Did God Change at the Incarnation?
The Gospel Coalition invited me to answer the question. They’ve just posted my response.
Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology
There’s considerable confusion today, even among Reformed Christians, about the implications of Reformed theology for human free will and moral responsibility. A large part of the problem is that often those who are well read in historical Reformed theology are not so well read in contemporary philosophy, and vice versa. Paul Manata is an exception and he has done us all a service by writing an excellent primer on the relationship between confessional Reformed theology and contemporary theories of human freedom and responsibility. Check it out and pass it on.
On the Origin of Heresies
In case you need further evidence that doctrinaire Darwinism is poison to biblical Christianity, just visit the Evolutionary Christianity website and scroll through the list of speakers. (Click on the images for short bios.)
Here’s hoping that survival of the fittest operates at the theological level!
The Deliberate Protestant
A family friend asked me to comment on an article entitled “The Accidental Catholic”, which was recently posted on the Called to Communion blog (run by converts to Roman Catholicism from Reformed churches). Below are my comments (edited and slightly expanded).
The author’s basic argument can be summarized simply as follows:
- If Sola Scriptura were correct and the Protestant churches were led by the Holy Spirit, there wouldn’t be many doctrinal disagreements between Protestant churches.
- But there are many doctrinal disagreements between Protestant churches.
- Therefore, it can’t be the case that Sola Scriptura is correct and the Protestant churches are led by the Holy Spirit.
The most serious problem with the argument is that there’s no good reason to accept the first premise. Here are some reasons why, along with some other related comments:
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Homophobiphobia?
“I have always hated anybody who is not tolerant of gay men or lesbians or bisexuals.” (Daniel Radcliffe, a.k.a. “Harry Potter”)
Apparently tolerance is a one-way street for Mr. Radcliffe.
Plantinga Defeated?
Just in from the “Yes, Really” department:
Perhaps what he needs is an extended A/C model.
(Sorry — couldn’t resist.)
HT: Patrick Chan
RefTagger Anywhere
Several years ago I created Bible Refalizer: an extension for Firefox that automatically hyperlinks Bible references in any web page to an online Bible. I’ve made a few minor improvements over the years in response to user feedback, but I haven’t implemented the most commonly requested feature, namely, the option to add tooltips containing the Bible passage to the hyperlinks. I haven’t added that feature because, in all honesty, it would take too much work and I don’t have the time and motivation.
Most of the people who have asked for this feature make a comparison with RefTagger. Created by the clever folk from Logos Bible Software, RefTagger is “a tool that lets your website visitors instantly view a Bible passage by hovering their mouse over a Bible reference.” It’s very nicely done and you’ve almost certainly seen it in action on one of your favorite blogs or websites (if you have JavaScript enabled in your browser). However, while RefTagger’s processing is done on the client side (i.e., in the user’s browser) the code to enable it has to be added on the server side (i.e., by the owner of the blog or website). For this reason RefTagger only functions on sites that have chosen to implement it.
Until now, that is.
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Two Countries Separated by a Common Language
My wife stumbled upon this invaluable translation guide and forwarded it to me. If only I’d known about it two years ago; I could have passed it out to my students and avoided so much confusion!
You Have a Basic Right to Read This Blog
If you’re looking for a new reductio ad absurdum of the modern conception of human rights, you can find it right here: Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, maintains that “access to the Web is now a human right.”
The modern conception of human rights runs along these lines: if a large number of people have X, would hate to have to do without X, and feel guilty about the fact that other people have to do without X, then having X must be a human right and governments across the globe must be enlisted to ensure that everybody gets X.
Of course, rights imply duties: if you have a right to X then someone somewhere must have a duty to ensure that you get X. So whose duty is it to ensure that everyone gets access to the World Wide Web? Presumably those who end up being forced to pay for it. No prizes for guessing who that will be!
In any case, if this is how human rights arise, why stop at access to the Web? Why not a human right to air conditioning, or to freshly ground coffee, or to live classical music? Remember, you heard it here first.
TAG and Epistemic Certainty
A commenter asks why I don’t endorse the claim that the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG) gives us epistemic certainty (which I take to mean that the argument delivers a conclusion that has maximal epistemic warrant and could not be rationally doubted). After all, if TAG proves Christian theism “by the impossibility of the contrary”, as many of its advocates have claimed, wouldn’t it follow that TAG’s conclusion is epistemically certain?
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