Round the Sphere Again: Apologetics

Answering Objections
A collection of Common Objections to Christianity from Skeptics answered by Steve Hays. Like, for instance,

How can it be just to send people to hell when they have never had the opportunity to believe in Jesus?

No one goes to hell for disbelieving in Jesus. Disbelief is an aggravating factor. But the hellbound are already lost. Refusing the gospel isn’t what renders them damnable.

In Christian theology, nobody can be saved unless he knows and accepts the gospel. This doesn’t mean nobody can be damned unless he knows and rejects the gospel. Rather, to be lost is the default condition of sinners. To be lost is not a result of spurning the gospel. To the contrary, it’s because sinners are lost in the first place that they desperately need to be saved.

From Monergism.com.

Presuppositional Apologetics
Listen to Dustin Segers and Sye Ten Bruggencate engage two atheists using presuppositional apologetics. The whole thing is 3 hours long, but you’ll get the idea if you listen to the first hour or so. 

The Cross of Christ: Self-Understanding and Self-Giving

This week’s reading from John Stott’s The Cross of Christ for Reading Classics Together at Challies.com is Chapter 11, Self-Understanding and Sefl-Giving. Instead of summarizing the whole chapter, I’ll just highlight a few points from it.

The self-understanding Stott writes of is not self-absorption, but a means to self-giving. The community of the cross will be “marked by sacrifice, service and suffering’ which works itself out in the home, the church, and the world.

The Christian Home
The Christian home should be marked by the self-giving love of the cross, but, says Stott, it is husbands who are particularly singled out. “[T]hey are to love their wives with the love which Christ has for his bride the church.” If our homes were distinguished by self-giving love Christian homes would be be more fulfilling and more solid.

The Church
Those in the church are to love one another.

We have only to remember that our fellow Christian is a “brother [or sister] for whom Christ died,” and we will never disregard, but always seek to serve, their truest and highest welfare. To sin against them would be to sin against Christ.

The World
Christ sends us out into the world.

Mission arises from the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus. His birth, by which he identified himself with our humanity, calls us to a similar costly identification with people. His death reminds us that suffering is the key to church growth, since it is the seed that dies which multiplies. And his resurrection gave him the universal lordship that enabled him both to claim that “all authority” was now his and to send his church to disciple the nations.

Next up is chapter 12, Loving Our Enemies.

Thankful Thursday

 

• I’m thankful for the garden potatoes that I’m baking for supper. I guess I’m thankful that we all like our potatoes baked, too.
• I’m thankful that my son replaced a couple of light fixtures for me this afternoon, because I’d rather not have to learn how to replace light fixtures for myself. I’m thankful for son’s patience when the old electrical box prooved difficult to attach the new fixture to. I’m thankful that the light fixtures I chose look even better than I thought they would. Sometimes things don’t work out like that for me.
• Still thankful for Natalie, who is becoming so reponsive and social. What fun she is! 
• I’m thankful that I have everything I need and more. Because sometimes I forget that.
• I’m thankful for a busy and productive day.
• I’m thankful for the historic creeds and confessions and for those who drafted them. 

Throughout this year I’m planning to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving each Thursday along with Kim at the Upward Call and others.