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Showing posts from July, 2011

What was Cornelius Van Til?

I was reading some from C. Stephen Evans on Epistemology and the Ethics of Belief. He was speaking about the failure of Internalism. One of his comments was "internalism shares a failing with deontological conceptions of justification. Even if it should be the case that it is intuitively evident that a belief is justified, it does not follow logically that the belief is likely to be true." He goes on to say that "the appeal of internalism may lie in the confusion between being justified in holding a belief and being able to justify a belief, which we noted ..., must be clearly distinguished." (219). It is interesting though, that Evans does not show his assertion by any justification. Can he justify his belief? Not really. If we appeal to externalism, such as Plantinga and Alston, then are we not just arguing over what constitutes a justified belief? How can we gain any real certainty from passing fads of what it takes to be justified? If we say a well functioning c

James K.A. Smith Gets It Wrong

In his useful work on postmodern thought, Who's Afraid of ..., Smith reveals in several ways his thought that Protestant churches which fall into a "Primitivism" category reject creeds and catholic (little c) statements (129). There is simply a leap back to the 1st century practices and the work of the apostles, even the revelation of Christ, but no "traditions of men" are used. This seems a bit biased. After all, if Smith is acquainted with many new church starts in the Protestant vein he would know better. While he might be right about some seeker starts, he can't be right with all of them. Many of those simply do not care for creeds. But they aren't anti-creedal as he says. The half seeker or non-seeker starts, which mark the motion of the future of Christianity in the US, don't fall into that category. Many are highly creedal. I am thinking of several starts now that simply don't fit his mold.

Does Mormonism Matter for Presidential Candidate?

A n article posted here deals with this question.

North America as Mission Field

It has become so critical in our time to see that new works need to be initiated in North America so that the good news about Jesus can get to people where they are living and working. As part of this effort, the North American Mission Board has some promotional videos about their work. They are actually very informative about this and also disaster relief work they do. Check them out there . Especially of interest to genuine change in our time is the video on the barber from Norwich, Ct. Blessings, David