Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful that the spring pollen levels seem to be dropping. I heard this morning on the radio that we had record pollen levels this year. Record pollen levels for us, that is, and close to the record pollen levels in the whole wide world ever recorded. I’m thankful that I’ve learned in previous years how to manage my spring allergies and that the antihistamines kept my reactions in control. After hearing that pollen-in-the-north news report, I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet before I knew it was there, and for that I am thankful to God, who is sovereign over both pollen and me.

I’m thankful that many of the plants in the garden are up now and I can back off a little on the constant hand watering.

I’m thankful that God has revealed himself to us in scripture so that I can know more of him than I would if I only had creation to tell me of him. Without the revelation in scripture, what would I know about the grace of God?

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be an encouragement to you and to others, I promise.

Unbeliever in the Dock

Quoting from Greg Bahnsen’s Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, Chapter 27, Answers to Apologetic Challenges:

Unbelievers take their intellectual autonomy so much for granted that they find it hard to believe that they are in no position, epistemologically or morally, to be questioning God and His revealed word. This is well described by C. S. Lewis:

The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.

God has, in His holy word, revealed the unholiness of this attitude. “You shall not make trial of Jehovah your God” (Deut. 6:16), as Moses decreed. When Satan tempted Jesus to do so—to push God into offering proof of the veracity of His word (as quoted by Satan)—Jesus rebuked Satan, “the accuser,” with these very words from the Old Testament. He declared “It stands written that you shall not make trial of the Lord your God” (Matt. 4:7). It is not God whose integrity and veracity and knowledge is somehow suspect, really. It is that of those who would accuse Him and demand proof to satisfy their own way of thinking or living.

In answering the objections of unbelievers, the apologist must not lose sight of that profound truth. It is incumbent upon us to offer a reasoned defense to the unbelievers, dealing with the criticism he has in an honest and detailed way. Christian apologetics is not served by obscurantism and generalities. Yet at the same time our apologetical arguments must serve to demonstrate that the unbeliever has no intellectual ground on which to stand in opposing God’s revelation. Our argumentation should end up by showing that the unbeliever’s presuppositions (worldview) would consistently lead to foolishness and the destruction of knowledge. In that case, and given the unbeliever’s sinful lifestyle, it is really the unbeliever—and not God—who is after all “in the dock,” both epistemologically and morally.

Round the Sphere Again: Apologetics

Both Simple and Difficult
Jeff Downs: “[T]he interesting thing about apologetics is that it really is simply thinking God’s thoughts after him and putting that into practice in an unbelieving world. It is that simple, but given the fact that we are sinners being sanctified, it is also difficult.”

He goes on to give us links to a few beginner apologetic resources, including a  series of videos done by Dustin Segers. I’ve only watched one (so far), and I’m recommending them on that basis.

Jeff’s list of three beginner apologetic books includes Always Ready by Greg Bahnsen, which I keep quoting here.

God Exists and He Has Revealed Himself
Mike Wittmer responds to a skeptic from a presuppositional perspective. 

My content presupposition is that God exists and that he has revealed himself in Scripture.  I appreciate why you would not accept this starting point, but you should note that I am not claiming to be “an oracle channeling God” but rather a recipient of his revelation. This is the important difference between us:  I believe that God has revealed himself to us and you do not.

I can’t say that I know a whole lot about the presuppositional method of apologetics vs. the evidentialist  method issue. I’ve been told that I argue like a presuppositionalist, but if that’s true, it’s only because that’s the way my mind works. That’s why I’m reading Always Ready and watching those videos linked above—to find out what I really should be doing.