as Creator and Designer of the universe (by using, for example, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, or The Fine Tuning Argument). Once the argument for creation is over, the atheist will retort “Oh yeah? Well, if God made the universe, then who made God?” Children ask this question as well, though out of sincerity rather than as a rhetorical ploy to stump the theist. I know this because this was probably the very first theological question I think I ever asked. First, what does The Bible have to say about this, second, is it really rational to think that God even needs to have a maker, to begin with?

What Does The Bible Say In Response To This Question?

Scripture actually provides the answer to this question in several verses throughout scripture. What The Bible teaches is that God is uncreated and is eternal in His being. That is to say; He always existed and always will exist.

There are numerous references throughout scripture about God’s eternal nature.

Psalm 90:2 says “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

Isaiah 57:15 says “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity…”

1 Timothy 1:17 says “To the King of agesimmortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Habakkuk 1:12 says O LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die. O LORD, you have appointed them to execute judgment; O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.”

God says in Revelations 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End: says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

So, according to The Bible, who created God? The Bible answers; Nobody. Nobody created God. He has always existed and always will exist. He has existed “from everlasting.”

It’s More Logical To Believe In An Uncreated Creator Than A Created One

But wholly apart from what The Bible teaches about God’s eternal existence. It’s more logical to believe in an uncreated Creator than a created one. Why? Because If God had a creator who brought Him into existence, then we could ask “who created that God?” Does the God who created God have a Creator too? Did someone make Him? If so, then who created the one who created God? And who created the one who created the one who created God? And who created the one who created the one who created the one who created God? And who created the one who created the one who created the one who created the one who created God? And who created the one who created the one who created the one who created the one who created God?

It seems that if you reject the possibility of an uncreated Creator than you get thrown into an infinite regress of Creators creating Creators. But then…how could the universe ever come into being? For because before the Creator who brought our universe into existence (i.e. Yahweh) could come into being, the one who brought Him into being had to be created, and before He could come into being, the one who created him had to come into being, and before that creator could come into being, the one before him had to come into being and so on back to infinity. No creator could ever come into being because there would have to be an infinite number of creators creating creators before any one of them could come into being. No creator could ever come into being because there would always be a creator to precede him.

At some point in the regress of creators, it seems that we must get back to an eternal, uncreated Creator; a Creator who has always existed. Otherwise, we wouldn’t exist (and neither would any of the creators begetting creators). But why have a regress of Creators at all? Why have even a finite regression of creators? It seems that if one uncreated creator is all that’s needed to explain the creation of our universe, then we should just assume that the One who brought our universe into being is the uncreated one. Ockam’s Razor (the scientific principle that suggests you shouldn’t multiply causes to explain something beyond what’s necessary) would suggest that we not have a regression of creators at all. The one who brought our universe into being is the uncreated one.

Moreover, Atheists Historically Have Not Denied The Possibility of Something Being Eternally Existent.

I also want to stress that this isn’t special pleading for God. This is what the atheist has typically said about the universe; that the universe is uncreated and eternal in its existence. No atheist was asking “Who created the universe”? They thought the universe was “Just there,” that it was a brute fact. Although that conclusion is now invalidated by powerful scientific evidence and philosophical arguments. As Frank Turek put it “Something must be eternal. Either the universe or something outside the universe”. Since science has proven that the universe isn’t eternal, whatever brought it into being must be eternal.

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2D6wS5m

By Evan Minton 

When atheists accuse God of being immoral, they usually point to nasty Old Testament accounts like the conquest of Canaan, God sicking two female bears on a group of youths for harassing Elisha, or destroying humanity in a massive flood (Genesis 6-9). In addition to various other considerations regarding these specific incidences, one factor I always bring up is that God does no wrong in ending the life of an individual human being. Why? Because He is the author of life and therefore He can take life as He sees fit. It’s wrong for humans to kill humans because we aren’t the Author Of Life. The Author Of Life can take life. If you didn’t give life, it isn’t yours to take. It is God’s prerogative as God to decide when the date of our death is.

How Skeptics Typically Respond To This

Two common responses from the skeptic are typically raised against this as reductio ad absurdum arguments. First, they’ll say, if giving someone life entails that you have the prerogative to take that life, then this would entail that parents have the right to kill their children since parents gave their children life. Second, they’ll say something like “If a scientist were able to create a living thing in the lab, your logic would entail that the scientist would have the right to kill that living thing.” Professor Utonium could smother the PowerPuff Girls in their sleep. Dr. Frankenstein could kill his monster. Yet we intuitively recoil at such an idea. This suggests that there’s something wrong with the argument.

The Problem With These Responses: The Fallacy Of The False Analogy

The problem with these responses is that it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. As far as parents and children go, parents only give their offspring life insofar as they come together in sexual union, and the mother allows the child to grow to full term before giving birth. Yet, my mother did not create any of her eggs, and my father didn’t create any of their sperm. Secondly, they wouldn’t exist unless their parents likewise came together in sexual union and so on. Ultimately there would be no sexual reproductive process if the universe weren’t created and finely tuned for life. As I recently told an atheist on Twitter “Parents and having sex and conceiving VS. God creating life is comparing apples to oranges. Create a living, breathing spirit by the word of your mouth; then we’ll talk about whether you can kill it.” The point is that God is the ULTIMATE creator of all things (Genesis 1, John 1:1-3) and sustains everything’s existence moment by moment (Colossians 1:17). While my mother and father certainly participated in my creation, they didn’t and couldn’t have done it apart from the will of God. Eve recognized this when she gave birth to her firstborn son Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” (Genesis 4:1)

Regarding the lab creation, again, the major key difference between God taking life and you taking the life of your lab experiment is that God is the supreme Creator of literally everything (as I’ve just said). There wouldn’t be anything if God had decided not to make the universe. Even if you could make life in a lab, you wouldn’t be the ultimate source of life. It reminds me of that joke in which scientists tell God that they create lifelike He can, and when they scoop up a pile of dirt to do so, God responds with “Hey! Hands off! Get your own dirt!”

Is The Argument Ad-Hoc? 

Recently when debating this issue on Twitter, an atheist accused The Author-Of Life argument as being “ad-hoc.” The ad hoc fallacy occurs when you make up an explanation just to save your belief from being refuted. In this case, the Twitter atheist accused me of making up this God-Has-Sovereignty-Over-Life-And-Death position just to avoid the conclusion that God did something wrong in sicking the bears on Elisha’s harassers or exterminating the Canaanites.

However, this charge would only stand if that were my reason for making the proposal, but it isn’t. The church has long held that God is sovereign over life and death precisely because He is the source of all life. This isn’t something I or other contemporary apologists came up with to get God off the hook. Only if this position on God’s sovereignty over life were invented solely with the purpose of answering God-Is-Immoral arguments would the charge of the ad hoc fallacy stand. I asked this person “Can you show me historical evidence that any of the church fathers or the Rabbis that preceded the rise of Christianity held to the view that God has sovereignty over life and death SPECIFICALLY to answer objections like the Elisha bears incident?” He denied that he could and ultimately said that it was unprovable. I told him he ought to refrain from making unprovable assertions in the future.

In Conclusion 

The attempts of the skeptic to make a murderer out of God fail.

“The Lord giveth and The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of The Lord!” – Job 21:1 (KJV)

 


Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2O4YPML

By Evan Minton 

Some well-meaning but very misinformed Christians discourage the study of philosophy on the basis of a verse in Colossians chapter 2. In Colossians 2:8, the apostle Paul wrote: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits[a] of the world, and not according to Christ.” This verse has become the chief proof-text for anti-philosophy Christians. In fact, even the famous reformed preacher John MacArthur argued against philosophy using this text. In The MacArthur Study Bible, he wrote “You know what philosophers are? They’re doodlers with words instead of pencils. They just make a whole lot of verbal squiggles. Colossians 2:8 says this: ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy.’” Unfortunately, this verse has been majorly misinterpreted.

Keep The Text In Its Context

When you look at the verse in context, what you find is that Paul wasn’t saying “Philosophy is bad”, but rather, he was warning his readers to be on the lookout for bad philosophies.

To really understand what Paul is talking about in this verse, one needs to move beyond the verse itself. One needs to read it in context. That means both the immediate context (the verses before and after it) and its cultural context. Moyer Hubbard of Equip.org writes “Looking now at Colossians and the specific context of chapter 2, we find Paul addressing a local assembly that had been infiltrated by a form of false teaching that threatened to undermine the gospel he preached. Paul does not give us enough information to identify precisely what sect or ‘philosophy’ he is describing. There are some clues, however, that suggest that it was perhaps a syncretistic hybrid of Jewish mystical practices and popular pagan folk-belief: he mentions the observance of special days, including the Sabbath (v.16); visionary experience and the worship of angels (v.18); submission to the “elemental spirits of the world” (v.20);6 and abstinence (vv.21,23). Paul clearly is attacking a peculiar form of religious speculation, but it is impossible to identify it with any of the major schools of philosophy known to us from the Greco-Roman world. In fact, it is important to keep in mind that the Greek word philosophia (and its Latin cognate) had a variety of meanings in this period, and, depending on the context, might be translated ‘religion,’ ‘speculation,’ or ‘investigation.'”[1]

We gain more information on this incorrect philosophy by taking into account how Paul describes it in the 8th verse of Colossians 2: Paul says that it’s founded on “human traditions and the elemental powers of the world, and not on Christ.” The key phrase here is “[based] not on Christ.” Paul was targeting “philosophical” speculations that oppose the truths of Christ.

Moreover, I think the phrase “human traditions,” gives us a clue that this ungodly speculation was Jewish in nature. The phrase “human traditions” appears in only one other place; Mark 7:8, where Jesus condemns the Pharisees as those who reject “the commands of God and hold to human traditions” (cf. Galatians 1:14). Paul uses the term “elemental spirits of the world” similarly in referring to the Galatians’ doing the Torah stuff in Galatians 4:3. As Hubbard commented, “That Paul could refer to this syncretistic Jewish speculation as a ‘philosophy’ is in keeping with how Hellenistic Jews of the period sometimes referred to their faith.”[2] He said that because extra-biblical Jewish writers of the time called their theological beliefs “philosophies”. For example, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus calls Judaism and its multiple sects as “philosophies”[3] (those sects being the Essenes, Sadducees, and Pharisees)[4]

4 Maccabees refers to Judaism as “our philosophy…teaching temperance, self-control, courage” (5.22‑23). Therefore, it very well could be the case that Colossians 2:8 is referring to Judaism and the Judaisers, employing their terminology when referring to their beliefs. If that is the case, then one cannot use Colossians 2:8 to condemn the study of philosophy as a whole, for Paul is merely warning against philosophical systems that oppose the gospel, in this case; the philosophy of the Judaisers.

Dissing Philosophy Is Logically Self-Refuting

Besides the exegetical fallacies in taking Colossians 2:8, there is a logical problem as well; namely, it’s self-refuting. In any attempt you make to formulate arguments against philosophy, you will be reasoning philosophically about philosophy. Yet if you’re reasoning philosophically about philosophy, you’re engaging in the very thing Paul (allegedly) told us not to do; philosophy! This is why Christians who say “I don’t need philosophy” are frequently met with the retort “Really? That’s a nice philosophy.” and “You shouldn’t do philosophy” with “Is that your philosophy?” Are we to believe that The Holy Spirit would inspire Paul to teach self-refuting…. philosophies?

Conclusion
The Apostle Paul was not anti-philosophy. Those who argue that he was, do so by ripping Colossians 2:8 out of context. Moreover, to say you shouldn’t do philosophy and then proceed to give any arguments for it is self-refuting, as you’re doing philosophy.

I’ll end this blog post with a quote from Dr. William Lane Craig: “the man who claims to have no need for philosophy is the one most apt to be fooled by it”[5]

Notes

[1] “Is Colossians 2:8 A Warning Against Philosophy?” – by Moyer Hubbard, http://www.equip.org/article/is-colossians-28-a-warning-against-philosophy/

[2] ibid.

[3] Flavius Josephus Against Apion 2.47.

[4] Flavius Josephus Antiquities 18.11.

[5] https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/hawking-and-mlodinow-philosophical-undertakers

 


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