How To Read The Church Fathers

The Other Paul recently posted a video that makes some good points on the subject.

Jimmy Akin's Paranormal Material

Cameron Bertuzzi recently had a discussion with Jimmy Akin about some paranormal issues. They address some of the problems with being too quick to appeal to the demonic hypothesis to explain something that's thought to be paranormal, how well human paranormal capacities fit within a Christian worldview, and some other issues that tend to be neglected in Christian discussions. Jimmy has a YouTube channel that addresses paranormal issues, and there's a lot of good material there.

Unravelling The Universe

Ben Sinclair's Unravelling The Universe is a good YouTube channel to follow on paranormal issues. He's done interviews with some of the biggest names in the field: Bruce Greyson, Stanley Krippner, Gregory Shushan, etc. There's a lot of valuable material on a lot of subjects.

The Death Of Michael Heiser

I still don't know a lot about him, and I haven't read any of his books yet, but I listened to his Peeranormal podcast for years. I'm grateful for the work he and his colleagues on that podcast did to address some issues that have been so neglected by so many Christians. He'll be missed.

The Other Paul's New Web Site

Paul does a lot of good work on a lot of important issues. He has a new web site.

Did Jesus ride two donkeys?

Caleb Jore recently wrote a good post addressing a common objection to Matthew 21:7. He discusses some problems with a popular Christian alternative to the skeptical interpretation and offers another reading that avoids the problems with that Christian alternative and the skeptical view.

Another recent post on the same blog, by Lucas, discusses some recent trends in scholarship that are favorable to Christianity.

The whole blog is worth following. There's a lot of good material there.

The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre As The Site Of Jesus' Burial

Here's a good article by Caleb Jackson on the subject. The blog the article appears on, Think Christian Theism, has a lot of other good posts as well. It's worth following.

A Good Resource On The Virgin Birth

Nick Peters just started a new web site on the subject. It features collections of material supporting the virgin birth in written, audio, and video form. If you have any ideas about other material to include, he's taking suggestions.

How To Begin To Argue For Christianity

Christians who are involved in apologetics are often overly defensive and don't go on offense enough. They're familiar with some or all of the broad outlines of the evidence for Christianity, but don't know much about the details or how to prioritize them.

There are a lot of approaches that can be taken. Different ones are better in different circumstances, and we don't have to take only one approach toward a given individual. I want to recommend several approaches, among others that could be used, with links to relevant posts.

Just as there isn't any easy way to answer every objection to Christianity, there isn't any easy way to argue for the religion as a whole. The same is true of other worldviews. There is no easy way to answer every objection or argue for your beliefs as a whole if you're an atheist, Muslim, or Hindu. About a decade ago, this is how I began my contribution to an e-book written by a few of us on the Triablogue staff:

We live in a complicated universe. No worldview has an easy answer for every question. There are advantages to complexity, though. The depth of human relationships makes life more enjoyable in some ways, but more difficult in other ways. The complexities of language are an advantage in some contexts and a disadvantage in others. Life involves a lot of tradeoffs. One thing is gained at the expense of something else. Any belief system can be made to look bad by inordinately focusing on some elements of it while neglecting others. (The Infidel Delusion, 5)

Having said all of that, we need to make decisions about where to begin in a discussion with a non-Christian. I can't cover all of the ground here, but I want to recommend some resources.

If you're interacting with an atheist or agnostic, for example, you could appeal to philosophical and scientific arguments for God's existence. You could also appeal to video evidence for miracles, especially if you're interacting with somebody who claims that there is no such evidence or that such evidence would be significant to him. To make a case more specifically for Christianity, you should familiarize yourself with the reasoning behind the traditional Christian arguments for the religion and be prepared to provide an overview to others. See here. You can appeal to prophecy fulfillment based on common ground with the non-Christian, namely evidence from the modern world and evidence from the ancient world that non-Christians often accept. You can also argue for Jesus' resurrection from non-Christian sources, in the sense of either people who were non-Christians prior to seeing Jesus risen from the dead or people who remained non-Christians, but corroborated the resurrection to some extent.

Those are just several examples. You can find more in our archives. And we have a lot of material that can be used to go beyond the earliest steps in arguing for Christianity. See here, for example, on arguing for the superiority of the Christian system of miracles over competing systems.

Easter Resources 2015

Since 2009, I've been putting together a post of resources for each Easter season. Here are the ones from previous years:

Apologetics 315

If you haven't been to Brian Auten's blog recently, you may want to take a look. He's been updating it a lot lately, including with some new interviews.

A Very Good DVD About The Evidence For Jesus

I recently watched a DVD that I want to recommend, titled Jesus Of Testimony. At the time I'm writing, you can watch a large portion of the DVD, the main segment of it, for free here. The DVD includes some extra segments that apparently aren't available online.

Triablogue Topical Index

We've sometimes put together posts that link to some representative material we've written over the years on a particular topic. What's below is a list of such posts. The list could be updated or expanded in the future. You may want to check back on it from time to time.

Maximizing Audio Resources

Brian Auten has written a good post about making the most of audio resources. It's a good idea to occasionally review your time management and ask how you can better use the resources you've been entrusted with. You may have a short commute to and from work, or you might have a job that doesn't allow you to listen to something like a sermon or debate while you're there, but what about the time you spend cleaning your house, exercising, paying bills, etc.? Maybe some time you're spending listening to music or a radio program about politics would be better spent on something else. We should ask ourselves these kinds of questions on a regular basis.

What You Can Find Here

We get new readers occasionally. Some of them are non-Christians who raise objections we've already addressed. And some of the people who aren't new to the blog may have missed some of our past posts or forgotten them. I think it's worthwhile to remind readers of the material we have here from time to time.

Here's a post from last year in which I linked to some of our material on a variety of topics. Since I was responding to an atheist in that post, I linked to some of our material on issues related to atheism. We have a lot of other material as well. Here's a collection of articles relevant to Roman Catholicism, for example. Here's a series of posts I did on why the Bible contains the books it does. And you can find a lot of other articles on a lot of other subjects by searching the archives.

GPTS Conference

From 9-11 March 2010, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary will have their Spring conference on "The Nature and Sufficiency of Scripture." Please see here for more information.

HT: Jeff Downs.