Christianity, confidence, and certainty

We can have complete certainty in the existence of God, and a high degree of confidence in the truth of Christianity specifically. This is justified not only by philosophical, prophetical and historical arguments, but especially by the direct knowledge imparted by the Spirit of God.

What is hell, and is it biblical? Part 6: argument from statistics

A response to Jacob McMillen and Josiah Pemberton. In this installment, I briefly demolish their “statistical argument” that if hell were in the Bible, it would appear more often.

“No one is righteous”…metaphorically speaking

A polemic against the argument that, in light of the apparently contradicting evidence of our moral intuitions, total depravity should be interpreted metaphorically.

Catholic and Reformed views of God and Scripture: a correspondence

A response to an email from a Roman Catholic correspondent, critiquing his presentation of the doctrine of Scripture and the purposes of God.

God and goodness: a second reply to Victor Reppert

Victor has posted a further response in our ongoing discussion regarding the nature of good as presented in the Bible, and how it compares to our moral intuitions. I invite you to read it in full; it is not very long. I will quote only pertinent segments here. The gist is that (I) Scripture only indirectly addresses the question in which we are interested (is predestination good?); (II) it is only authoritative once we already believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, so a preexisting conception of goodness is logically necessary to belief in the Christian God; and (III) it is unclear the extent to which we can get precise meaning out of Scripture via historical-grammatical analysis.

Regarding Red Letters

There is a heretical attitude, indulged by certain Christians, that the words of Christ, or of the four gospels as a whole, have special priority in the Bible. These are considered more important than the rest of Scripture because they describe the words and actions of Jesus, who is God himself. In certain churches, for […]