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Confronting and Correcting Cultists is Frowned Upon in Much of Modern America

November 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Correcting Mormons and Their Dreadful Doctrines

 
By Mike Robinson

… There are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed (Galatians 1:7-8).

confronting mormonism

In our postmodern culture, anyone who confronts and corrects others is labeled intolerant and prejudiced. But real love tells people the truth, even if it may be unpleasant and it might hurt. Christians must speak the truth in love or we are derelict in our duty. The Christian church in all biblical denominations rejected the aggressive and militant Mormon Gospel because it attacks the nature of God as it aims to lift man to godhood. The Mormons attempt to dazzle the culture by marketing a “Christian” image through high powered Madison Avenue makeover firms. Why all the subterfuge and the smokescreens? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should tell the world about all its unique beliefs. Many of the LDS folks are nice, sincere and friendly. But the reality: Mormonism is a completely different religion than historic Christianity.

Biblical Christians do not delight in bringing correction to obstinate allotheists. We do not want to be derisive or churlish to anybody. We hold to the presupposition that truth is a moral, pragmatic, and philosophical requisition. We are called to cast down “imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” We urge all Mormons to turn from their error and reject the fancies and fairy tales of the young glass-looker, Joseph Smith. The Mormons teach that God the Father was once a sinful man and is now a physical man who ascended into godhood through following Mormon imperatives. Additionally, they declare that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, and that faithful Mormons can one day become a god or goddess. This means they are henotheists, which is a subcategory of polytheism and places the LDS outside of Christian orthodoxy. These hideous doctrines are what vexes the Christian community and precludes the LDS from being a Christian denomination. The Bible states over and over that there is only one God. All biblical Christians believe in an absolute, uncompromised, ontological monotheism. Many Mormon leaders have taught that there is a plurality of gods. Mormon leader Spencer Kimball once said, “I suppose all 225,000 of you may become gods.” LDS Prophet Joseph F. Smith said, “Men are gods in embryo.”

A False Christ

Confounded Mormons seek comfort in the false notion that they believe in Jesus Christ too. But they believe in another Christ, a different Jesus. For example, I have a different car than you do. It shares some features that your car has: they both have tires, doors, and a gas engine. But my car doesn’t have a stereo, yours has one; my car is red, but yours is blue; mine has leather interior, and yours has cloth. My car is not your car. My house and your house have roofs, front doors, windows and carpet. But I have French doors, you do not. I have tan carpet, you have pink. I have a pool and you do not. We have different cars and different houses. And Mormons have a different Christ than Christians do. A different house, car, and Christ—they have some things in common but are different. LDS President, Gordon Hinckley, conceded that Mormons “do not believe in the traditional Christ. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak.”

I.
The LDS Jesus is according to Mormon doctrine:

• The Spirit brother of Lucifer
• One of many gods
• Mutable: progressed into godhood
• Once imperfect
• Married.

II.
Biblical Jesus is:

• Not the Spirit brother of Lucifer
• Always God
• Creator of all things: The same yesterday, today, and forever (Col. 1:16)
• Immutably perfect
• Not married.

Blasphemy is Immoral

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain (Exodus 20:4-7).

Contemporary culture doesn’t consider blasphemy immoral. When Joseph Smith propagated his deviant doctrines, that generation took slander against God very seriously. People in America have been prosecuted by the judicial system for blasphemy and using the Lord’s name in vain all the way up to 1968. Christian children in the nineteenth century were taught the Westminster Catechism or something similar. The Catechism asks: “What is God? Answer: God is a Spirit, Whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.” The antithesis of that creed is the couplet every dedicated Mormon child learns: “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.” The biblical Christian doesn’t look at this as just a unlettered motto, but it is an affront to God’s holy name. Confronting religious heresy is an unpleasant task that wins no friends. Yet God is righteousness and He calls His followers to stand up for righteousness even if it means doing the unpopular and tough assignment of correcting religious error.

Many Christians in the nineteenth century brought correction to the LDS church, but this novel sect failed to demonstrate wisdom by rejecting the rebuke in order to protect its pagan presuppositions and sexual anomalies. The LDS church has defended the right to break the commandments of God as they chastise Christians for the audacity of bringing reproof and correction to self-professed prophets. The Mormons have taught their members to break the first three commandments–they are accountable to the holy and immutable God of heaven.

In our tender culture, anyone who confronts and corrects is labeled intolerant and mean-spirited. But real love tells people the truth, even if it may be difficult and it might cause a little emotional hurt. Christians must speak the truth in love or we are derelict in our duty. The Christian church in all biblical denominations rejected the aggressive and militant Mormon Gospel because it attacks the nature of God as it attempts to lift man to godhood. Quine admits that “a naturalized epistemology itself” is “fallible and corrigible.” Latter-day Saint theology can only offer naturalized foundation for knowledge (epistemology). Thus it is fallible and corrigible. Christian theism is the truth and the foundation for all truth.

It’s easy to notice that Americans increasingly have a deep contempt for sharing the tough things about sin and hell with lost people. Many LDS members have complained about the use of the words “hell” and “repent.” Frequently they are repulsed by such words. They do not have much of a problem with the mush of the ultra-tolerant, decaffeinated, warm, and fuzzy modern religion, but they get very upset by a believer who warns them about the wrath to come. They tell me that it is distasteful to use fear as a way to motivate people to become Christians. Mormons genuinely dislike non-soft witnessing. The LDS often ask me: “Why are you telling me to repent?” And I usually answer: “Because I do not want you to go to hell forever.” The Mormon suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and hopes hell will just go away. He lives and moves in fear of hell, yet pretends his flawed righteousness will keep him from its confines. Hell is real and so is heaven. Everyone will spend eternity in one of those two places. We should patiently attempt to get the Mormon to the place that Christian philosopher Kelly James Clark describes: “Desperately seeking forgiveness, we accept the embrace of God in Jesus Christ.” Henry Buckle wrote: “If immortality be untrue, it matters little whether anything else be true or not.” That is how important eternity is. If there is eternal life, then that actuality is one of the most important issues with which people must ponder.

Abraham… Isaac… and Jacob… sit upon thrones… not as angels but are gods (Doctrine and Covenants 132:37).

As the acorn becomes the oak, the mortal man becomes a god (LDS prophet and President Spencer W. Kimball).

…[O]ur Father in heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man… our Father had a father and so on… (LDS Prophet Joseph Fielding Smith).

Gods exist, and we better strive to prepare to be one with them (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 7:238).

Come to the True Jesus for Complete Pardon

And he believed in the LORD; and He accounted it to him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6).

If you are LDS, another cultist, or a non-Christian, I urge you to cast your whole soul upon Jesus Christ; He is and has always been God. Flee to His mercy, love, and truth. He will not only forgive you, but He will secure you since He will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus is not related to Satan. Moreover,  Jesus died on the cross for sinners and rose from the grave: Come to Christ and find pardon, hope, joy, and love.

So when Peter saw it, he responded … “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up … But you denied the Holy One and the Just … and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. … But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:12-19).

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  1. W.V. Quine, Pursuit of Truth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 21.

For a unique and foundational critique of Mormonism see my eBook Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Refute Mormonism HERE  (also in paperback on Amazon).

Filed Under: Apologetics, Christian Philosophy, Cornelius Van Til Tagged With: , ,

Colossal Collection of Many Fine Essays on Frame’s Academic Contribution

May 20, 2012 By 1 Comment

Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame (Hardcover)

Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame puts the “giant” in “gigantic” since this festschrift honoring Professor Frame is over 1200 pages – Amazing! Subsequently if you’ve only a cursory acquaintance of Dr. Frame, scholar/academician/philosopher/worship leader who has been called Van Til’s second most significant advocate, you may be surprised to learn what a forbearing apologist he is.

Speaking the Truth in Love is teeming with outstanding essays by a variety of erudite apologists, ministers, and theologians. Herein are chapters touching an array of fascinating and diverse topics. For the Presuppositional devotee there are three essential chapters that offer fresh and potent analysis and application of Frame’s employment of Cornelius Van Til’s apologetic commencing with James Anderson, Don Collect and pressed further by Steve R. Scrivener.

Additional chapters (editor is John J. Hughes) have a mix of superb, splendid, captivating, ordinary, tedious, and lackluster writing from first-class scholars such as:

• Wayne Grudem
• Richard Pratt
• Paul Helm
• Vern Poythress
• Bruce Waltke (resigned from RTS due to his defence of “scientific evolution.”)
• William Davis
• William Edgar
• Peter Jones
• Reggie Kidd
• Don Collett (his chapter is his third published revision of his essay on Van Til’s TAG)
* Frame’s most recent reply to Collect’s defense of the Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence (TAG). See my analysis of Reiter’s update on TAG: http://thelordgodexists.com/2012/01/concerning-david-reiter%E2%80%99s-modal-transcendental-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/

• And more mostly fine essays.

An extraordinary chapter includes Steve R. Scrivener’s cogent essay contrasting and intermingling of Frame’s and Van Til’s apologetic while utilizing insights from Greg Bahnsen: fresh, perceptive, remarkable, stupendous, and profoundly contemplative. Scrivener makes use of the work of Frame, Van Til, and Bahnsen as he issues a powerful defense of TAG. He then reformulates the classical arguments in a TA formulation. One may not affirm all of Scrivener’s innovations and amalgamations, but all readers will be challenged and encouraged in the employment of TAG. Scrivener discusses the work of Craig and other non-presuppositionalists as he presses the need of presenting the Gospel as the center of one’s apologetic approach.

Another superb essay comes from the pen of Esther L. Meek on Frame’s epistemology in comparison with Michael Polanyi’s (1891-1976, a European chemist who became a groundbreaking philosopher and epistemologist) epistemic insights. Polanyi asserted that epistemic rights are obtained by central and subsidiary aspects of awareness while fixing on the article at hand while focusing on less important derivative things as epistemic backdrops. Meeks notes that for Polanyi “normative structures such as interpretive frameworks, or even languages, work like hammers… I indwell them, I pour myself into them, to attend beyond me a further focus or project. All knowing involves integrative orientation from subsidiary to focal, from `from’ to `to’ and beyond” (p. 619). Meek’s work in this volume is captivating, enthralling, instructive, and enlightening. A must read for Christians interested in epistemology.

Classical apologist R. C. Sproul acknowledged that “John Frame … has distinguished himself in the fields of theology, apologetics, philosophy, and Christian ethics.”

This massive volume offers several convincing assessments of Frame’s academic efforts regarding the following issues:

• Theology
• Van Til’s apologetic
• Ethics
• Worship
• Ecclesiology
• Classical apologetics
• Evidential apologetics
• Law and government
• Moral absolutes.

A chapter that is well-fitted for a pastor is Bruce K. Waltke’s explication of “Psalm 19: A Royal Sage Praises and Petitions I AM.” Waltke delivers an exegetical gem infused with precision and hearty application. His exposition is laden with exceptional scholarship that makes for a stirring devotional read and will drive many men of letters to their knees in humble thanksgiving (note: Professor Waltke resently resigned from RTS due to his defence of “scientific evolution,” but not “philosophical evolution”).

Two other noteworthy chapters discuss “The Attributes of God Within Frame’s Theology” (Derek Thomas) and Paul Helm on “Frame’s Doctrine of God.”

The price of this admirable book is nearly cut in half since its publication; moreover I would heartily recommend this volume for Christian apologists, philosophers, epistemologists, and ministers of all apologetic schools and disciplines.

See my two of my Books: Truth, Knowledge and the Reason for God: The Defense of the Rational Assurance of Christianity
And One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions http://thelordgodexists.com/books/

and my Apologetic E-books HERE

The Master’s Seminary Here

Filed Under: Apologetics, Book Reviews, Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, Presuppositional Epistemology, Transcendental Argument Tagged With: , , , ,

Knowledge and a Brief Discussion on the Gettier Problem

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Knowledge, JTB, and the Gettier Problem

 

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope? (Immanuel Kant).


Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe (C.S. Lewis).

All men by nature desire knowledge (Aristotle).

Knowledge in philosophy is most often defined as justified (justified in epistemology: has merit, right quality, good reasons) true belief (JTB). Nonetheless knowledge cannot be merely justified true beliefs as Gettier revealed. Knowledge is best described as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” For God knows everything exhaustively and perfectly. Additionally, logic is indispensable for the Christian and Christian theism (CT) can sufficiently ground it. JTB is usually, but not always, real knowledge.

The Gettier Problem

Gettier Problem: The tripartite analysis of knowledge as JTB has been shown to be incomplete. There are cases of JTB that do not qualify as cases of knowledge (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

A Gettier-type of illustration: I look at a school yard on a holiday and I see a child. So I have justified belief that a child was in the school yard. But the child I observed was actually a statue of a child. But around the corner in the school playground there was a child climbing up the slide that I did not see or know was in the school yard. Thus I had JTB but I arrived at the belief in a mistaken way. I was justified. It was true that a child was in the school, but I was erroneous in the manner I obtained the belief. The reasons I came to the JTB were incorrect.
A stopped clock was stuck on the correct time when I looked at it. I had JTB concerning the exact time of day. The criteria were satisfied, but I arrived at the JTB in a fallacious way because the clock was broken and was correct only twice a day.
Herein is the problem resulting from the lack of omniscience: one cannot know at a particular moment that one’s belief is true knowledge and not just JTB. In contrast, God is omniscient, He knows all things; men lack omniscience, so real JTB cannot be solely based on empirical observations, one must know some truths based on God’s nature and His revelation. This is a presupposition that furnishes the ground for true truth arrived in a non-erroneous manner. So truth is located in God’s unflawed, utterly precise omniscience.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30; italics mine).

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
The laws of logic (LL) are incontestable, indisputable, and unavoidable forasmuch as to deny the LL, one must utilize the LL to attempt to deny them. CT is sufficient to ground the LL and non-theism is not.

Atheism Cannot Account for the Laws of Logic

 

In this brief essay I engage the terms atheism, materialism and physicalism interchangeably: I interact with those three positions as per strict materialism. There are selected scholars who make distinctions between the three as well as posit subclasses thereof. Even so, ultimately they appear to reduce to strict materialism. Subsequently, general atheistic materialism is a physical-only philosophy. It asserts the belief that only the physical/material universe exists; there are no gods, angels, or spirits; only matter and motion. The advocate for strict materialism tries to prove that only the material world exists, all the while he uses immaterial reason, thus he supplies his own defeater. Hard materialism cannot justify immaterial objective moral values and the laws of logic.

 

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines (atheist Bertrand Russell; italics mine).

When Atheists, by necessity, employ the laws of logic while attempting to disprove the existence of God they are ontologically sponging off the CWV since only the CWV accounts for the LL.

1. If an Atheist asserts that the laws of logic are human conventions based on opinion or vote, then the laws of logic cannot be absolute because they depend on non-absolute men.

2. The laws of logic cannot ultimately depend on and spring from the minds of men or the mere cosmos since people and the universe are mutable; however, the laws of logic are immutable.  Moreover, they cannot be grounded on human minds considering the diverse thinking within the different human minds is frequently contradictory.

The CWV maintains that the LL are changeless universals because they come from God who is Himself changeless with universal power. Moreover the atheist worldview is grounded on the always-changing non-universal material cosmos. And God is the supreme Logos and He alone is the immovable and changeless base for the immovable and changeless LL which includes the LNC and the LOI.

The LNC is transcendent, immutable, non-material, aspatial, and universal; only God who is transcendent, immutable, non-material, aspatial, and universal can supply the a priori necessities to endow an accounting for the LNC.

see my book Truth, Knowledge, and the Reason for God HERE

 

 

Filed Under: Christian Philosophy, Cornelius Van Til, Presuppositional Epistemology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Horton’s New Systematic Theology: Book Review

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Book Review: The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Hardcover).

 

Review by Mike Robinson.

Michael Horton is like technology; he’s been improving our lives for decades now.
Ponder all his fine work on the White Horse Inn, ACE, and his numerous books. And what did he get for it all?
A professorship at a small Reformed seminary complete with some listless students (and some sharp and eager ones too!).
Mostly Dr. Horton toils for the glory of God–and that is just one powerful reason his work has made such a significant impact.
And in The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way the good professor offers an interesting and modern work of Systematic Theology. This volume is large, but breezy; yes a ST that is a smooth and engaging read!
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The Fondation of the Covenants 
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Horton is always covenantally focused and notes that “we were created by God as inherently covenantal creatures–in relationship with God and each other, and redemption restores this extroverted identity…” (p. 27). He reveals his main objective: “There is one faith–the Christian faith–and this volume is an attempt to explore that faith as it is summarized in the confession of Reformed Christianity” (p. 30).
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Dr. Horton does not attempt to avoid theological, philosophical, or epistemological concepts as he posits: “The widest horizon for theology–indeed for all of our knowledge–is the question of ontology: what is reality?” (p. 36). And that “Western atheism rejects any transcendent reality beyond the world of sense experience” (p. 39). He presses the need to understand the most essential antithesis for his “model assumes that God and the world are distinct–Creator and creation. The world is dependent on God, but God is independent of the world” (p. 41). Yet the “triune God created us to share in His drama, not in His essence” (p. 44). Horton takes knowledge to depend on the triune God for “epistemology depends on ontology” (p. 47). What one knows, can know, and warrant depend on God’s ontic status and not the other way around. Men must “recognize there is no such thing as a neutral epistemological method. We always presuppose a certain view of reality before we ask how to investigate it” (p. 49). Epistemic and ontic issues can be very complicated and tricky, and although the author may offer some hazy distinctions, he provides a respectable account for most of his positions (he is a professor of apologetics at WTS).
This modest presuppositionally-leaning ST includes:
I. Knowing God: The Presupposition of Theology Dissonant Dramas: Paradigms for Knowing God and the World The Character of Theology The Source of Theology: Scripture Scripture as Covenant Canon
II. The God Who Lives God: The Incommunicable Attributes God: The Communicable Attributes The Trinity
III. God Who Creates The Decree: Trinity and Predestination Creation Providence The Fall
IV. The God Who Rescues
V. God Who Reigns in Grace Called to be Saints Union with Christ Forensic Aspects of Union with Christ: Justification and Adoption Sanctification and Perseverance The Kingdom of Grace and the New Covenant Church Word and Sacrament Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

VI. God Who Reigns in Glory

VII. and plenty more.

Systematic Theology and the Christian Worldview

 

The author adds that central to a “biblical worldview, over against its rivals, is the qualitative distinction between God and the world. This distinction holds with respect not only to ontology, but epistemology. In His existence and knowledge, God transcends us. … Only the triune God is eternal, infinite, and omniscient. And yet, God is not only transcendent in majesty, but immanent in loving in his covenantal condensation” (p. 77).

Language and Theology

 

Horton discusses language in relation to the Word of God: speech involves assertives, directives, expressives, declarations, and other illocutionary acts (p. 121). And he offers a fine exposition of that which he is famous for: the basic distinction within God’s Word of “Law and Gospel” pp. 135-154) with quotes to that end from Calvin, Bavinck, Murray, etc. Regarding Scripture “the Trinitarian character of divine communication is crucial” in “general and special revelation” (p. 158).

Also included:

  • Horton discusses approaches, models and, methodology in undertaking Christian theology
  • The author’s theological approach is Reformed Redemptive-historical
  • He concentrates on various facets of modern theology
  • Horton contrasts Christian orthodoxy with several heterodox theological views
  • He utilizes a covenantal framework (influenced by Meredith Kline)
  • The professor rebuts sundry facets of liberal and postmodern theology.

He goes on to define Verbal-Plenary Inspiration as well as the relationship between divine and human agency in God’s revelation (pp. 160-163). Forasmuch as the source of VPI is “in the triune God.” Later he discusses various views of inerrancy including the Princeton formulation (pp. 176-178). The study of scripture is essential, however “the methodological assumptions of textual criticism are quite different from those of higher criticism, which as an apparatus of theological liberalism follows naturalistic presuppositions” (p. 180). We must always remember that whatever “the holy, unerring, and faithful Father speaks is–simply by virtue of having come from him–holy, unerring, and faithful” (p. 184). As Anthanasius wrote, “holy Scripture is of all things most sufficient for us” (p. 194).

Professor Horton discusses the incommunicable attributes of God:
  •  Simplicity: As infinite spirit, God is not made up of different parts; His attributes are identical with his being.
  • Aseity: Self-existence (from-himself-ness, a-se, absolute); independence from the creation (Isaiah 40:8-18); I Am Who I Am (Exodus 3:14); god is life; he gives life (Psalm 115:3). He adds Bavinck’s words that God is “unbounded, limitless, and absolutely undetermined.”
  • Immutability: Unchangeableness.
  • Impassibility: Incapacity for being overwhelmed by suffering (James 1:17; Psalm 102:25-27; Mal. 3:6).
  • Eternity (Psalm 90:2, 102:12; Eph. 3:21): God’s transcendence of time (pp. 226-258) for God is omnitemporal in the way He is omnipresent.

 

This large ST covers aspects of the work of:
  • Calvin
  • Duns Scotus
  • Aquinas
  • Turretin (theology “treats God not like metaphysics … but as the Creator and Redeemer”). Augustine
  • Beza
  • Rahner (Rahner advocates for some SV Council doctrines).
  • Plato (Dr. Horton asserts that “the biblical faith is opposed to any notion of a world emanating from God’s essence, with divine souls thrown mercilessly into bodies and the realm of appearances” along with a separate “world of forms”).
  • Berkhof
  • N.T. Wright’s (he refutes Wright’s novel view of Justification (pp. 639-641).
  • Bavinck
  • Vos (“the concept of knowledge is not Hellenistic” but covenantal).
  • Polanyi (like Augustine “faith seeking understanding” p. 102-106).
  • Grudem
  • Hodge
  • Kant
  • Hume
  • Van Til (Creator-creature distinction; i.e., archetypal-ectypal).
  • Descartes
  • Hegel (for him “everything that exists in reality is rational”).
  • Torrence
  • Some Puritans
  • And many others including interacting with and critiquing the work of unorthodox theologians.

 

The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way is practical, yet almost devotional as Horton outlines “doctrine, doxology, discipleship, and redemptive drama”; perfect for busy pastors, seminary students, and even most laypeople.
Recommended by:
  • Kevin Vanhoozer
  • David Wells
  • Bryan Chapell
  • R.C. Sproul
  • And other erudite scholars.
                                                                
Conclusion
 
 
In The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way one discovers an exceedingly useful and valuable tool for appraising an extensive range of Christian doctrinal and life matters, with an opportunity to evaluate various viewpoints in the process and to ascertain the supporting biblical data for each. I appreciate Dr. Horton’s depth of understanding, simplicity, and lucidity. This large volume has aided my research and devotional life. You may not be Reformed, nonetheless don’t let that deter you from buying this extremely well documented and annotated educational and spiritual storehouse. You may not agree with all of Horton’s positions, but the understanding you gain will be of prodigious profit.
also see my New Apologetic new Ebook or Paperback:
                                                                                                        ————————–

Dr. Horton has won the 2012 Christianity Today book award for best theology/ethics text for this volume.

The award states, “averting his gaze from the kind of popular evangelicalism that is nondenominational in style and never quite confessional in ethos, Horton delivers the Reformed goods to a new generation.”

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Philosophy, Theological Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Christian Philosophy Refutes Islam: E-book for Kindle, Nook, E-readers

November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions

Critique Islam

 

By Mike A. Robinson

E-Book Description

 It’s difficult to find books that refute Islam using worldview criticism and Christian philosophy. But herein Robinson produces an innovative book that argues that Islamic thought fails the test of reason and that Christian theism is not only true, but Christianity is rationally necessary and assured. Christian Philosophy Critiques Islam is a readable volume; accessible yet scholarly.

Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Critique Islam evaluates the claims of Islam and examines the evidence for the Christian counterclaim, equipping you with strong apologetic answers. This fresh edition provides resources and leading-edge argumentation throughout.

Robinson defines difficult terminology and explains challenging concepts so no one is baffled by the clear contentions he furnishes. This innovative resource establishes the necessary reliability of the New Testament, and in contrast with Islam, that Christianity is the only sound worldview; it alone provides logical, philosophical, and theological essentials.

This volume is a must for everyone concerned about defending Christian theism against the claims of Islamic thought.

If you desire to find out how a philosophical, biblical, theological, and transcendental analysis refutes the Qur’an and Islamic thought, then this book is for you.

Within its pages are numerous deductive and transcendental arguments which make it a very unique book regarding comparative religion. It’s a fine resource for a searching non-Christian, those with apologetic or philosophical interests, religious scholars, and ministers.

Christian Philosophy Critiques Islam is a clearly written and fairly presented statement of what Islamic Theism implies and how we as Christians can argue for the truth of the Triune God as we present the claims of Christ to Muslims in a persuasive and caring manner.

Logically meticulous, apologetically relevant, and philosophically indispensable, this is a richly illuminating work. Anyone interested in sharing the truth with Muslim friends or understanding the doctrines and theological foundation of Islam will appreciate this new apologetic resource.

Using an easy–to–follow format this book helps the reader answer questions like:

  •  Muhammad and Jesus Christ—what are their roles and who has a legitimate claim to authority?
  •  The Qur’an and the Bible—what kind of inspiration and authority do they have?
  •  Islamic Theology—What are the theological, philosophical, and logical problems?

Readers will discover that this is an invaluable tool for discussing and sharing the truth and life of Christ with Muslim friends and acquaintances.

Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Critique Islam E-book HERE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Glossary

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Inadequacy of the Islamic Worldview

Chapter 2 The Power of Biblical Inerrancy and the Weakness of the Qur’an

Chapter 3 Witnessing to Muslims: An Effective Approach

Chapter 4 The Philosophical Impossibility of Islam

Chapter 5 The Trinity: The Solution Not the Problem

 

Appendix I: Additional Material on Presupposition

Appendix II: Auxiliary Material on the Laws of Logic

Appendix III: Transcendental Reasoning and Skepticism

Appendix IV: Modal Argument for the Universality of the Laws of Logic

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Or a paperback that refutes Islam and additional false religions One Way to God HERE

Mike A. Robinson, author of 20 Apologetic books, long time pastor of Christ Covenant Church and instructor at FLBS.

Filed Under: Christian Philosophy, Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics, World Religions Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Atheism is Impossible: It Lacks a Ground for Truth

May 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Worldview Necessities: Absent from Atheism

 

How can a finite and fallible human being possibly judge? (Herman Bavinck).

Materialistic Naturalism “flourishes best in the garden of supernaturalistic metaphysics” (Alvin Plantinga).

 

When one attempts to construct a worldview based on anything but the true God, one will find, under philosophical scrutiny, he cannot justify or account for anything in the cosmos. The person who denies the existence of God uses the laws of reason (A = A; A~~A) to articulate his disbelief. Yet he cannot justify the use of the necessary, immaterial, and universal laws of logic. The laws of logic must be used in the knowledge quest inasmuch as they are transcendent, universal, invariant, timeless, and immaterial. Only a being that also is transcendent, universal, invariant, timeless, and nonmaterial can provide the required ontic stature to account for the laws of truth (Frege’s term). Van Til informs us, “The law of contradiction (a law of logic also known as the law of non-contradiction), to operate at all, must have its foundation in God” (Introduction to Systematic Theology).

One may try to flee from the true and living God, but when anyone attempts to escape the truth that God exists, he falls into a trap he cannot get out of because he must use the laws of logic. This point is well made in Van Til’s illustration of a man made of water, who is trying to climb out of the ocean by means of a ladder that is made of water. He cannot get out of the water for he has nothing to stand on. And without God, one cannot make sense of anything. The non-Christian has nothing to stand upon, and nothing to grip or climb. God is inevasible, unavoidable, and certain because He provides the necessary pre-essentials for the laws of reason that must be used in understanding and in knowledge attainment. The laws of reason are transcendent and universal. Only a foundation that is transcendent and universal can provide the required rational pre-environment to account for fixed logical norms since it is transcendent, fixed, and nonmaterial. When anyone attempts to escape the truth that God exists, he falls into a snare he cannot get out of because he must employ the laws of logic. Anti-theistic philosophies fail to justify continuously enduring-logical-norms and can only be asserted at the pain of contradiction. Van Til went on to summarize that “unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else.” This is undeniably valid because Christianity is “shown to be the position which alone does not annihilate intelligent human experience” (Defense of Faith).

Sin is a plague, yea, the greatest and most infectious plague in the world; and yet, ah! How few are there that tremble at it, that keep it at a distance!  (Thomas Brooks).

God Must Be Presupposed

The Christian worldview supplies the required pre-essentials for the laws of thought. These laws are necessary for communication and for the intelligibility of human experience. The pugnacious New Atheist (NA) has a hollow philosophy that works on the assumption that his sweeping statements made with harsh, stinging, and bitter force against Christianity are settled facts since he makes them with dogmatic stridency. Insults and unsighted conviction, flowing from a sinful heart, do not just make for bad arguments; they are embarrassing misapprehensions that cannot account for argumentation at all.  Christian theism can supplies the pre-essentials needed for debate, evidence, and knowledge; atheism falls short.

 

Also see my Book that offers numerous fresh arguments for the Existence of God:

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Filed Under: Cornelius Van Til, Covenantal Apologetics, Presuppositional Apologetics, Presuppositional Epistemology Tagged With: , , , ,

In Honor of Cornelius Van Til: Some Van Til Quotes

May 9, 2011 By 1 Comment
Cornelius Van Til: Some Quotes


Corneilus Van Til Quotes:
“I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else” (Why I believe in God).

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“There can be no other facts than such as speak clearly of God and therefore of God’s claims upon man. Every fact speaks of God and speaks of him in the imperative as well as in the declarative voice” (Defense of the Faith).

“If one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point. Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. He will have to hold that if he cannot attain to such an exhaustive understanding of reality he has no true knowledge of anything at all. Either man must then know everything or he knows nothing. This is the dilemma that confronts every form of non-Christian epistemology” (SCE).

“The philosophy of the non-Christian cannot account for the intelligibility of human experience in any sense” (Defense of Faith, p. 354).

“Anti-theism presupposes theism” (Survey Christian Epistemology, p. xii).

“If we are to defend Christian theism as a unit it must be shown that its parts are really related to one another. We have already indicated the relation between the doctrine of Christ’s work, the doctrine of sin, and the doctrine of God. The whole curriculum of an orthodox seminary is built upon the conception of Christian theism as a unit. The Bible is at the center not only of every course, but at the center of the curriculum as a whole. The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything of which it speaks. Moreover, it speaks of everything. We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly or by implication. It tells us not only of the Christ and his work, but it also tells us who God is and where the universe about us has come from. It tells us about theism as well as about Christianity. It gives us a philosophy of history as well as history. Moreover, the information on these subjects is woven into an inextricable whole. It is only if you reject the Bible as the word of God that you can separate the so-called religious and moral instruction of the Bible from what it says, e.g., about the physical universe. This view of Scripture, therefore, involves the idea that there is nothing in this universe on which human beings can have full and true information unless they take the Bible into account. We do not mean, of course, that one must go to the Bible rather than to the laboratory if one wishes to study the anatomy of the snake. But if one goes only to the laboratory and not also to the Bible one will not have a full or even true interpretation of the snake. Apologetics must therefore take a definitely assigned place in the curriculum of an orthodox seminary. To intimate this place, something must be said about the general subject of theological encyclopedia” (CA).

“To us the only thing of great significance in this connection is that it is often found to be more difficult to distinguish our method from the deductive method than from the inductive method. But the favorite charge against us is that we are still bound to the past and are therefore employing the deductive method. Our opponents are thoughtlessly identifying our method with the Greek method of deduction. For this reason it is necessary for us to make the difference between these two methods as clear as we can” (SCE).

“He [Christ] came to bring peace, to be sure, but the peace that He came to bring must be built upon the complete destruction of the power of darkness” (Defence of the Faith).

“We must rather reason that unless God exists as ultimate, as self-subsistent, we could not know anything, we could not even reason that God does not exist, nor could we even ask a question about God” (IST).

Van Til said: “But this identification of the act of creation and conservation takes away the element of continued permanence from creation. Yes in another sense also the permanence of creation is dependent upon God, but it must be sought through the realization of second causes, not by their denial” (The Will in Its Theological Relations: notebook 2, The Works of Cornelius Van Til).

“God, not some sort of God or some higher principle, but God, the true God, is displayed before men” (IST).

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Please Note: There must exist a certain, absolute, self-sufficient, and unchanging basis for the intelligibility of our world: God. He must exist to account for the unchanging and transcendent laws of logic. Fallible and mutable humanity cannot supply the required pre-necessities for absolute and unchanging realities. Only the Lord God can. The true God alone has the ability and character to provide that which is necessary to make sense out of reality.

See the new Presuppositional Book:

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More Cornelius Van Til Quotes:

“Christians are in themselves no wiser than are other men. What they have, they have by grace. They must be ‘all things to all men.’ But it is not kindness to tell patients that need strong medicine that nothing serious is wrong with them. Christians are bound to tell men the truth about themselves; that is the only way of bringing them to recognize the mercy, the compassion, of Christ. For if men are told the truth about themselves, and if they are warned against the false remedies that establish men in their wickedness, then, by the power of the Spirit of God, they will flee to the Christ through whom alone they must be saved” (The Intellectual Challenge of the Gospel).

“The Reformed apologist throws down the gauntlet and challenges his opponent to a duel-to-the-death.” (Defense of the Faith).

“God is absolute. He is autonomous” (IST).

I was brought up on the Bible as the Word of God. Can I, now that I have been to school, still believe in the God of the Bible? Well, can I still believe in the sun that shown on me when I walked as a boy in wooden shoes in Groningen? I could believe in nothing else if I did not, as back of everything, believe in this God. Can I see the beams underneath the floor on which I walk? I must assume or presuppose that the beams are underneath. Unless the beams were underneath, I could not walk on the floor (Why I Believe in God: Toward A Reformed Apologetic).

A restricted and fixed human cannot be the indispensable foundation for the unity of experience and knowledge. Van Til warns that “the only alternative to thinking of God as the ultimate source of unity in human experience as it is furnished by laws or universals is to think that the unity rests in a void. Every object of knowledge must, therefore, be thought of as being surrounded by ultimate irrationality” (SCE, p. 216).

A preliminary survey of epistemological terminology brings out that this terminology itself has grown out of a milieu which has colored its connotation. It will not do to speak of the inductive and deductive methods as though theists and non-theists meant the same things when they use these terms. The term induction means one thing for a theist who presupposes God and another thing for a non-theist who does not presuppose God. For a theist induction is the implication into God-centered facts by a God-centered mind; for a non-theist it means the implication into self-centered facts by a self-centered mind. The same difference prevails in the case of such terms as analysis and synthesis, correspondence and coherence, objectivity and subjectivity, a priori and a posteriori, implication and linear inference and transcendental versus syllogistic reasoning. A non-theist uses all these terms univocally, while a theist may use any or all of them analogically (A Survey of Christian Epistemology).

VT on Authority: “There are those, of course, who deny that they need any form of authority. They are the popular atheists and agnostics. Such men say that they must be shown by ‘reason’ whatever they are to accept as true. But the great thinkers among non-Christian men have taken no such position. They know that they cannot cover the whole area of reality with their knowledge.”

“Christ has assigned to his followers the task of breaking down the works of darkness everywhere. These works must be broken down absolutely. The soldiers of Christ must give no quarter to the enemies of Christ. And as they are on their daily search-and-destroy mission, this mission must begin with the daily cleansing of their hearts.”

Only Jesus Christ and His death on the cross can wash away all our sins. Jesus died and rose again. No one else has done that for you. Van Til asserts: “If God was to continue communication with His creature, it was either to be by condemnation or by atonement.” God, through His mercy, provided a perfect and effectual atonement through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Believe in Him and you will be saved.

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Filed Under: Cornelius Van Til, Covenantal Apologetics, Presuppositional Apologetics, Presuppositional Epistemology Tagged With: , , ,