Welcome to the inaugural post in this blog. So what’s this going to be all about? While I will cover all kinds of things that come up over time, the primary focus will be apologetics. Why apologetics? I’m glad you asked. As a former atheist and victim of a relentlessly skeptical mind, finding answers to the toughest questions is a great passion for me.
As time goes on I’ll be commenting on (and pointing to resources related to) issues in the news that followers of Christ need to ready with answers on, like… Is embryonic stem cell research really a difficult moral question? Would it have saved Christopher Reeve? Isn’t it intolerant to deny same-sex marriage? What about the Da Vinci code and the “lost gospels?”
In addition, I’ll talk about more classical apologetic questions, like… Why should we believe the gospels are historically reliable? Isn’t a logical contradiction to say that Jesus was fully God and fully man? How can God be in control and we have free will?
Where does the word “apologetics” come from?
That is a good question. I Peter 3:15 says “…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” The Greek word for defense is apologia which means: “verbal defense, speech in defense a reasoned statement or argument.” From that we get the English word Apologetics. I will be posting more on what the field of Apologetics is all about and why it is important.
How would you define “time”?
Ah, a timely question, given that your message on Sunday has the philosophically-minded among us pondering God’s relation to time. My favorite definition is not original but something along the lines of “the thing that keeps everything happening at once.”
Essentially, I would say that time is the thing necessary to observe change. You can have time without change, but you cannot have change without time. In order for state to change, there must be a before and an after. This does not mean that the observer must change to experience time, but in order to observe something change, one must have a sense of time.
C.S. Lewis and others have made the case that God is outside of time. I’m pondering a future post that puts forth the alternative view—that God has a sense of the temporal; that He is engaged in time. Not that He is bound by it anymore than he is bound by His holiness. But more on that later. Back to work for now…
Excellent. I think that you are correct that God has a sense of the temporal – he interacted with people throughout biblical history (i.e. Moses and the burning bush) and people are certainly temporal beings. It would then be that he would be able to engage in temporal aspects of creation – and yet exist outside of time.
Ken has an intresting point of view that Sproul puts forth – if God is outside of time, then He does not exist. He simply is.
The verb “to be” implies existence in it’s very nature. This existence may or may not be bound by time or other constraints, but this “being” seems to include existing. Help my understand this conundrum.
Yeah, I’m not sure I see the distinction either.