J.P. Moreland, Craig Hazen, Clay Jones, Mary Jo Sharp, Michael Keas, Melissa Cain Travis….and more!
The Apologetics ministry of Confident Christianity, Biola University, and FBC Euless to brings you the Confident Christianity Conference: Proclaiming the Certainty of Christ in an Age of Unbelief. The goal of the conference is to strengthen and equip Christians so that they will be better able to engage in discussions with people of no faith or of a different faith. In order to accomplish this, they have brought together an impressive team of expert speakers and workshop leaders who will present compelling evidence for the truths of Christianity in a way that is Biblically grounded and culturally relevant.See the event announcement and more information about the conference.
Come Let Us Reason is the third book in a series on modern Christian apologetics that began with the popular Passionate Conviction and Contending with Christianity’s Critics. The nineteen essays here raise classical philosophical questions in fresh ways, address contemporary challenges for the church, and will deepen the thinking of the next generation of apologists. Packed with dynamic topical discussions and informed by the latest scholarship, the book’s major sections are:
• Apologetics, Culture, and the Kingdom of God • The God Question • The Gospels and the Historical Jesus • Ancient Israel and Other Religions • Christian Uniqueness and the World’s Religions Contributors include J. P. Moreland (“Four Degrees of Postmodernism”), William Lane Craig (“Objections So Bad That I Couldn’t Have Made Them Up”), Gary R. Habermas (“How to Respond When God Gives You the Silent Treatment”), Craig Keener (“Gospel Truth: The Historical Reliability of the Gospels”), and Paul Copan (“Does the Old Testament Endorse Slavery?”). Also included will be my essay (“Does the Story of Jesus Mimic Pagan Mysteries Stories?”). You can PREORDER this book due for publication April 2012!
There are lots of great topics so far (I’m at 52:23); including atheism, Molinism, free will, determinism, counterfactuals and possible worlds, postmodernism vs. modernism, and etc.
Dr. Craig was interviewed by some of the folks at Reasons to Believe who have differing viewpoints from him. The differences of view make for a lively discussion. Plus, the interviewers threw in some atheist responses to Craig’s arguments to see how he would answer.
I will be in Phoenix June 10th-15th. I am looking for a church or churches on the north side of Phoenix to speak at Sunday morning and evening. Do you have a few recommendations you can send me? I really appreciate it!
My husband and I will also be attending the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting during our stay in Phoenix. We will be messengers for our home church, Nassau Bay Baptist Church. For more information about this meeting, check out: SBC ANNUAL MEETING
Pastor Bryant Wright (new President of the Southern Baptist Convention) talks with Dr. William Lane Craig about the upcoming Evangelical Philosophical Society Apologetics Conference. Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia will host. The dates of the conference are November 18th – 20th, 2010.
Islam is increasingly becoming the major topic of discussion in the United States. The Mosque at Ground Zero, The Christmas Day Bomber, The Gunman at Ft. Bliss here in Texas, and the recent Burn the Qur’an Day all filled the airwaves and blogosphere. Alarmingly, many professing Christians do not know the major differences between Islam & Christianity. Mary Jo Sharp recently had two formal debates with Muslims.
The first was with Ehteshaam Gulam in Michigan (June 2009) on the topic: “Did Jesus Die On The Cross.” This debate took place in a local church. The second was with Tabasum Hussain, Ph.D. in Ontario, Canada (February 2010) on the topic: “Women: The Qur’an & The Bible.” This debate took place in a local mosque.
The debates are lengthy, but are necessary in order to fully expand upon the stark differences between the two religions. The Sharp-Gulam debate can be watched in its entirety on a single YouTube video. The Sharp-Hussain debate is divided among four separate YouTube videos.
Feel free to take notes and use the information from these debates as you equip yourself and others on these topics of discussion.
Choosing Your Faith In a World of Spiritual Options Over the past couple of years, I have attempted to teach apologetics at an accessible level for the local church. Sometimes I hit and sometimes I miss this mark. So, I have continued to look for a well-reasoned, introductory apologetic work with a more pastoral tone. I look for a book that would serve as a springboard for church members into an investigation of their beliefs. I believe that Mark Mittelberg’s new book, Choosing Your Faith, fulfills this role. Mittelberg offers apologetic arguments, he calls “arrows,” that point towards belief in the Christian God, but he also offers a fresh look at how people choose their faith. He outlines six different paths to belief (or non-belief): 1) The Relativistic Faith Path, 2) The Traditional Faith Path, 3) The Authoritarian Faith Path, 4) The Intuitive Faith Path, 5) The Mystical Faith Path, and 6) The Evidential Faith Path. Mittelberg explains the benefits and problems with each one and what faith structures adhere to the different paths. He concludes that the Evidential Faith Path must be the one that tests all others, because it is based in logic and experience. As he states on page 155, “As we have seen, logic and experience are inescapable tools—you can’t deny them without using them—so we might as well accept them and learn to use them well.” Overall, I found the book to be a very readable and understandable introduction to apologetic arguments. When my own church members or seminar attendees ask me where to start, I will definitely point them to this book along with Timothy Keller’s book, The Reason for God. I specifically found the paths to faith helpful in understanding the differing backgrounds of those with whom I speak to about the Christian God. I also found Mittelberg’s book a revealing insight into my own beliefs and into how I came to faith in God. Thanks, Mark! MJ
Melissa Travis is the creator of the brand-new apologetics blog, Hard-Core Christianity. She is a current student in apologetics at Biola University. I had the privilege of meeting her, along with other students in the modular program, at my lecture this summer.
She has allowed me the honor of posting one of her first blogs here on Confident Christianity. I know my readers will welcome her and, of course, discuss the arguments with her!
Theological Problems with Theistic Evolution by Melissa Travis of Hard-Core Christianity If you have spent time around small children, it’s likely that you are familiar with the shape-sorting toys that consist of a container, a lid with different shaped holes, and an assortment of blocks in the various shapes. Perhaps you’ve also witnessed the frustration of a toddler trying fruitlessly to shove the round block through the hole meant for the square blocks, or a star-shaped block through the triangular hole. Try as he might, it just won’t fit.This is an appropriate analogy for attempts to reconcile the belief of the Creator revealed in the Bible with Darwinian evolution. There are fundamental incongruities between them, and the only way to make them fit together is to compromise one or the other to the point that integrity is lost. If you file down the corners of the triangular block so that it will pass through the round hole, you will be successful in accomplishing your end-goal, but the block is no longer a triangle. Similarly, proponents of theistic evolution (TE) consider the theory a diplomatic solution to the debate between naturalistic, neo-Darwinian evolution and the existence of a Divine Creator. However, this involves theological compromises that contradict essential tenets of Christianity. “Christians who are theistic evolutionists are in a cruel bind,” says Dr. Paul Nelson, philosopher of science. These TE proponents adhere to current consensus science, but with great detriment to the legitimacy of their faith.There are several variations of the theory of TE, but for this post, I will use the following definition: TE = matter + evolutionary factors + very long time periods + GOD To clarify, TE makes the claim that the modern plant and animal kingdoms were derived, by God’s providence, through chemical evolution (inorganic material changing to organic due to natural forces) and then biological evolution (random genetic mutation combined with natural selection) over enormous periods of time. Theistic evolutionist Howard Van Till uses the phrase “fully gifted creation.” In other words, he believes that the originally created physical matter had all of the necessary qualities and capabilities built into it originally in such a way that nature, using its unguided processes and laws, could bring about the grand diversity and intricacy of life we witness today. God is thrown in as the “gap-filler” in explanation of where this gifted matter originated. One of the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith is that God directly and purposefully created mankind in His own image. Genesis says, “Then the Lord God formed man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being” (2:7) and “So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female” (1:27). How do theistic evolutionists handle scriptures like these? They relegate them to the genre of myth or allegory. In other words, they do not consider Adam and Eve to be, literally, the first man and first woman directly created by God. They are simply mythological figures conceived in the minds of ancient Jews. Theistic evolutionist George Murphy describes them as “theological representations of all humans.” He says, just because “Judaism of the time… thought of Adam as a historical figure does not mean that we must.” This view is supported by the writings of some highly respected biblical form critics. In his work, The Legends of Genesis, the late Hermann Gunkel calls the account of Genesis a myth derived from primitive legends that “come from a period of Israel’s history when the childlike belief of the people had not yet fully arrived at the conception of a divinity whose operations are shrouded in mystery.” In other words, the purported legends were conceived by an uneducated, unenlightened people to explain man’s origin, his mortality, and the circumstances under which he lives.This allegorical approach to the Genesis creation account sharply contradicts the principle of authority and divine inspiration of scripture. There are ramifications that reach well beyond Genesis and into the New Testament. In Matthew 19:4, Jesus quoted Genesis 1:27 when he said: “He who created them in the beginning made them male and female.” Obviously, Jesus did not consider the special creation of man to be a myth. Thus, when TE supporters dismiss the Genesis creation account as allegory, subsequent passages are discounted and doubt is cast on the reliability of the NT teachings and the text as a whole.This brings us to perhaps the most serious theological problem for TE: the doctrine of original sin and the necessity of the redemptive work of Christ. If man evolved gradually from primate ancestors, where does sin enter the picture? Theistic evolutionists again attempt to utilize the scapegoat of allegory to explain away this predicament and seriously downplay the relationship between original sin and the Atonement. George Murphy says, “The Christian claim is that a savior is needed because all people are sinners. It is that simple. Why all people are sinners in an important question but an answer to it is not required in order to recognize the need for salvation.” Yet, Paul obviously believed in the original sin of Adam and its direct association with the redemptive work of Christ: “So then, as through one trespass there is condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act there is life-giving justification for everyone. For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man’s obedience they many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19) It is easy to recognize that this is another instance of TE supporters compromising on the authority and accuracy of scripture in order to adhere to the scientific paradigm.In his book, Saving Darwin, theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson rejects the idea of original sin, choosing instead to adopt the idea that mankind never experienced an initial, innocent state, but instead was imperfect, sinful from the beginning. Many of his TE peers agree with this view, going as far as claiming that the Bible says nothing about mankind being created sinless at the start. Giberson and others in the TE camp apparently choose to ignore scripture such as Ecclesiastes 7:29: “Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.”If the very creation of mankind was accomplished through gradual evolution with its intrinsic violence, selfishness, and other sinful behavior, wherein is the need for a redeemer? The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is only understood as rational and imperative when we recognize that it’s the remedy for intentional disobedience by a previously innocent being endowed with free will, an individual from which all human sin perpetuated. The God of the Bible is a just God (Deut. 32:4). He created an innocent man in his own image that had the opportunity to live in obedience but chose rebellion instead.Evolution, as a supposed method of creation, is utterly contrary to the nature of our Divine Creator. It’s a process that directly depends upon natural selection, which is driven by competition for resources, suffering, and death. The members of a population that manage to survive longer than the others (by fighting for and winning the larger share of resources, mates, and/or territory) are the ones that go on to be more prolific in reproduction, making a larger contribution to the gene pool of that population. According to TE theory, the genetic mutations that made those individuals “fitter” for survival and allowed them to procreate more are the very source of the gradual genetic change that brings about biological diversity of species from common ancestry.In contrast, 1 John lists the following fundamental aspects of God’s nature: God is love (1 John 4:16) God is light (1 John 1:5) [and] God is life (1 John 1:1-2). Would the God of the Bible, the one described as love, light, and life, use such a horrific method of creation? In addition, the Genesis account certainly doesn’t allow for this idea: “So God made the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and creatures that crawl on the ground according to their kind. And God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:25).An indispensable element of the theory of evolution is the frequent occurrence of genetic mutations (mistakes) in the duplication of DNA during reproduction. These mistakes are considered to be responsible for the theoretical progression of life from simple to highly complex. Beneficial mutations are preserved through natural selection, while harmful or benign ones are not. It is a process filled with dead-end, extinct species and wastefulness of life. It is impossible to reconcile this cruel, inefficient trial and error scenario with God’s character, which is so eloquently described in Psalms 145:17: “The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all his works.”Theistic evolution is the fateful outcome of philosophically and theologically naïve Christians seeking common ground in the hostile, intimidating territory where faith and the current science paradigm clash. The issue at stake is not just argument over an allegorical versus literal reading of Genesis, but also a stark misrepresentation of God’s nature. It conflicts with the biblical perspectives on the nature of man, original sin, and the necessity of Christ’s redemptive action in salvation history. If one but listens with a practiced ear, it is not harmony produced by the theory of theistic evolution, but a piercingly sour note.
Ladies, this is a apologetics/spiritual transformation series designed specifically for you! Throughout the summer, I will be issuing the challenge to women to return to a lifelong commitment of growing in the knowledge of God; no matter what stage of life you are in. We’ll have worship time, some interactive teaching sessions, question and answer sessions, and prayer.
This series is meant to be challenging, but in a relaxed and open atmosphere. Our goal is to foster a love of learning and an environment of unity amongst the believers and to be available to those who have questions regarding belief in God.
Sessions:
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Three Tuesdays this summer: June 8th (tomorrow), July 6th, and August 3rd
Nassau Bay Baptist Church Chapel
For more information visit our Facebook Event Page: click here.
