Fear and Trembling

Apologetics 315 has posted an excellent review of R. C. Sproul’s book If There is a God, Why Are There Atheists . The original book is, in part, an attack on the notion of Freud and Feuerbach that religion is just projection or wishful thinking. Here’s a taste of Sproul’s book courtesy of Apologetics 315: The Christian God has some ‘attractive’ features that might incline a person to embrace God as a narcotic to help him face the threatening character of life, but these are overwhelmingly outweighed by the trauma of encountering God. Though man may desire and create for himself a deity who meets his needs and provides him with innumerable benefits, he will not instinctively desire a God who is holy, omniscient, and sovereign. The Bible does not try to conceal the fact that, in spite of God’s love and mercy, He is an awesome, threatening Being, a Being that man would not instinctively search for. The psychologists continue to argue that men like to invent protective deities ...

[For background, see here .] Here’s an excerpt from Sproul’s comments : The Manhattan Declaration confuses common grace and special grace by combining them. While I would march with the bishop of Rome and an Orthodox prelate to resist the slaughter of innocents in the womb, I could never ground that cobelligerency on the assumption that we share a common faith and a unified understanding of the gospel.

I’ve been doing a little reading on Quantum Mechanics lately (see here , here , and here for interesting articles). There are many abstract concepts that do not have any reality behind them: randomness, chance, and luck, for example. These have no bearing in the real world because they are abstract concepts used to describe things we cannot understand yet. If we knew the causal relationships, we would not need a concept of chance or probability. I have no reason to believe in chance or randomness in the concrete sense because I believe that all events have a cause. I may not be able to identify the cause yet, but I have no reason to believe in an uncased event. Chance has no existence. It is not a thing, no-thing, nothing. It cannot cause anything since it has no existence in reality. It has no being, and hence no power. It’s similar to the idea of a negative number. We can never find a negative number of tangible things. This is one of the first rules I learned as an engineering stud...

R. C. Sproul does a good job of explaining what we can know about the origin of sin in “The Mystery of Iniquity” over at Ligonier’s blog. I’ve tried to tackle the issue here and here , but R. C. does a more professional job.

Skeptic magazine gives a summary of possible explanations for the universe we live in. The article (“Why This Universe?: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations,” Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Skeptic, Volume 13, Number 2, 2007 .) starts with the question “Why is there something rater than nothing?” and notes many of the alternatives scientists and philosophers put fort as possible answers. This listing, or taxonomy, is intended to promote useful discussion about the alternatives. The article states that each of the alternatives given is “logically permissible.” This is a misnomer; “logically permissible” implies that there is a cogent argument in support of the explanation. Since many of the explanations are contradictory, this cannot be the case. To imply otherwise makes no sense. The author does note that these possibilities “should not be mistaken for scientific theories or even scientific possibilities.” I agree, but would add that logic in and of itself excludes all of the poss...

Ligonier now has a blog here . This should be well written and informative.

Here’s a second post on Victor J. Stenger’s book. I’ll focus on his idea of lack of structure at the universe’s beginning. I’ll then look at some of the implications of his interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Stenger, Victor J. God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does not Exist , Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2007) He is clear and easy to understand here: “At [the beginning] the universe had no structure. That meant that it had no distinguishable place, direction, or time. In such a situation, the conservation laws apply.” (131) Elsewhere he writes, “…an expanding universe could have started in total chaos and still formed localized order consistent with the second law [of thermodynamics].” (118) First, as I have noted before , there may well be structure and order in the universe that we cannot yet identify. Vast complexity is difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend. The ever increasing body of knowledge held by science is apparent in his...

An interesting quote from R. C. Sproul over at Between Two Worlds : …My point is that there is confusion about what the doctrine of limited atonement actually teaches. However, I think that if a person really understands the other four points and is thinking at all clearly, he must believe in limited atonement because of what Martin Luther called a resistless logic. Still, there are people who live in a happy inconsistency. I believe it's possible for a person to believe four points without believing the fifth, although I don't think it's possible to do it consistently or logically. However, it is certainly a possibility given our proclivity for inconsistency… Sproul’s approach has always been inconsistent with many people’s miss-conception of Five Point Calvinism. I think R. C. puts forth the doctrine clearly and well , and I agree with him. The idea is very distinct from what Baptist history knows as “high Calvinism” (put down within Baptist circles by Andrew Fuller) or...

R. C. Sproul has a new book out that I just had the chance to read. It’s called The Truth of The Cross . Dr. Sproul is at his best when he writes or speaks on Christ’s life and sacrifice for the sins of the church. This book is no expectation. I hardily recommend it to anyone who has questions about the reasons behind the cross and it’s necessity.

There are many pastors and teachers I could look up to as heros. I have benefited greatly from their ministries. To list a few: John Piper R. C. Sproul Al Mohler Norman Geisler Michael S. Horton and Rod Rosenbladt . This is good. I have learned a lot from these men, especially Dr. Sproul. (I’ve heard and read so much of his teaching that there is a certain sense that even when I am disagreeing with him it is him I am disagreeing with.) This is also bad. I could easily get to the point where I put them on a pedestal. I could begin to take what they say as authoritative in am inappropriate sense. (No man, no matter how smart or gifted, should get an implicit faith.) I could fail to check what they say against the Scriptures. I could fail to see their imperfections and shortcomings. Al of this could be dangerous to my Christian life. If carried to far, hero worship can even ship-wreck a person’s faith. The moral failure of a pastor I had idealized as a youth was almost the undo...

Question to R. C. Sproul: Some modern theologians believe that we can’t prove God’s existence. They say that devising proofs for God’s existence is a useless exercise; it’s just a matter of faith; we don’t need reasons. Is that approach consistent with the Bible? Part of R. C.’s Answer: No, I don’t think it’s consistent with the Bible at all. I believe, first of all, that we can prove the existence of God. I think we can do more than just give evidence. I think we can argue compellingly for the existence of God, at least in terms of a self-existent, eternal being. Further, I think Aquinas was absolutely right when he developed the concept of a “necessary being”. What do we mean by a “necessary being”? We mean that this particular being is one who is both ontologically necessary, that is, that he is a being who cannot not be, as well as being a being who is logically necessary. When I say that God is logically necessary what I mean is this: it is illogical and inconceivable that you can...

“…most Americans believe that their major problem is something that has happened to them, and their solution is to be found within. In other words, they believe that they have an alien problem that is to be resolved with an inner solution . What the gospel says, however, is that we have an inner problem that demands and alien solution – a righteousness that is not our own. Once we begin to understand how that dichotomy comes together, we can see better how we can think we are talking about the gospel, yet people in this culture will hear it as merely a new form of therapy.” – R. Albert Mohler (“Preaching with the Culture in View,” in Preaching the Cross , Dever, Mark, et. al. p. 81) Recent events in my personal life have brought me face to face with my biggest problem, and I stare at him in the mirror every morning when I shave. I am my own worst enemy. I can’t blame Satan, or the media, or the moviemakers, or the magazine publishers, or the boss, or my wife. I am the one whose desi...

At the request of a Muslim I have been having online exchanges with, I wrote the following bit about the trinity. I have reprinted it here, along with links, quotes and augmentations. You had requested an explanation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Pardon my delayed response due to my father-in-law’s illness. To begin, God is one being. Christians do not worship three Gods, but one (Deuteronomy 6:45; Isaiah 45:5-6 and 21-22; Isaiah 44:6-8). We do not worship more than one God as Surah 5:73 states. That would be “tritheism,” which we condemn. Baptists like myself do not see Jesus, Mary, and God as the trinity as is suggested by Surah 5:116-117. This elevates a human, Mary, into the God-head, and we would see that as “adoptionism,” which we condemn. We would also condemn as adoptionism any thinking that says Jesus ever became God. Jesus was not created. He did not become God at some time. He has eternally existed. God exists as three persons and as one being. This is logical...

Time after time an opponent of Christianity accuses us of circular reasoning . The statement we are accused of making goes like this: The Bible claims to be God’s Word so it is God’s Word. That is “begging the question,” where the conclusion is true only if the premise is true. However, the actual argument put forth by Christians is linear and logical. In bullet point form, it goes like this: · The Bible is good history ( The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell). · We can trust what the Bible says about Jesus because it is based on eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-4, 2 Peter 1:16). These eyewitnesses were willing to die for their faith. · Jesus claimed to be God. He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” and Jesus did not correct him (John 20:26-31). · Jesus worked miracles and proved Himself to be God (John 14: 9-11). · Jesus affirmed the truth of God’s Word. He said, “Man shall not l...

Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) evokes strong feelings. Most of the arguments presented are not cogent, and the next post or two will address some of them. Not everything will be addressed. Some of the statements he makes about probabilistic arguments seem intelligent. Some do not justify a response. The case presented will outline a strong confirmation of the basic tenants of Christianity. Dawkins quickly dismisses all of the classical arguments for God’s existence without reason. His issue is the infinite regress. This argument, called the cosmological argument because it is an argument from the existence of the cosmos, is more fully stated in the post Logic and God 3 . There are other forms of this argument ( what Norman Geisler calls the horizontal form for example ), but those are better stated elsewhere. In brief, the argument proceeds backwards through the series of causes that arrive at us. We cannot expect that an infinite reg...

Many contemporary believers do not feel the need to have a rational basis for their Christian faith. For example, Robert Webber’s comment in Ancient-Future Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999, p. 185): …Christianity is not provable outside itself through the scientific method. One must come to the Christian faith believing that it is true and embrace it as such without any dependence on data outside the faith. Christianity requires trust, a believing embrace, a willingness to step inside its story apart from any dependence on historical, scientific, or rational persuasion. So, according to Webber, Christianity requires a blind leap of faith for entrance. I always think of the Indiana Jones movie where he must jump across a chasm not knowing whether there is anything to catch him as he falls. When he jumps, he falls onto a bridge that was hidden from view by exquisite camouflage. Is that kind of leap the requirement, or are there reasons to believe what we believe? Let’s l...

Robert Webber’s comments in Listening to the Beliefs of the Emergent Church lead me to take a book by him off my shelf which had been there for a few years: Ancient-Future Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999). I looked back through my underlinings and dog-ears to find some quotes. Several came to mind. One is on page 177: The debate of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries paved the way for the Reformers who chose the doctrine of sola scriptura. The Reformers pulled Scripture away from the church, separated it from tradition, set it over against popes and councils, and made it stand on its own. I question whether the Reformers pulled the Bible away from church tradition. It is more likely that they returned to the original interpretations of Scriptural authority held by the Early Church Fathers. Keith Mathison in his excellent book The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, Indiana: Canon Press, 2001) shows that the interpretation of the early church on Scriptural auth...

I recently found a quote from R. C. Sproul that I would like to share and comment on today. I hope some of you know the reputation I have, a bad reputation with some, of being an unreconstructed, Aristotelian logician. I get that criticism all the time. I am told, “Sproul reduces the faith to logic.” Actually, I hope people keep saying that about me. I hope it gets worse. I think we are living in the most anti-intellectual period in the history of the church, and I think the most important thing that has to happen on Sunday mornings is a spiritual awakening of the mind. As downloaded from http://theresurgence.com/r_c_sproul_1993-01_the_recovery_of_worship on 3/21/07. It is no secret to many who know me that I like R. C. I own and have read every book that he has published, including a couple that are out of print. I own much of my interest in theology to him. He was the first theologian that I ever read who did not shy away from philosophy. In medieval times, teachers in the churc...