Apologetics and Evidence

Mormons  and  Jehovah’s Witnesses  (JWs) both teach that a person is saved by their faith  plus  their works. I want to look at this and dissect it in such a manner that is easy to understand, usable in witnessing, and simply memorable for everyone. I think the most helpful way to tackle this is to look at the James passage, because rarely does anyone have an objection that Paul is talking about faith, since in Ephesians 2:9 he specifically says, “not by works, lest anyone could boast.” But now to James 2:14-26:   14 “What good is it, my brothers, if  someone  says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 But  someone  will say, “You have fait...

A virtue is a trait of excellence. What is the highest virtue? It seems that based on the nature of truth, that truth itself is perhaps the highest virtue. For instance, I could say that love is the highest virtue, but then I could ask the question of whether that is true or not. If it is or isn’t true, this places truth virtuously higher than love, at least in some sense. The fact that I can question love through the lens of truth seems to place truth above love in height of virtue. On the other hand, if I said that truth is the highest virtue, then it seems that it would be loving to tell others the truth! Perhaps truth and love go hand in hand, but this also concerns the nature of what truth is.  Truth is a requirement for love, which I argue here , but is love a requirement for truth? Love must contain truth in order to be  true  love. But truth does not have to contain love in order to be true truth. Take for instance, mathematics, or numbers in general… Sometimes, t...

Have you ever wondered about the Strong Delusion that God sends on people? What does it mean? What does it look like? How can I recognize it? How can it benefit us to understand it better? What apologetics secrets lie behind understanding it better?   Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12,    Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what ...

It matters. The truth about Jesus matters . Just because some say and claim the name "Jesus" does not mean that they know the one true Jesus. There are a lot of distortions of Christianity that claim to be true religions . Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam , and scientology come to mind. As much as some of them claim to have the truth about Christ, it is impossible that all of them are true based on the law of non-contradiction, and there is something else very interesting that we should see. Paul says in Galatians 1:6-9,    I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gosp...

You may have heard of the phrase,   Classical Apologetics , from studying under people such as, William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, Norman Geisler, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, B.B. Warfield, R. C. Sproul, and others, and perhaps you wondered what it means.   Classical Apologetics is one method of doing apologetics… I personally like to think that it is classical for a reason. Some other methods of doing apologetics are first,  Presuppositionalism , which is that a person presupposes that God exists, and that the reason that a person does not believe in God is because he does not believe the Bible is the word of God. The issue is that from an unbeliever’s perspective, this is circular reasoning. It emphasizes revelation as opposed to reason.  Another method of apologetics is  Evidentialism , which is essentially to follow the evidence where it leads and using this evidence to support Christian claims. Sometimes people refer to it as being a subtype as Classical Apolo...