Critiquing - The God Delusion - : An Apologetic Paradigm against the New Atheism of the 21st Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Use of English in Cross-Cultural Mission: Observations from Africa
Foundations: An International Journal of Evangelical Theology , 2020
This article discusses the use of the English language on the mission field in Africa today. While the learning of indigenous African languages was a must for every missionary in the past, contemporary experience shows that more and more missionaries tend to operate only in English (or some other colonial language). This development, which can be observed especially among those missionaries who speak English as their first language, has proven to be problematic. Use of English as the sole language does not assist missionaries in overcoming the cultural gap between them and the African people they have come to serve. It rather conveys an attitude of insensitivity and superiority, which only serves to further cultural distance. Consequentially, missionaries, who insist on speaking English alone, face the danger of remaining cultural outsiders, and risk hindering the effectiveness of their ministries. If missionaries believe the Bible is God’s revelation in written form, they must then recognise how seriously God takes human language as a means of communication. Accordingly, the importance of sharing the gospel of Christ in the mother tongue of indigenous peoples, i.e. in their heart language, should again become a staple element of missionary practice today.
Calvinism: An Introduction and Comparison with the Main Historic Christian Alternatives
Unpublished, 2024
This small book provides an overview of Christian salvation as understood by Reformed “Calvinistic” theologians, and includes pointers to the principal Scriptural passages which teach this view. It identifies compatibilism and monergism as two doctrinal distinctives of Calvinism which capture its essence, where compatibilism is understood to be the position that maintains that God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are compatible truths, and monergism is understood to be the position that God is the sole author of salvation. These truths are explored through the doctrines of: • God’s predestination of the elect to salvation; • the natural corruption and guilt of all people; • the effective and specific penal-substitutionary atonement of the elect by Christ’s death; • the effectual calling and regeneration of the elect by the Holy Spirit; and • the way that true Christians are kept in their faith, ensuring their ultimate salvation. The Biblical basis for these teachings is outlined. The ways that Calvinism fits with the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” and the ways that it impacts the gospel and the Christian life are explored. Finally, Calvinism is contrasted with the main Christian alternative positions that have been adopted: namely, Augustine’s teaching; Pelagianism; Semi-Pelagianism; the position of the Second Council of Orange; various positions of medieval Catholicism; the traditional Roman Catholic position articulated at the Council of Trent; and three alternative positions held by some “evangelical” Christians: orthodox Lutheranism; Arminianism and Hyper-Calvinism. There are appendices, which contain English translations of five important historical documents relating to salvation. The first is the canons of the Council of Carthage which rejected Pelagianism. The second is the canons of the second Council of Orange, which was the council which rejected the semi-Pelagian heresy. The third is the decrees of the council of Trent concerning justification; the fourth is the five point remonstrance, published by Jacob Arminius’s followers the year after his death; and the fifth is the canons of the Synod of Dort, which was the official international Calvinistic response to the Arminian Remonstrance. These are included as it is always helpful to return to the official statements of various positions, for these documents do not always say exactly what “everyone” says that they do.
M.J. Smith, “Redemption”, in Paul F. Cooper David A. Burke (eds.), Read in the Light: The 1901 Declaratory Statement of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, Stanhope Gardens: Eider Books, 2019, 87–122., 2019
The paper provides an analysis of the doctrine of redemption in the Presbyterian Church of Australia's Declaratory Statement. It shows how the doctrine of redemption in the Declaratory Statement relates to that doctrine in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in the Christian Scriptures.
A Reformed assessment of Richard Swinburne's Christian theology
PhD Thesis, London School of Theology, 2018
Richard Swinburne (1934-) is Emeritus Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford. This study evaluates Swinburne’s Christian theology from a Reformed perspective by comparing and assessing his views against those of John Calvin and Herman Bavinck, two influential representatives of classical and modern Reformed theology respectively. I also draw on arguments and insights from other theologians, philosophers and biblical scholars where their contributions clarify or amplify the positions held by Calvin and Bavinck. I conclude that Swinburne’s belief in the epistemological primacy of unaided human reasoning over Scriptural revelation, and in the existence and value of libertarian freedom, are the two most important philosophical presuppositions that account for the majority of his doctrinal differences from Calvin and Bavinck. I argue that from a Reformed perspective neither of these two presuppositions are correct, since they cannot be reconciled with the testimony of Scripture, the effects of sin nor the sovereignty of God.