• 79. It is useful and necessary at all times, in all places, and for every kind of person, to study and to know the spirit, the piety, and the mysteries of Sacred Scripture.
• 80. The reading of Sacred Scripture is for all.
• 81. The sacred obscurity of the Word of God is no reason for the laity to dispense themselves from reading it.
• 82. The Lord's Day ought to be sanctified by Christians with readings of pious works and above all of the Holy Scriptures. It is harmful for a Christian to wish to withdraw from this reading.
• 83. It is an illusion to persuade oneself that knowledge of the mysteries of religion should not be communicated to women by the reading of Sacred Scriptures. Not from the simplicity of women, but from the proud knowledge of men has arisen the abuse of the Scriptures, and have heresies been born.
• 84. To snatch away from the hands of Christians the New Testament, or to hold it closed against them by taking away from them the means of understanding it, is to close for them the mouth of Christ.
• 85. To forbid Christians to read Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels, is to forbid the use of light to the sons of light, and to cause them to suffer a kind of excommunication.

• 30. All whom God wishes to save through Christ, are infallibly saved.
• 31. The desires of Christ always have their effect; He brings peace to the depth of hearts when He desires it for them.

• 32. Jesus Christ surrendered Himself to death to free forever from the hand of the exterminating angel, by His blood, the first born, that is, the elect.

• 51. Faith justifies when it operates, but it does not operate except through charity.

• 69. Faith, practice of it, increase, and reward of faith, all are a gift of the pure liberality of God.

• 72. A mark of the Christian Church is that it is catholic, embracing all the angels of heaven, all the elect and the just on earth, and of all times.
• 73. What is the Church except an assembly of the sons of God abiding in His bosom, adopted in Christ, subsisting in His person, redeemed by His blood, living in His spirit, acting through His grace, and awaiting the grace of the future life?
• 74. The Church or the whole Christ has the Incarnate Word as head, but all the saints as members.
• 75. The Church is one single man composed of many members, of which Christ is the head, the life, the subsistence and the person; it is one single Christ composed of many saints, of whom He is the sanctifier.

• 38. Without the grace of the Liberator, the sinner is not free except to do evil.
• 39. The will, which grace does not anticipate, has no light except for straying, no eagerness except to put itself in danger, no strength except to wound itself, and is capable of all evil and incapable of all good.
• 40. Without grace we can love nothing except to our own condemnation.
• 41. All knowledge of God, even natural knowledge, even in the pagan philosophers, cannot come except from God; and without grace knowledge produces nothing but presumption, vanity, and opposition to God Himself, instead of the affections of adoration, gratitude, and love.
• 42. The grace of Christ alone renders a man fit for the sacrifice of faith; without this there is nothing but impurity, nothing but unworthiness.
• 48. What else can we be except darkness, except aberration, and except sin, without the light of faith, without Christ, and without charity?

• 1. What else remains for the soul that has lost God and His grace except sin and the consequences of sin, a proud poverty and a slothful indigence, that is, a general impotence for labor, for prayer, and for every good work?
• 2. The grace of Jesus Christ, which is the efficacious principle of every kind of good, is necessary for every good work; without it, not only is nothing done, but nothing can be done.
• 5. When God does not soften a heart by the interior unction of His grace, exterior exhortations and graces are of no service except to harden it the more.
• 9. The grace of Christ is a supreme grace, without which we can never confess Christ, and with which we never deny Him.

• 10. Grace is the working of the omnipotent hand of God, which nothing can hinder or retard.
• 11. Grace is nothing else than the omnipotent Will of God, ordering and doing what He orders.
• 12. When God wishes to save a soul, at whatever time and at whatever place, the undoubted effect follows the Will of God.
• 13. When God wishes to save a soul and touches it with the interior hand of His grace, no human will resists Him.
• 14. Howsoever remote from salvation an obstinate sinner is, when Jesus presents Himself to be seen by him in the salutary light of His grace, the sinner is forced to surrender himself, to have recourse to Him, and to humble himself, and to adore his Savior.
• 15. When God accompanies His commandment and His eternal exhortation by the unction of His Spirit and by the interior force of His grace, He works that obedience in the heart that He is seeking.
• 16. There are no attractions which do not yield to the attractions of grace, because nothing resists the Almighty.
• 17. Grace is that voice of the Father which teaches men interiorly and makes them come to Jesus Christ; whoever does not come to Him, after he has heard the exterior voice of the Son, is in no wise taught by the Father.

• 91. The fear of an unjust excommunication should never hinder us from fulfilling our duty; never are we separated from the Church, even when by the wickedness of men we seem to be expelled from it, as long as we are attached to God, to Jesus Christ, and to the Church herself by charity.
• 92. To suffer in peace an excommunication and an unjust anathema rather than betray truth, is to imitate St. Paul; far be it from rebelling against authority or of destroying unity.

… It is sometimes asserted that we can prove to men that we are not asserting anything that they ought to consider irrational, inasmuch as we say that God is one in essence and three in person. We therefore claim that we have not asserted unity and trinity of exactly the same thing.
   Yet this is not the whole truth of the matter. We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person.

God exists in himself as a triune self-consciously active being. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are each a personality and together constitute the exhaustively personal God… Each is as much God as are the other two.

Again, if you want to read the original paper from which this series is based, go to my website (colindsmith.com) and look in the "Papers" section.

09:11:02 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -

William Tyndale Puts our Comforts into Perspective

11/14/2010 - Alan Kurschner

14:48:54 - Category: Godly Disciplines - Link to this article -

Innocent III vs. Benedict XVI -- Use Scripture as Your Standard Instead

11/13/2010 - Tur8infan

09:40:55 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

Doctrine of the Word of God

11/12/2010 - Jeff Downs

00:31:12 - Category: Resources - Link to this article -

Today on the Dividing Line: Mark 1:41 and Hebrews 2:9 in the SBLGNT Plus Calls

11/11/2010 - James White

20:21:05 - Category: The Dividing Line - Link to this article -

And a Canadian Muslim Responds....

11/10/2010 - James White

20:26:28 - Category: Islam - Link to this article -

A Request for My Muslim Friends

11/10/2010 - James White

06:20:34 - Category: Islam - Link to this article -

Formal Sufficiency of Scripture on Iron Sharpens Iron Today

11/10/2010 - Tur8infan

04:50:20 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

Biologos and Doug Pagitt: an Interesting Comparison

11/09/2010 - James White

15:42:26 - Category: The Dividing Line - Link to this article -

Don't Forget the DL at its NORMAL Time

11/09/2010 - James White

09:46:23 - Category: The Dividing Line - Link to this article -

Deity of Christ Debate, Pt. 2

11/08/2010 - Jeff Downs

10:11:45 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -

Handel's Hallelujah Chorus: In Macy's

11/08/2010 - James White

05:35:55 - Category: Misc - Link to this article -

Minneapolis Interview Posted

11/06/2010 - James White

18:02:28 - Category: Misc - Link to this article -

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Trinity: A Review

11/05/2010 - Colin Smith

   Before digging into Van Til's teaching on the Trinity and how it applies to his argumentation for the existence of God, it will do us well to review the fundamental principles of Presuppositional Apologetics. Okay, I know you have heard a lot about PA recently, but you know the old teaching addage: the more you hear something, the more likely you are to remember it. So, once again, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a look at what PA is about at its core.
   The popular model of apologetics today is one where you present evidence, and use logic and reason to argue for the existence of God, the truthfulness of the Bible, the historicity of Christ and the resurrection, etc. This model assumes that everyone, no matter what their religious or philosophical viewpoint, agrees on principles of logic and reason, and can use these to evaluate evidence. In other words, on these principles we all share "common ground," since these are assumed to be neutral standards by which all claims can be weighed.
   Van Til objected to this saying that to set anything above God and His Word, whether it be a man, a false god, or a set of principles, is a violation of Scripture and an undermining of the ultimate authority of God and His revelation. God's Word, if it is has supreme authority, cannot be held accountable to a higher authority. If we believe the Bible is "God-breathed," that it is God speaking to us, then to subject it to evidence, reason, and logic to validate it is to say that it really has no authority on its own, and requires an external authority to verify it. Not only this, but it is to say that it needs man to apply this external authority and use it to verify what God has said, whether or not it is true. Since when does man have the right to tell God whether He is speaking truth? How we know Scripture is true without engaging in circular reasoning is, perhaps, a subject for another time. But for now, suffice to say that the Christian can do no other than to hold Scripture in the highest regard. In fact, Van Til would argue that we need Scripture, God's special revelation to us, to be able to properly apply logic, reason, and evidence.
   When God originally created man, He gave him natural revelation (the world around him, its complexity and order, etc.) as a demonstration of His existence, and special revelation (instructions, commands, etc.) so he would know how to properly live in the universe God had made with the rules that govern it, and know how to honor and serve his Creator in a way that most pleases Him. However, in Genesis 3 we are told that man disobeyed God and fell into sin (Romans 5:12-14). From that time on, man has been suppressing natural revelation (Romans 1:18-32), and unable to receive and accept special revelation due to his spiritual estrangement from his Creator. To this day, man is in a state of denial regarding God's existence and truth, and is trying to live in this world according to his own understanding. God, in His mercy, permits man to understand certain truths: morality, ethics, laws, justice, etc. that come from being made in His image. Without these, man would not survive long in this world; his life would be intolerable (as would life for those around him). Yet, given man's natural understanding, unaided by that understanding that comes from either natural or special revelation, these truths are not consistent with his understanding of the world. And it is his understanding of the world, or his presuppositions that will always ultimately lead him to the conclusions he makes, which will invariably be wrong or misguided.
   If the unbeliever is looking at the world through different presuppositions than the believer, it stands to reason that, apart from the work of the Spirit giving him eyes to see, he will not come to the same conclusions as the believer regarding evidence, no matter how good and sound that evidence is. He does not share "common ground" with the believer, because the unbeliever and the believer are operating on diametrically opposed presuppositions. Knowing that the unbeliever is suppressing the knowledge of God, however, the Christian apologist can appeal to that knowledge of God to call the unbeliever to repentance so he can see the world as God intended it to be seen. The apologist could even take the approach of having the unbeliever assume Christian presuppositions (for the sake of argument), and he assume non-Christian presuppositions (again, for the sake of argument) to help the unbeliever see which is consistent with the universe as we know it--which of them makes the world around us and its laws intelligible.
   That's PA in a nutshell. One point that Van Til was insistent on was that any defense of the Christian faith cannot simply be a defense of one aspect of it. In other words, it is not simply a defense of the fact of God's existence, or the fact of Christ's divinity, or the fact of the resurrection. Christian apologetics is a defense of the entire Christian worldview. Hopefully, from the foregoing it is clear why this is the case. Without a Christian worldview, the evidence is meaningless. The unbeliever can accept the bare evidence for the resurrection saying, "Okay, so something strange happened," without ever proclaiming saving faith in Christ as a result. That conclusion requires seeing the evidence for the resurrection with Christian presuppositions; only then can it have any meaning.
   This is where Van Til's teaching on the Trinity comes in. He argues that we are not presenting mere theism, but we are presenting Christian theism, and we have to. To present any other kind of theism is to argue for a God that doesn't exist, and, in fact, undermines everything you then say to affirm the truth of the Christian worldview. We will explore this in the next installment.

Don't forget, if you want to read the entire article upon which this series is based, you can do so at my website, under the "Papers" section.

17:00:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -

Deity of Christ Debate

11/05/2010 - Jeff Downs

Most, if not all of you, are aware of the debate that took place on the Jewish Voice Broadcast with James White, Michael Brown v. Joseph Good and Sir. Anthony Buzzard.

If you do not remember, this week the JVB began with Pt. #1 of the debate. You can catch the program here, beginning at 7.36.

11:19:17 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -

Two Video Clips from Lima

11/04/2010 - James White

I didn't know Brad White had posted these. Short, but they give you a flavor of the presentations:

05:36:52 - Category: Personal - Link to this article -

What Was Recovered During the Reformation?

11/04/2010 - Jeff Downs

Yesterday I had the privilege of sitting under the preaching of Pastor Ian Hamilton (a Scotsman) pastor at Cambridge Presbyterian Church.

Hamilton is the author of two books The Erosion of Calvinist Orthodoxy: Drifting from the Truth in Confessional Scottish Churches and a commentary in the Let's Study series on The Letters of John. One of my favorite courses I've taken at Greenville Seminary was a summer course with Pastor Hamilton on Pastoral Leadership. I would highly recommend this to all shepherds or anyone interested in shepherding God's people.

In this chapel message (audio) he addresses the heart of the reformation biblical Christianity; I trust you'll agree.

Here is a video of the chapel (Pt. 1):

05:27:06 - Category: Resources - Link to this article -

Ministry in Lima, Peru

11/04/2010 - James White

Half way through my time here in Lima. So far we have covered sola scriptura, the biblical form of the church (plurality of elders), the transmission of the text of the New Testament, and in the Q&A times---just about everything. Yes, speaking with translation is always a challenge, but so far so good. Surviving culture shock as best as a stodgy Scotsman can. Appreciate Brad White and the brothers who are helping me along. Here are a couple of pictures from the presentations.

05:22:03 - Category: Personal - Link to this article -

The Nuisance of Biblical Logic

11/03/2010 - Alan Kurschner

If God knows every detail of the future with infallible certainty, then (by definition) the outcome of all things is already determined. And if things are predetermined but God did not ordain whatsoever comes to pass, then you have two choices:

1. A higher sovereignty belongs to some being (or beings) other than God. That is idolatry.
2. Some impersonal force did the determining. That is fatalism.

Therefore if the thinking Arminian wants to avoid both fatalism and idolatry, he or she must deny God's foreknowledge, thereby nullifying God's omnscience—in other words, they essentially undeify God. That is of course blasphemy. But that is precisely the road Open Theism takes.

by Phil Johnson

20:31:23 - Category: Reformed Apologetics - Link to this article -

On Sincerity = Salvation

11/03/2010 - Alan Kurschner

Christian exclusivity is anathema to the natural religious Man. "If someone is sincere about their religious faith, who are you to judge?" Their dogma characterizes today's Christian inclusivism, but did you know that there were a few "sincerity=salvation" voices in the Reformation period:

The emphasis among [various humanist-rationalists during the Reformation] committed to the rational and ethical approach was upon sincerity rather than upon inerrancy as the condition for God's favor. Sincerity is an interior loyalty to that which at the moment appears to be true. Castellio went so far as to say that to tell the truth is to say what one believes to be true. On this basis he could declare that Servetus had been put to death for telling the truth inasmuch as by lying and denying his convictions he could have been saved. He perished because he would not recant. The reason why sincerity is so prized is because integrity is indispensable in the question for truth. There is no deposit of dogma equally valid whether professed by the sincere or the insincere. Rather there is a truth which can be seized only by those who pursue it with passion and utter transparency (The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Roland H. Bainton, 220).

18:34:30 - Category: Christian Worldview - Link to this article -

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Trinity

11/02/2010 - Colin Smith

   If you have been following the blog over the past month, you will have seen Jamin Hubner's series of posts on apologetic methodology and particularly on Presuppositional Apologetics. Hopefully, as a result of Jamin's sterling work, you are all now fully conversant with Presuppositional Apologetics (or the "Transcendental" argument as Van Til preferred to call it) such that you are freely discussing presuppositionalism vs. evidentialism with your neighbors, and you plan to give a copy of Van Til's Christian Apologetics to all your relatives for Christmas. Well done, Jamin!
   One aspect of presuppositionalism that Van Til (and those that followed him) was quite insistent on was the fact that when arguing for the existence of God, it is insufficient to simply argue that there is such a thing as a divine being. Most apologists start here, and then have an uphill battle once this premise is assumed to then jump from deism or theism to the Christian God. For Van Til, it was pointless even beginning to discuss God, His existence, His nature, His works, etc. if you are not prepared to argue for the Christian God. In his famous debate against Gordon Stein, Greg Bahnsen in his opening statement made it plain that he was not there to discuss the existence of any other deity--it would be pointless because he would agree with Stein regarding their non-existence. Rather, the point of the argument begins with Christians on the Christian God.
   Naturally, one of--if not the--key doctrines of Christian theism is that of the Trinity. It is the doctrine of the Trinity above all other doctrines pertaining to God that sets Christianity apart from other religions. It has often been said, and as far as I can tell this is generally true, that all heretical offsprings of Christianity share a denial or a perversion of this central teaching. For Van Til, however, the Trinity was also important to his apologetic argument. Over the next few blog articles, I plan to sketch what Van Til taught regarding the Trinity (which has often been misunderstood, opening him up to charges of heresy), and how he understood the Trinity to figure into the presuppositional argument for God's existence.
   These blog articles are based on a paper I wrote a while back on the subject "Van Til and the Trinity: The Centrality of the Christian View of God in the Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til." If you want to read this paper as a pdf, you can do so by going to the "Papers" section on my website. What will follow in these blogs will not be a simple cut-and-paste of the paper. I will attempt to present the basic arguments in a blog-friendly format. For some people, that's as much as you want or need. For others who want more, read the paper, or check out Jamin's Van Til/Presuppositional Apologetics Reading Recommendations.

PS: If you have been hunting around for my blog articles on the Islamic concept of Predestination (Qadar), you can now find that as a single article in pdf format on my website, along with an overview of the Qur'an.

14:43:46 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -

Golden Chain

11/02/2010 - Jeff Downs

Dr. Joseph Pipa, president of Greenville Seminary recently spoke at the Oklahoma Conference on Reformed Theology on the topic of the "Golden Chain of Redemption (Romans 8:29-30)." I am currently taking Christ & Salvation with Dr. Pipa, some of the same things mentioned in class are presented in this lectures. The advantage you have is you is that he is not going to ask you questions about what you read. The disadvantage is that the lectures total only five hours (the class is 3 hrs. every Wednesday over a semester - certainly more intense).

I've listened to part of the lecture on Predestination and here is my favorite statement:

Some may say “because I am elect, it doesn’t really matter how I live or what I do. Well the one thing I can say for sure about you is that you might be elect, but you are not yet converted.”

To listen click here,

10:49:02 - Category: Resources - Link to this article -

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