Developing a Christian Apologetics Educational Program

Developing a Christian Apologetics Educational Program
Author: Douglas E. Potter
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2010-02-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1556355033

Many are expressing concern about the future of Christian youth today. What can we do to help ensure they will keep their evangelical faith once they graduate from high school? Can Christian apologetics provide an educational solution? Developing A Christian Apologetics Educational Program explores issues certain to be encountered by secondary school educators who want to teach apologetics as a distinct subject of study either as a part of a Christian institutional or home school curriculum. This book helps the apologist and educator blend their skills to soundly integrate the two subjects. A solution is sought by providing a background and rational for implementing an age-level appropriate apologetics course at this critical level of Christian education. This book is designed as a text to supplement those used in Christian education or applied apologetics courses; each chapter successively builds upon the other to help develop an educational philosophy that supports the inclusion of apologetics in the curriculum. A model is explained and materials are given to support the development of a curriculum in Christian Apologetics Education at the secondary level. Practical ideas are explored and a sample unit of instruction is supplied to help the educator develop an evangelical approach to education that is in the classical apologetic tradition.

The Failure of Natural Theology

The Failure of Natural Theology
Author: Jeffrey D Johnson
Publisher: New Studies in Theology Series
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2021-09-15
Genre: Natural theology
ISBN: 9781952599378

Aristotle's cosmological argument is the foundation of Aquinas's doctrine of God. For Thomas, the cosmological argument not only speaks of God's existence but also of God's nature. By learning that the unmoved mover is behind all moving objects, we learn something true about the essence of God-principally, that God is immobile. But therein lies the problem for Thomas. The Catholic Church had already condemned Aristotle's unmoved mover because, according to Aristotle, the unmoved mover is unable to be the moving cause (i.e., Creator) and governor of the universe-or else he would cease to be immobile. By seeking to baptize Aristotle into the Catholic Church, however, Thomas gave his life to seeking to explain how God can be both immobile and the moving cause of the universe. Thomas even looked to the pantheistic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius for help. But even with Dionysius's aid, Thomas failed to reconcile the god of Aristotle with the Trinitarian God of the Bible. If Thomas would have rejected the natural theology of Aristotle by placing the doctrine of the Trinity, which is known only by divine revelation, at the foundation of his knowledge of God, he would have rid himself of the irresolvable tension that permeates his philosophical theology. Thomas could have realized that the Trinity alone allows for God to be the only self-moving being-because the Trinity is the only being not moved by anything outside himself but freely capable of creating and controlling contingent things in motion.

Reforming Apologetics

Reforming Apologetics
Author: J. V. Fesko
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493411306

Challenging the dominant Van Tillian approach in Reformed apologetics, this book by a leading expert in contemporary Reformed theology sets forth the principles that undergird a classic Reformed approach. J. V. Fesko's detailed exegetical, theological, and historical argument takes as its starting point the classical Reformed understanding of the "two books" of God's revelation: nature and Scripture. Believers should always rest on the authority of Scripture but also can and should appeal to the book of nature in the apologetic task.

Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics

Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics
Author: Keith A. Mascord
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1556351569

The distinguished American philosopher Alvin Plantinga has had a career-long interest in the defense of Christian belief. There hasn't been a major contemporary challenge to such belief that Plantinga has not, in some way, addressed. This book draws together those contributions, highlighting particularly Plantinga's groundbreaking work in the areas of epistemology and the problem of evil. Historical and biographical background information is included to give perspective to Plantinga's work. His theory that both theistic and Christian belief is warranted and basic is explored and critiqued, and an assessment is offered as to the significance of Plantinga's work for apologetic theory and practice.

The Agnostic Inquirer

The Agnostic Inquirer
Author: Sandra Menssen
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2007-09-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0802803946

A startling achievement....I cannot overemphasize how original and groundbreaking this work is, or recommend this book too highly. The argument throughout is clear, succinct, and rigorous. It represents the highest standards of analytical philosophy. All future work, if it is to be up to speed, will have to deal with what Menssen and Sullivan have done.

Epistemology as Theology

Epistemology as Theology
Author: James Beilby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2017-09-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351939319

Alvin Plantinga is arguably one of the most influential philosophers of our time. Much of his career has been devoted to explaining and defending the intellectual acceptability of Christian belief. Recently he has developed a comprehensive, rigorous, and distinctively Christian religious epistemology. This book presents the development of Plantinga's religious epistemology before considering Plantinga's mature religious epistemology in detail. Locating Plantinga's most recent work in the context of his theological assumptions, his previous work on religious epistemology, and in the context of the current debate over how knowledge should be characterized, Beilby blends theological and philosophical discussion to offer a unique perspective on Plantinga's influential proposal.

The Analytic Theist

The Analytic Theist
Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1998
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780802842299

This collection of essays and excerpts gives a comprehensive overview of Alvin Plantinga's seminal work as a Christian philosopher of religion.

The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology

The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology
Author: Michael Sudduth
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2016-02-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317018079

Michael Sudduth examines three prominent objections to natural theology that have emerged in the Reformed streams of the Protestant theological tradition: objections from the immediacy of our knowledge of God, the noetic effects of sin, and the logic of theistic arguments. Distinguishing between the project of natural theology and particular models of natural theology, Sudduth argues that none of the main Reformed objections is successful as an objection to the project of natural theology itself. One particular model of natural theology - the dogmatic model - is best suited to handle Reformed concerns over natural theology. According to this model, rational theistic arguments represent the reflective reconstruction of the natural knowledge of God by the Christian in the context of dogmatic theology. Informed by both contemporary religious epistemology and the history of Protestant philosophical theology, Sudduth’'s examination illuminates the complex nature of the project of natural theology and its place in the Reformed tradition.

God without Parts

God without Parts
Author: James E. Dolezal
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2011-11-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621891097

The doctrine of divine simplicity has long played a crucial role in Western Christianity's understanding of God. It claimed that by denying that God is composed of parts Christians are able to account for his absolute self-sufficiency and his ultimate sufficiency as the absolute Creator of the world. If God were a composite being then something other than the Godhead itself would be required to explain or account for God. If this were the case then God would not be most absolute and would not be able to adequately know or account for himself without reference to something other than himself. This book develops these arguments by examining the implications of divine simplicity for God's existence, attributes, knowledge, and will. Along the way there is extensive interaction with older writers, such as Thomas Aquinas and the Reformed scholastics, as well as more recent philosophers and theologians. An attempt is made to answer some of the currently popular criticisms of divine simplicity and to reassert the vital importance of continuing to confess that God is without parts, even in the modern philosophical-theological milieu.

Wisdom, Law, and Virtue

Wisdom, Law, and Virtue
Author: Lawrence Dewan
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2008
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0823227960

This title focuses on morals, how human beings should live their lives. The essays included treat the history of philosophy as a development that proceeds by deepening appreciation of basic questions rather than the constant replacement of one worldview by another.