| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
Our sequestration continues, as does my stream of appearances on various social media and my writing of my systematic philosophical theology.
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| We’re so encouraged by the people we continue to touch through social media, far more than would have attended my personal speaking engagements. For example, the number of viewers of my appearance on “The Cosmic Sceptic” two months ago is now in excess of 200,000! Moreover, feedback from unbelievers has been uniformly appreciative of this interview. Every week Jan and I continue to record my Defenders lesson for podcasting. I’m so thankful that when our class ceased to meet personally at the church last March we began podcasting the lessons, so that the class has continued uninterrupted.
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| Aaron Patterson, who produced the film “The Absurdity of Life without God,” which has had 1.5 million views over the last two years, came to town to record five new short films with me on the kalām cosmological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the argument from the applicability of mathematics, the moral argument, and Christian particularism. Whew!
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| I did some international interviews, including one with students from Colombo Theological Seminary (really dear people!) in Sri Lanka half the world away, and through a Russian translator with two fellows in Russia and the Ukraine, who were very intelligent and informed. Michael, the younger of the two, made a point of sharing with me that it was through our ministry that he had come to faith in Christ.
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| I also did an online summit with Grad Resources, a ministry to Christian graduate students in various fields, speaking on “On Being a Christian Academic,” encouraging them to engage intellectually with their Christian faith, to integrate their faith with their field of expertise, and to mind their personal, spiritual formation. What a strategic group of people they are!
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| I really enjoyed my interview with Alisa Childers, a former musician who now has a burden to save people from the seduction of so-called “Progressive Christianity.” We talked about progressives’ objections to the classic doctrine of substitutionary atonement, which I have vigorously defended in Atonement and the Death of Christ.
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| I can hardly believe it, but my research for my systematic philosophical theology is going so well that I’ve already begun writing up the first locus (or topic) on De Sacra Scriptura (On Sacred Scripture). It turns out that this is a really underdeveloped area among philosophical theologians. There have been a couple of important books on the topic of revelation by Mavrodes and Swinburne, but the concept of revelation differs importantly from that of Scripture. There are manifold ways in which divine revelation takes place in the Bible, from casting lots to prophecy, so that Scripture is at most one means of revelation.
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| Moreover, revelation is differently defined by different thinkers. Etymologically, “revelation” in the Greek (apokalypsis) means to uncover something that was hidden. But on such an understanding, whether the Scriptures count as a revelation from God will be person-relative. For example, the Gospel of Luke, even if divinely inspired, would not be a revelation to someone who was an eyewitness of the events, even if it is to us. That seems perverse and leads me to distinguish between subjective and objective revelation. Even if subjective revelation is person-relative, the Scriptures are an objective revelation from God in the sense that they are an inspired communication from God to us. The key question to be dealt with, then, is not whether the Scriptures are revelation but whether they are a divinely inspired communication of God’s truth for us.
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At Reasonable Faith we’re always thinking of ways to improve and expand our outreach. We are about to embark on an exciting new venture that will help to secure a legacy for Reasonable Faith materials far into the future. We want to build a Reasonable Faith curriculum in Christian philosophy, theology, and apologetics that could be taken for credit at an accredited university or seminary. There is a great deal to be done here, and I’ll share more about our vision as things unfold.
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| For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Greetings,
I am a 23 years old man from Portugal. I was a cynical atheist throughout my adolescence, but I finally grew out of it into agnosticism in my senior year in High School. I became disgusted by the arrogance I slowly realized that embodies the doctrine of atheism. After reading 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, I went and read Dostoiévski's Karamazov Brothers (it was mentioned in 12 Rules for Life). I was struck by the brilliance of Dostoiévski and the life story of his character, the Elder Zosima and his life story. That was the day I became a deep appreciator of Christianity. I strongly encourage everyone to read that novel, might be the best one ever written. After having my heart opened to Christianity by Dostoiévksi's story in a warm and heartfelt way, I came across Christian Apologetics. Dr William Lane Craig may well be the best one in recent times. His message is vitally important in today's day and age, with the rise of neoliberalism and the New Atheists movement, which are all intellectual charlatans by the way. And their so-called evolution (and previously mine too) is unsupported by science. This long rant is simply meant to say: Thank You! I wish you all only the best, and I hope to keep seeing more from you!
From the other side of the ocean,
João
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