If you ever wanted a book to impress your girlfriend by how smart you are, Clifford William’s Existential Reasons for Belief in God will do the trick…either that or she will want to break up with you because you’re just that nerdy. The title of the book presents no illusion or mystery to it’s inside contents. A creative cover image, not a very creative title. But this is a … [Read more...]
Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt: The Passover as a Foreshadow of Christ
Previously, I posted a blog entry on the Abraham affair as a foreshadow — a prototype — of the Gospel. As with most of the arguments for Christianity, the evidence from Old Testament foreshadows and prophecies is most compelling when taken as a cumulative argument. In other words, it becomes most convincing when many different examples are considered together. In this blog … [Read more...]
What Is This Faith We Defend?
First, let’s look at the answer for the first part of the question – What Is This Faith? … [Read more...]
Book Review: The Reason for God by Tim Keller
The Reason for God, by Tim Keller, is an outstanding response to the biggest questions of our day. Tim Keller is the highly regarded pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, a church with weekly attendance around 5,000. Redeemer has planted dozens of other churches and is generally considered to be one of the most influential churches in America. From the first … [Read more...]
Why the Resurrection of Jesus is the Best Explanation For What Happened To Paul
Over the years, I have had my share of discussions about what we can know about Jesus. I think a good starting place about historical discussions about Jesus is seen in the book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by New Testament historian Mike Licona.[1] In the book Licona discusses what is called “The Historical Bedrock.” These three facts about the … [Read more...]
The Appearance to Paul
In his first letter to the Corinthians the apostle Paul testified that Christ appeared to him after being raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:8). This experience transformed him from a leading opponent and persecutor of the church to its most famous missionary. The record indicates that Paul spent the last three decades or so of his life after this experience traveling around the … [Read more...]
Do Christians Commit the Fallacy of Composition?
When I debate atheists, from time to time I point out when they commit some of the standard logical fallacies. The genetic fallacy probably comes up as often as any other. This occurs when you incorrectly assume that by proving the origin of a belief, you have thereby disproven the validity of that belief. For example, atheists often claim that morality is merely the … [Read more...]
A Look at Bart Ehrman’s Objection: The Earliest Christians Did Not Think Jesus Was God
By Eric Chabot, Director, Ratio Christi, The Ohio State University I have been reading through Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. I could not agree with Ehrman more on several points he makes in the book on the problem with the Jesus Mythers. However, there are still some areas of disagreement. I will address one of them in this … [Read more...]
Who Wrote the Gospels?
One often hears the claim, made frequently by skeptical scholars and laypeople alike, that we have no grounds on which to think the four canonical gospels were actually written by the people to whom they are ascribed. The original documents, we are told, were written in anonymity, the attributions being added by scribes at a later date. This claim is made frequently by the … [Read more...]
Did Muhammad Properly Understand the Trinity?
In a recent post, I explained and defended the historical Christian concept of the Trinity. In this blog post, I want to consider the conception of the Trinity held by the writer of the Qur'an -- whom I presume to be Muhammad -- and examine whether this individual properly understood the view he so strongly repudiated. Firstly, let's briefly recap. What is the historic … [Read more...]