Theological Retrieval for Apologetics

Categories: Augustine · Creation Issues · History7 Comments

In my Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals I give a number of reasons why I think retrieving the theology of the historic church is valuable in our culture right now. One that I don’t discuss, but have been thinking more about lately, is its role in apologetics and cultural dialogue. People tend to think of theological retrieval as primarily an academic interest, but I think it is useful in a wide variety of practical contexts, including apologetics. Here are two great examples of retrieval “at work.” First, in his 2009 debate with Christopher Hitchens, which I have enjoyed watching many times,…

Some Favorite Quotes from Confronting Christianity

Categories: Book Reviews · PhilosophyLeave a comment

I know I’m a little late to this, but I just finished Rebecca McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion (Crossway, 2019), which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s similar in both style and content to Tim Keller’s Making Sense of God, which is the last book I read in my current research project on apologetics. Confronting Christianity tackles a wide variety of issues, from classical objections like “how could a loving God allow so much suffering?” (chapter 11) to the most immediately pressing questions of contemporary Western culture like “doesn’t Christianity denigrate women?” (chapter 8) and “Isn’t…

Apologetics Should Speak to the Heart

Categories: Philosophy7 Comments

I’d like to make apologetics my next major intellectual project. This is what I want to give my thoughts and spare reading to during my late 30’s. It’s been brewing in me for a while. Part of it is my innate love of philosophy, which I haven’t formally studied since college, and which feels refreshing and fun to go back to. The greater reason, though, is that it seems like we are at a fascinating cultural moment in which fresh work in apologetics is needed. I thought about this recently while reading my latest book in this personal project, Tim…

Gratitude Leads to Joy

Categories: Devotional Thoughts12 Comments

Lately I’ve been practicing what I call intentional gratitude. I stop in the day, as often as I think to, and pause to recount things for which I am grateful. I’m always amazed at two things: how many things I have to be grateful for how easy it is to overlook them It’s like the old saying about seeing the glass as half-empty, or half-full. Our lives are always like that: both full and empty. There are things we have, and things we lack. Blessings and disappointments. And our default seems to be for the bad things, the disappointments, to…

Four Reasons Evangelicals Should Still Read Karl Barth

Categories: BarthLeave a comment

During my first year of seminary I discovered Karl Barth. He was grappling with theological challenges that were new to me, he was operating within a theological tradition that was largely foreign to me (names like Ritschl, von Harnack, etc. meant nothing to me at that time), and there was an aura about his approach to theology that felt reverent and profound. I became intensely interested. Many an afternoon of 2006 and 2007 was spent struggling through Romans and Church Dogmatics—and then onto the secondary literature, especially Bruce McCormack. With enough distance from that episode now to have some critical…

8 Ways to Find Sermon Illustrations

Categories: Devotional Thoughts8 Comments

Every preacher knows the feeling of needing an illustration, but not having anything handy. Even if you have good systems for capturing and filing illustrations, you will inevitably have moments where nothing is in your notes, and you cannot think of anything spontaneously. I know some people are against illustrations, and certainly they can be abused. For instance, we can be tempted to rely on illustrations too much out of a desire to make our sermons more engaging or emotional. But I’m convinced that there is also a way to go about illustrating that is honoring the text of Scripture,…

Pastors Should Like People (Not Just Love Them)

Categories: Devotional Thoughts4 Comments

Affection should be a part of ministry. It was for Paul: “I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8) “being affectionately desirous of you … because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 1:8). Affection isn’t quite identical to kindness or even love. In these verses, for instance, affection involves yearning (Philippians 1:8), desire, and dearness (1 Thessalonians 1:8). Put it this way: to do ministry well, you need to not only love people, but like them. You need to give your heart to them. But amidst the strains and seasons of ministry, it is easy for affection…

Why We Misunderstand the Beatific Vision

Categories: Heaven · History · Theologians · Theology4 Comments

I’ve been reading Hans Boersma’s helpful and interesting book Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Eerdmans 2018). For a while I’ve been wanting to learn more about this intriguing and often neglected doctrine, so now I’m finally getting around to it. The beatific vision is widespread throughout the early and medieval church, East and West, and into Protestantism (especially the Reformed tradition). Yet many evangelical today have never heard of it, or misunderstand it. As Kyle Strobel puts it, “few doctrines are as ‘standard’ in the history of theology, and ignored in contemporary theology, as the beatific vision.”…

Another Ortlund Update

Categories: Miscellaneous25 Comments

God has blessed us during our year in the Chicago suburbs. In July Esther and I celebrated 10 years of marriage at the very restaurant at which I proposed to her in downtown Chicago (pictured right). In August little Elijah joined us. I will never forget walking around the neighborhood just outside the hospital in Highland Park, filled with joy and amazement at being a family of 5! Unbelievable. God has been so good to us. We purchased a minivan, which makes me feel like an official “dad.” I became quite adept at chucking snacks into the back row while…

God Whispers In All of Life

Categories: Philosophy7 Comments

I think logic and argument can suggest God. I have personally benefited a lot from apologists like William Lane Craig who do this so well. But, of course, this is not the only way to suggest God. It is possible to make God plausible, not as the conclusion of a thread of reasoning, but as the premise of human experience. This approach says, in effect, “if God does not exist, so much of life—so much of what we simply assume everyday in the way we function—becomes mysterious and inexplicable.” Such a strategy is often rationally avoidable. But that does not…