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Van Til, Common Ground, and the Point of Contact

             GREENVILLE PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY THE COMMON GROUND BETWEEN BELIEVER AND UNBELIEVER Thomas Booher AP 21 Introduction to Apologetics December 5, 2014               In many Christian apologetic methodologies, much energy is spent in an effort to determine or establish common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. Some conclude that the common ground is historical evidences, while others argue it is man’s rational capabilities or the physical creation itself. [1] Still others say that there is no common ground or point of contact whatsoever, and only subjective impulses from the Holy Spirit can convince someone of the Christian faith. Cornelius Van Til would implement the transcendental argument, that is, he would attempt to show the skeptic that without a belief in God, one could not believe or know anything. There is no common area of knowledge because the believer and unbeliever have a fundamental disagreeme

CSFF Blog Tour: Rebels by Jill Williamson

In conjunction with the CSFF blog tour, I received a free review copy of this book. You can purchase Rebels from Amazon here .  Review By: Thomas F. Booher   Rebels is the third and final installment in The Safe Lands trilogy (I am pretty certain this is a trilogy). It concludes the story of Omar, Mason, and Levi, three brothers who lived off the land with their family tribes of Glenrock. It is the year 2088 and The Safe Lands, a walled city where no one can leave, have been operating for some fifty years. The Great Pandemic left most of the world without suitable drinking water, and so The Safe Lands was built at a location where drinking water was available and people could live something of a normal life. Except they do not live much of a normal life. They are Hedonists, and their economy is set up for the young to live for pleasure and do little work while the old and criminals… well they are “liberated” at age forty and enter what they call Bliss. Then there i

Why You Should Read On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius

By: Thomas F. Booher          On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius is a valuable work. It is valuable not because it teaches a new doctrine or provides some new insight, but because it simply teaches the Christian faith as Scripture itself has taught us. This book gave me greater confidence that I am really part of the tradition of sound doctrine which the Apostle Paul so often tells Timothy and Titus to hold fast to. I see that Christians really are of one faith because St. Athanasius wrote On the Incarnation in the early 4th century (around the age of twenty no less); at the time he was not introducing anything new to Christendom (19-20). This was the faith as he himself had received it. In this little book I see the Catholicity of the church traced back near to the time of the Apostles themselves, and I see a man holding fast to the one true faith even in the midst of persecution. St. Athanasius sweeps across the whole scope of redemptive history, from creation a

The Background and Environment of the New Testament

             GREENVILLE PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY THE BACKGROUND AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BY THOMAS BOOHER                 In Galatians 4:4-5 Paul tells us that God sent Christ His Son to redeem and adopt His people “when the fullness of time had come”. It was no accident that our Lord and Savior came when He did. It was part of God’s perfect plan for Christ to come in the 1 st century; He was orchestrating all of history prior to that time to make way for the incarnation of the God-Man. Because of this, it is necessary that serious students of God’s Word know the setting in which Christ came. The historical setting did not produce the thought and teaching of the New Testament, but it did serve as the molding in which the gospel entered into history. The centuries leading up to the coming of Christ provide us with reasons for the patterns of thought and life in the New Testament. [1] While