Cave To The Cross Apologetics

The cry for evidence, evidence, evidence is the usual driving factor of apologetic conversations. However, people are more than complex machines that take in just brute facts and out spits the right answer. Here, Oliphint argues for Christians to embrace the theology of persuasion and uses the classical model trivium as building blocks to promote a robust and a full "to-the-man" apologetic.

At the start of this chapter Oliphint takes us down the trivium path as he lays the foundation to talk about persuasion. Classical education has seen a resurgence in homeschool communities and private schools alike. The molding students for a career is finally using up all the investment that classical education made before World War II. Now with a resurgence of the liberal arts, classical education, and the trivium we look at how best to persuade people to believe in the God of The Bible.

We conclude our chapter by talking about proving God by looking at how Christians can have the theological grounding to present proof to all people and how that's possible if we are corrupted by sin. We also look at the issues with the idea that one needs to provide proof for every aspect to know things and that the idea of burden of proof isn't as clear-cut as some people want to make it out to be.

Now that the terms are defined and we understand what covenantal apologetics means, we turn to understanding what offering proof entails. Oliphint centers his giving of proofs on top of Mars Hill in Acts 17 and point to two areas of how all people can be given proof. In this episode, we talk about how the fact that the Imo Dei reflected in humanity is the primary reason we can offer proof and also be in the fickle state we find ourselves.

How that Oliphint has made his case for why we need to hang our apologetic entirely on Christ as Lord, we apply that to two different critiques. An internal one levied at Dawkins and rationality alone and an internal one made by an atheist against Christianity. Which side is about to survive critique?

Now that we've got a proper understanding of the term covenant apologetics, Oliphint looks at the necessity of seeing Christ as Lord in order to do apologetics as prescribed in The Bible. Without that understanding, we'd be a confused Kant! And we impact that here as well.

We welcome back to the show from Revived Studios Troy Frasier and his cohost Mark. They've launched a new show on their network called "Christian or Not" where they look at people in Church history who have claimed or others have claimed to be a Christian. Doing a deep dive on the person's life, they evaluate their lives, writings, and actions in life to see if we are able to tell if the person has walked in the footsteps of Christ.

Here we talk about how Scripture gives us the ability to ask the question, "Christian or not", the bumpy road of Church history to determine if people walked with Christ, how Protestants should deal with the Roman Catholic Church in Church History, and how to look at people even today who may not be all who we know them to be.

Check out their show at RevivedThoughts.com

Finishing up chapter 1, Oliphant makes the case for the transition of presuppositional apologetics to the more accurate and more biblical name covenant apologetics. The Christian Covenant Of Apologetics is grounded in the Scripture and nature of God. How, then, can the Christian carry out apologetics? Oliphant gives ten tenants that guide us to properly carry out the command of being apologists to the world under the same covenant.

Starting out with chapter one, Oliphint does what we love around here - defining his terms. Here he covers what is apologetics and that all humanity has a covenantal duty to believe in God and follow Him. The Christian apologist, then, is to always be ready with Christian truth - not general theism with a sidestep to Jesus.

We dive into Oliphint's intro where he wants to get into reorienting presuppositional apologetics. This is a focus less on the philosophical but more on the practical, Christian aspect of it. He wishes to "translate" Van Til for the common man and breaks down how his book will do that.