Evangelism and Apologetics

It was way back on June 8 last year that we last revisited Plantinga’s repudiation of the common view that the reality of evil is at odds with the Christian affirmation of God as good, omnipotent and omniscient. Plantinga ends up with two propositions:
4. God is omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good.
5. God creates a world […]

There are those who think evangelism is a task to be carried out by those who have been specially gifted for this purpose. To their minds most Christians are simply called upon to live the life and only to be ready to share their faith when called upon to do so (1 Peter 3:15). However, […]

Here we are looking at evangelism which is not exercised directly by the apostles themselves. Before we do so we need to add a word of caution concerning the way we use this term “evangelism.” If we were being technically pedantic then we might restrict the use of this term to the oral proclamation of […]

In Acts 1:8 we read:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
It is the power of the Holy Spirit that explains how it is that the apostolic witness to Jesus […]

The promise of Acts 1:8 is addressed to the apostles (see verse 2). When Jesus assures his disciples that they will be his witnesses he means that they will be witnessing to him as the risen Lord. This is made plain at the close of the chapter when Peter leads the process to find a […]

In Part One we saw that by applying the language of Isaiah in identifying his apostles as his witnesses, Jesus is indicating that the witness of the apostles themselves is integral to the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. It is highly significant that while Acts begins with the restoration of the kingdom to Israel […]

In Acts 1:8 Jesus promises the following:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Here Jesus is responding to a question asked by his apostles:
“Lord, are you at this time going […]

In Chapter 2 of Evangelism in the Early Church,  Michael Green attempts to identify the obstacles to evangelism that confronted the early Christian faith:
1. Jewish obstacles to the gospel
(1) The stumbling-block of Christ
The early Christian missionaries were considered nobodies, a handful of men without rabbinic training, who got up the nose of the Jewish religious authorities […]

In the first chapter of his book Evangelism in the Early Church Michael Green identifies three main “Pathways for Evangelism”, that is, three features of the first century world that greatly served to facilitate the spread of the gospel:

Roman Peace
Greek Culture
Jewish Religion

Roman Peace (the pax Romana)
Here Green emphasises the success the Romans had achieved in […]

A friend’s church is seeking to develop a vision statement and, as many churches have done, they are considering framing this in a way that will involve setting a numerical target. My friend asked me whether it was right for churches to do this, given that in 2 Samuel 24 David was punished for conducting a […]

I was listening today to a podcast by Tim Keller. He made an important point about preaching. It is the people with whom one is speaking during the week who determine the way we will read the Bible when preparing a sermon and to whom we will address our sermon when we preach. This in […]

Philip Sampson points out the inadequacy of views of faith which drive a wedge between it and evidence. Mystical views of faith lie at the root but in modern times Richard Dawkins is particularly associated with the view that faith is the mortal enemy of evidence.
Sampson recalls scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne being interviewed by John Humphrys. Humphrys […]

Summarising Plantinga’s approach to this question, we began with four propositions:
1. God is omnipotent
2. God is wholly good
3. God is omniscient
4. Evil exists
It has never been shown that this logical set is implicitly inconsistent. Yet it does not necessarily follow that it is implicitly consistent. Can it be shown that there is in fact no inconsistency here?
Plantinga begins by considering […]

Following Plantinga, we have seen that no explicit or formal contradiction is involved in the following propositions:
1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is wholly good.
and
3. Evil exists.
We considered an attempt to demonstrate an implicit contradiction by adding the following two propositions:
4c. An omnipotent and omniscient good being eliminates every evil that it can properly eliminate.
and
5. There are no limits to […]

Following Plantinga, we have seen that no explicit or formal contradiction is involved in the following propositions:
1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is wholly good.
and
3. Evil exists.
We considered an attempt to demonstrate an implicit contradiction by adding the following two propositions:
4a. Every good thing always eliminates evil that it knows about and can eliminate.
and
5. There are no limits to what […]

Following Plantinga, we have seen that no explicit or formal contradiction is involved in the following propositions:
1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is wholly good.
and
3. Evil exists.
We considered Mackie’s attempt to demonstrate an implicit contradiction by adding the following two propositions:
4. A good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can.
and
5. There are no limits to what an omnipotent being […]

At this point we need to recall the example containing three propositions concerning the ages of George, Paul and Nick. To demonstrate that these were implicitly contradictory another proposition(s) had to be added that was necessarily true. Since the fourth proposition clearly was of this nature there was no doubt that the three propositions did […]

In God, Freedom and Evil Alvin Plantinga distinguishes between various kinds of contradictions and argues that it is not possible to construct a logical set that demonstrates there is a contradiction between the reality of evil, on the one hand, and God’s goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, on the other.
The typical function of natural theology, involving philosophical […]

On Saturday I attended an excellent conference on Apologetics in the 21st Century, with great input from John Dickson, Greg Clarke and Lewis Jones. John Dickson opened with reference to Aristotle’s On Rhetoric. I was intrigued by what Aristotle had to say about persuasion and so, following the conference, decided to read On Rhetoric for myself. […]

In a discussion between the Clerkenwell Symposium and Tim Keller various problems were identified in those kinds of evangelistic conversations which become “a point by point battle where our point of view is put in opposition to someone else’s point of view until one or other prevails.” I’ve taken the liberty of rewording these problems.
Firstly, […]

In the last blog on this subject I pointed out the obvious: that the reality of evil does not constitute an explicit contradiction of God’s goodness, omnipotence and omniscience. But does it constitute a formal contradiction? As Plantinga (God, Freedom and Evil) points out this depends on whether it is possible for the atheologian (the […]

In his book God, Freedom and Evil, Alvin Plantinga gives the following example of an explicit contradiction:
Paul is a good tennis player, and it is false that Paul is a good tennis player.
Technically, an explicit contradiction can be defined as “a conjunctive proposition, one conjunct of which is the denial or negation of the other conjunct” (12). The […]

In an industrial accident in Eurasia a Volga Tatar was horrendously burnt. Two weeks later he died without ever saying goodbye to his family. Who got blamed for this tragedy? The man’s daughter. Why? Because she had converted from Islam to Christianity.
In another Tartar family, after the daughter became a Christian, her father started drinking […]

Philosopher-theologian Janet Martin Soskice was once asked if she would participate in a radio program considering the issue of whether there are miracles or not. After she agreed she was told that there would be a leading humanist putting the opposite case. She was asked, “What would you say to him?” She replied, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” […]

I was chatting to Linda, an attractive young girl who married Alphonso, a young Brazilian, just seven months ago. We were eating feijoada, the national Brazilian dish. There were around 30 of us in the home of Wilson and Zelda Fernandes, who are planting a Brazilian church which is attracting many young Brazilians. Linda was […]

I was reading an interview with philosophical theologian Janet Martin Soskice. She related how she became a Christian at Cornell University and how after this she avoided Christian groups. She was afraid that she would be put off by them. She had formed this conclusion because of her dismay at the low standard of undergraduate […]

On Friday nights I co-lead a group of internationals. Most of them are mainland Chinese, given the area of Sydney in which our church is located. But other nationalities include Indonesian, Swiss, Thai, Korean and Anglo-Aussie. My friend and co-leader Allan Mao gave this “stunning” introduction to a sermon he recently preached on Jesus’ encounter […]