CADRE Comments

Yesterday, a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door. They were very nice people. They smiled a lot, and carefully explained to me that according to the Bible, the Kingdom of God is coming. They were people who I would happily invite out to dinner because they were very pleasant and loving. They gave me a copy of their latest addition of The Watchtower Magazine (every true Christian should always accept The Watchtower when offered by well-meaning Jehovah's Witnesses to keep it out of the hands of those who do not already have a relationship with God) and another little booklet called "Good News from God." I thanked them for both.  It may surprise some people to learn that I don't automatically turn into "super-apologist" when Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door. I intentionally choose to refrain from using my years of reading and study in the area of apologetics to reveal their errors by hammering them on doctrine. I don't do that b...

I'm a bit of a fan of J. Warner Wallace, the cold-case detective (occasionally featured on the Dateline NBC news series) who converted to Christianity and then, when he retired from policework, became a full-time apologist. I'm enough of a fan to be on his mailing list, and so when he posted an article last month (May 4) titled "The Trinity is Not A Problem, It's A Solution", I was particularly curious since the importance of the Trinity as a solution to certain problems has been a main thrust of my own apologetic work for more than 15 years. Not that I think the Trinity isn't also "a problem". I think it's fair to say that any complex theory is inherently more difficult, and so more problematic in that sense, than a relatively simpler theory, and I don't know of a theistic doctrinal set more complex than trinitarian theism. It isn't easy to arrive at metaphysically; and no less easy to arrive at by working out the implications of Chr...

Allow me some reflections today, on a connection to Passover which isn't always appreciated. On the first Passover, the Hebrews (the dusty ones) were instructed to escape the destroyer sent by God (leaving aside whether the destroyer was or wasn't God Himself in action), by painting the blood of a slain lamb around their doors. On the last Passover (or the greatest Passover so far anyway, since we still celebrate it every year in remembrance as though we are participating in the event ourselves at that time), the One Who authoritatively sent the destroyer (or Who possibly even was acting as the destroyer Himself), voluntarily dies in a way the lambs had been symbolizing for centuries (as well as fulfilling other Jewish sacrificial prefigurations). The Lamb of God dies in solidarity with the lambs. But not only in solidarity with the lambs. The Only-Begotten of God dies in solidarity with the firstborn sons of man (and beasts) who were destroyed by the d...

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th -- the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain). Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and not-infrequently religiously. Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can ha...

Sometimes I'm asked to try to explain the Trinity simply -- sometimes for the humor of watching me try it! {wry g} And sometimes for the perceived apologetic value in my acknowledgment that the doctrinal set of trinitarian theism isn't simple, as if simplicity of a doctrinal set was itself evidence of truth (tell that to an astrophysicist of any flavor), or as if the complexity in itself should be regarded as evidence of unnecessary (and thus false) over-complication. There are only distant analogies to the Trinity in Nature, and that doesn't help, although that ought to be expected since we're supposed to be talking about the one and only self-existent ground of all reality. The Latin phrase sui generis is sometimes used here; that just means it's one of a kind and so every analogy to it for illustration will bring built-in differences from it. But one of my nieces (not yet ten years old) started catechism training this year, with some portions of doctrine (re...

Recently I was asked, due to my holding a minority position of which we will not speak (so to speak {lopsided g}), how "faith" and "works" fit with my position, the implication being that I have the wrong idea about faith and works and salvation somewhere. The specifics don't matter, since I am sometimes accused of having a "works" based salvation, and I am sometimes accused of having a "faith" based salvation, and I am sometimes accused of having an idea of salvation based on nothing at all. In fact, my idea of salvation follows from trinitarian theology, and from trying to reckon scriptural testimony coherently (exegetics); so it isn't surprising that I get accused of one thing or another, because (as I will argue below) trinitarian theology gives an important place to both faith and works, while of course ideas of faith and works in salvation which conflict with trinitarian theism ought to be avoided and denied. Anyway, I answered ...

I've been having an interesting discussion with Dr. Keith Parsons, an old friend, roommate and sparring partner of a friend of mine (Dr. Victor Reppert of Dangerous Idea ) over at the Secular Web channel of Patheos, specifically in the comments of Bradley Bowen's article "This Knee Won't Bow" . Because Disqus (the comment engine at Patheos) gets kind of screwy trying to keep track of the threads of a conversation, and doesn't always indicate when a comment has been properly posted (leading to inadvertent double-posts), I'm going to try to collect our side of the commentary discussion (there are several threads) here for further reference. (Although Blogger's comment system has an intrinsic wordcount limit now, so we probably won't be able to continue in our own comments below, even if Dr. P wants to.) This isn't my Easter "sermon" this year (I never really know if I'm going to do one of those beforehand), but a much more techn...

With the recent school shooting in Connecticut, I wouldn't be surprised if Christmas sermons leaned a little more than usual this year on the incident of Herod slaughtering the baby boys in Bethlehem. I would however be surprised if many Christian sermons bothered to talk about the Old Testament verses being referenced by Matthew (or whoever authored/compiled/redacted/whatever the Greek text of The Gospel According to Matthew --but for ease of reference I'll go with Matthean authorship hereafter). That's because many Christian preachers would have good reason to be nervous about looking into why Matthew cites this incident as fulfilling a prophecy from Jeremiah. I on the other hand think Matthew's reference is hugely important and relevant, not only in regard to Christian hope for innocent victims, but also in regard to Christian hope for those who slaughter the innocent! ...what? Hope in Christ, and in the grace of God, for Herod and for his murderous thugs?! ...