As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
A few people have asked me what I thought about Dr. Thomas M. Strouse’s paper, “The Geocentric Cosmology of Genesis 1:1–19.” After I read the paper, I thought it would be helpful to provide a brief critique of Strouse’s paper. His paper caught my attention because he claimed to examine Genesis 1:1–19.
Christian apologetics is the discipline or practice of defending and commending Christianity. Christianity as a worldview competes with a host of other worldviews to accurately represent things as they are. Imagine with me a Christian engaging a non-Christian in apologetics. By what criteria will he judge the arguments? Ah, but here is the kicker: The debate is about the criteria themselves.
In Scripture, casting lots is routine. Some might even say it’s the normal way to decide a difficult question.
The OT 1 contains 24 references to “cast lots,” “casting lots,” and “the lot fell.” Two of these are in Proverbs where lot-casting is highly recommended.
Some people in the body of Christ, at least in their own minds, seem to have the gift of confrontation. These are the folks most other Christians try to dodge. However, sometimes they sneak up on one of their brothers or sisters and utter those dreaded works.
One of the quickest ways to morph into a “fire-breathing, hard-nosed, black-and-white, reactionary Christian fundamentalist” is to listen to any diatribe that downplays Christian unity. Why? I believe that when one downplays unity, in essence, he diminishes the full orb of the Gospel and attacks the very character of God.Faith in the Gospel becomes the very hinge to a door that allows one to escape the outside, hateful, cold, contentious, racist, dark world and to step into a brand-new environment of musical harmony where love for God and one another envelops us like the summer sun.
Our views of election, predestination, and the sovereignty of God in salvation in many ways develop from our beliefs of the depravity of man. What we believe about the true nature of unsaved man ends up shaping much of our other views in soteriology. Even our notions regarding the love and justice of God in election hinge on what we believe an unconverted person is capable (or not capable) of doing.
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