Enjoyed your RTS piece. "Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil, not the works of his brothers and sisters." Great line. It seems to me you could riff endlessly on this theme of the intrinsic goodness and durability of human work product, and come at it from a dozen directions.
For example; the hallowing of human work product via God becoming a man and taking up the vocation of carpentry. If God found it worthwhile to build things with his hands, why would anyone assume these things will not persist into glory?
Then, you could throw economics into the mix. We assume that Christ's work in his father Joseph's shop was impeccable. But what does impeccable mean, in the context of carpentry? Does it mean a platonically perfect number of adze chips in the joint of the lintel, so that the joinery contains literally no gaps? Or does it mean a "good enough" number of adze chips, suitable for the structure being built, so that the Lord could produce this lintel efficiently, and go on to serve his next customer, delivering the lintel at a competitive price rather than some stratospheric, niche price?
"Babette" is a lovely movie. Very humane and one of my favorites.
I'm no theologian or scholar, but almost every snippet of Van Til's has always made intuitive sense to me, and almost every snippet I've read against him just falls flat also on intuitive bases. I realize that's no rigorous defense... probably just a relic of having been brought up in the healthier currents of fundamentalism.
Why *wouldn't* the Lord give a definitive epistemology and apologetic method intrinsic to scriptural revelation alone? It's hard to swallow the idea that he came to save the world from all of our sins *except* our intellectual ones.
A nice thing about presuppositionalism is it acknowledges that questions really can be answered by going to the scripture. If a man makes a wax nose out of scripture, you can correct him from scripture; but if you try to correct him from secondary and tertiary philosophies, you're just inviting a tar baby into the discussion.
And the circular reasoning thing doesn't hold water either, because God has privileges we don't. He's well within his rights to be self-attesting. That's why there's a Trinity... so that there will always be at least 2 witnesses to the truth of scripture. He doesn't require any external witnesses.
This is one reason that Christ alone can settle an argument with simple ad hominem, calling his opponents hypocrites, and it's over. Because he knows what's in the heart of a man. We, on the other hand, don't know, so we have to open the bible and do the hard work.
I find it odd that—even after his death—those at Ligonier/RBC are still trumpeting Sproul’s causes, i.e. classical apologetics over presuppositionalism. I listened to the dialogue, and found his argument incredibly thin, almost rote, as if it was possibly something assigned to him.
I started listening to R.C. Sproul while I lived in Billings, Montana in the 1990s and I learned SO much. Now I'm to think it is flawed? That's hard. Say, Brian, I need to change the debit card with which I pay for The Square Inch. And I don't know how to do it.
Paradisial Gin and Tonics - Bravo, well done.
Enjoyed your RTS piece. "Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil, not the works of his brothers and sisters." Great line. It seems to me you could riff endlessly on this theme of the intrinsic goodness and durability of human work product, and come at it from a dozen directions.
For example; the hallowing of human work product via God becoming a man and taking up the vocation of carpentry. If God found it worthwhile to build things with his hands, why would anyone assume these things will not persist into glory?
Then, you could throw economics into the mix. We assume that Christ's work in his father Joseph's shop was impeccable. But what does impeccable mean, in the context of carpentry? Does it mean a platonically perfect number of adze chips in the joint of the lintel, so that the joinery contains literally no gaps? Or does it mean a "good enough" number of adze chips, suitable for the structure being built, so that the Lord could produce this lintel efficiently, and go on to serve his next customer, delivering the lintel at a competitive price rather than some stratospheric, niche price?
"Babette" is a lovely movie. Very humane and one of my favorites.
I'm no theologian or scholar, but almost every snippet of Van Til's has always made intuitive sense to me, and almost every snippet I've read against him just falls flat also on intuitive bases. I realize that's no rigorous defense... probably just a relic of having been brought up in the healthier currents of fundamentalism.
Why *wouldn't* the Lord give a definitive epistemology and apologetic method intrinsic to scriptural revelation alone? It's hard to swallow the idea that he came to save the world from all of our sins *except* our intellectual ones.
A nice thing about presuppositionalism is it acknowledges that questions really can be answered by going to the scripture. If a man makes a wax nose out of scripture, you can correct him from scripture; but if you try to correct him from secondary and tertiary philosophies, you're just inviting a tar baby into the discussion.
And the circular reasoning thing doesn't hold water either, because God has privileges we don't. He's well within his rights to be self-attesting. That's why there's a Trinity... so that there will always be at least 2 witnesses to the truth of scripture. He doesn't require any external witnesses.
This is one reason that Christ alone can settle an argument with simple ad hominem, calling his opponents hypocrites, and it's over. Because he knows what's in the heart of a man. We, on the other hand, don't know, so we have to open the bible and do the hard work.
I find it odd that—even after his death—those at Ligonier/RBC are still trumpeting Sproul’s causes, i.e. classical apologetics over presuppositionalism. I listened to the dialogue, and found his argument incredibly thin, almost rote, as if it was possibly something assigned to him.
Their arguments have certainly not improved, in my view!
I was just looking at my Bible and it is from Ligonier Ministries with so many notes. Am I to think it is flawed?
I started listening to R.C. Sproul while I lived in Billings, Montana in the 1990s and I learned SO much. Now I'm to think it is flawed? That's hard. Say, Brian, I need to change the debit card with which I pay for The Square Inch. And I don't know how to do it.
Spot on.