Round the Sphere Again: Summer Reading

With the Whippersnappers
From Juan Sanchez, a list of books to use with your children, books that  do not “merely promotes moralism,” but “explain the storyline of Scripture (biblical theology) and present a BIG God!” (The Gospel Coalition Blog)

And John Starke recommends The Church History ABCs by Stephen Nichols and Ned Bustard, a book that “runs through each letter of the alphabet, and couples [it] with a figure from church history.” (TGC Reviews) [Update, July 2: View pages from this book.}

For the Grown-Ups
What better way to spend the summer than reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables? And now there’s a new translation by Julie Rose that is, we’re told, “lively, dramatic, and wonderfully readable.” (Justin Taylor)

Much shorter than Les Misérables (a whole summer project, I’d say) is Mark Dever’s What Does God Want of Us Anyway? A Quick Overview of the Whole Bible. This one is only 122 small pages long (just a weekend read) but, says John Beeson, “teaches the reader basic biblical redemptive categories all the while whetting his appetite for the Word itself.” He concludes his review like this:

Read this book. If you’ve been a Christian for years and the Bible is like an old gym shirt—worn in and comfortable—you need this book to reinvigorate you and bring you back to the core themes of Scripture.  If you’re a brand new Christian use this book as a very simple guide to help provide you a roadmap of the most important book you’ll never grow too old or too mature for.  If you have friends who are interested in Christianity, read this book with them. It will pique their interest and hopefully cause them to assume less and be challenged to pick up for themselves Book that God has given to his people.

Read the whole review at TGC Reviews.

Update, July 1: (So it’s not exactly reading, but it does have to do with books.) I like to listen to audiobooks while tackling boring summer projects like weeding and painting. This months free audiobook at Christian Audio is Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. Here are the details.

This Week in Housekeeping

The Theological Term of the Week posts continue to be the most popular on this blog. That makes me very happy, but it also means that I need to keep all those posts up-to-date—you know, get rid of dead links and add  links to good content that has come online since the original post was first posted.

This week I’ve updated these:

modalism

• Added a new link to Martin Downes’s recent post: The Insufficient Explanatory Power of Modalism.
• Added a new link to Examining the Oneness Objections to the Doctrine of the Trinity from Department of Christian Defense.
• Added related terms: adoptionism and Arianism.

definite atonement

• Added a new link to Justin Taylor’s recent post: A Primer on Limited (or Definite) Atonement
• Added a new link to Thomas Schreiner’s sermon:  Particular Redemption (mp3) (He also prefers the term definite atonement to limited atonement.)
• Added related terms: substitutionary atonement, total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.

anthropopathism

• Added related term: anthropomorphism
• Note: There are not many articles or other resources linked in this post because I just can’t find much on this term. Do you know of any I should be linking to?

Theological Term of the Week

evidential apologetics
An approach to apologetics that seeks to demonstrate the reasonableness of  the Christian faith from positive evidences drawn from history and experience; a method of apologetics that seeks to show the truth of Christianity by demonstrating its factuality using arguments based on archeology, textual criticism, fulfilled prophesies, miracles and more. Also called evidentialism.

• An example of an evidential argument:

   A. The Historical Argument (an inductive argument with a posteriori premises).

  1. Historiography, textual criticism, archaeology, etc. demonstrate that the Bible is a reliable history book.
  2. The Bible teaches that Jesus lived, and claimed to be God.
  3. Jesus could only be (l) Lord, (2) a liar, (3) a lunatic
  4. Various parts of the description of Jesus’ conduct and the response to his character rule out his being a lunatic.
  5. Other parts of his conduct and a lack of clear motive rule out his being a liar.
  6. Therefore Jesus was whom he said he was: Lord, and God.

  
  Additional Steps, tending to add verification to steps 4,5,6

  • Jesus fulfilled prophecy in a way that a liar or lunatic could not
  • Jesus performed miracles in a way that a liar or lunatic could not
  • The historical fact of the empty tomb and the resurrection account cannot be explained if Jesus was a liar or lunatic
  • The phenomenon of the faith, integrity, and sacrifices of the early Church cannot be explained if Jesus was a liar or lunatic

• From Evidential Apologetics: Faith Founded on Fact:

  Although there are different varieties of evidentialist apologetics, they have several crucial aspects in common. First, evidentialism is primarily inductive, rather than deductive, in its logical form. Inductive arguments reason from as many facts, or data, as can be mustered to a conclusion that is shown to be supported in some way by the facts. By contrast, deductive arguments, such as those favored in classical apologetics, reason from as few facts, or premises, as are needed to a conclusion that is shown to follow from the facts. Evidentialism makes induction, rather than deduction, the primary form of apologetic argumentation. logic and science, and only in the context of faith is a rational and orderly world possible.  …

  Evidential apologists of all stripes hold in common a second crucial aspect: the conclusions of the apologetic arguments they employ are shown to be probable rather than certain. This follows from the inductive nature of the arguments typically employed. Inductive reasoning assembles facts and argues that a particular conclusion offers the best or most probable explanation of the facts. Such reasoning does not absolutely close the door on other possible explanations of the facts, and for that reason inductive arguments do not attain certainty for their conclusions. … 

  The third point on which all evidential apologists agree is that evidentialism seeks to employ methods that are in principle acceptable to non-Christians as a means of convincing them of the truth of Christianity. These methods are modeled on those used by both Christians and non-Christians in various disciplines. The evidentialist goal is to avoid gratuitous or disputable assumptions about the nature of things…

Learn more:

1. GotQuestions.org: What Is Evidential Apologetics?
2. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministries: Evidential Apologetics
3. Bible.org: Evidential Apologetics: Faith Founded on Fact
4. Dr. Greg Bahnson: The Impropriety of Evidentially Arguing for the Resurrection
5. Dr. Greg Bahnson: Evidential Apologetics the Right Way
6. Gordon Clark and David Hoover: Presuppositional or Evidential Apologetics?(mp3)
   

Related terms:

• presuppositional apologetics

Filed under Apologetics.

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.