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61 results for “Christian apologetics”
Clear searchEitan Bar · Biblical and historical polemic · 2019
I recommend this book because Bar engages objections that Christians often answer without sufficient knowledge of their Jewish setting. His command of Hebrew, familiarity with Israeli life, and experience discussing Yeshua with Jewish people bring…
View recommendation →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…A conversation with my son brought the strangeness of the incarnation freshly before me. Christians have heard the words so often that we can cease to feel their force. God became man. The Word was made flesh. The One who made the world entered it, accepted the limitations of a…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…Origen’s difficult position helps us distinguish what Scripture teaches from the language Christians gradually developed to defend it. Primary passages: John 1:1–3; John 5:17–23; John 8:54–59; John 17:5; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 1:1–12; Isaiah 44:6, 24 --- In the previous stud…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…r an objection. It should enlarge our worship. The Incarnation is not merely a difficulty Christianity can survive; it is glory Christianity alone can proclaim. The Maker entered His creation. The eternal Son made our nature His own. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot cont…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
The Sum of These Things Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Ma…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
Not Three Gods Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God The Trinity is often rejected before it is accurately defined. “The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God,” the objection runs. “That makes three…
Read article →Tertullian · Apologetic, doctrinal, and practical treatises · c. 197–220
…His Apology and related appeals confront Roman governors with the injustice of condemning Christians without hearing their case, while his doctrinal works answer opponents with close argument and a profound regard for Scripture. He can also be searching on the practical demands o…
View recommendation →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
The surviving works and fragments of a second-century Christian writer, above all Against Heresies, defending the apostolic faith against Gnostic systems through sustained appeals to Scripture, creation, incarnation, resurrection, and the unity of God's purpose.
View recommendation →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…of calling upon the One in whom people must believe. Paul elsewhere explicitly describes Christians as those who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1:2).[^20] There is an alternative. Since God appears in verse 9 as the One who raised Jesus, and since Joe…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…confessed that He knew all things. He suffered, bled and died, although God is immortal. Christians rightly believe all these things because Scripture plainly teaches them. The difficulty begins when we try to explain how they can all be true of the same Christ. It is common to…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…m it. The People of the Gospel are told to judge by what God revealed within it. Yet when Christians open the Gospel they possessed for centuries before Muhammad, they find the Son who shares the Father's glory, gives His life as a ransom, is crucified under Pontius Pilate and ri…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…it against failure. The Bible also teaches a perfectly just judgement according to works. Christianity does not replace moral seriousness with divine indifference. Yet at the centre of the gospel stands an answer that no scale can supply: the Judge has provided a substitute, and…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…ion to love and freely express it when He creates. That answer should be taken seriously. Christianity does not need to prove the Trinity by defining love in a way which makes every alternative logically impossible. The biblical case is stronger than that. Jesus does not leave us…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real. Islam and Christianity both speak of divine mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merciless or that Muslims worship a deity who ne…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
Does Romans 2:28-29 Make Christians "Spiritual Jews"? Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew Paul's description of the inward Jew is often treated as a decisive redefinition of Israel: "For…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
When Do Persecuted Christians Receive Rest? Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints In his presentation Why I Reject a Pre-tribulation Rapture, Michael Brown identifies 2 The…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…The Council of Nicaea has become a screen upon which almost every conspiracy about early Christianity is projected. Constantine invented the Trinity. Jesus was voted into deity. Paganism defeated biblical Christianity. The emperor chose the books of the Bible. Reincarnation was…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…nd some of it while misunderstanding the rest? Did our words awaken a familiar picture of Christianity assembled from school lessons, political arguments, religious hypocrisy, painful experiences, and things Christians themselves should never have taught? The question is not whet…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination Christians sometimes hear a sweeping objection: the Bible may once have contained God's word, but generations of copying changed it so thoroughly that nobody can now know what it originally…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…Prophet The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels Islam honours Jesus in ways which Christians should acknowledge accurately. The Qur'an calls Him the Messiah, describes Him as a word from God, affirms His virgin birth and attributes extraordinary signs to Him by God's perm…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…ent comes. The future of Israel is therefore not a specialised controversy at the edge of Christian doctrine. It tests how we understand the faithfulness of the God upon whose promises the Church itself depends. The opposing case deserves to be stated fairly Most thoughtful super…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world To many Jewish people, Christianity appears thoroughly foreign. Its historic centres became Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, Geneva, and countless cities far from Jerusalem. Its Scriptures have been used to justi…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…cultural vacuum. It appeared in a world alive with biblical names, Jewish interpretation, Christian preaching, sectarian disagreement, devotional legend and stories carried across languages by travellers, merchants, clergy and ordinary believers. That observation does not disprov…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
Every Christian Should Believe in the Rapture The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing The rapture is often treated as though it were an eccentric event invented by dispensationalists…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…Christ and the Church. The resulting history is neither simple nor flattering. Some early Christian writers defended essential truths: Jesus is Israel's Messiah, the law cannot justify, Gentiles are full heirs in Christ, and the Old Testament finds its goal in Him. Yet those trut…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…pe The claim that the Church is not appointed to wrath is sometimes answered too quickly. Christians plainly suffer. Jesus promised tribulation in the world. The apostles endured imprisonment, violence, loss, and martyrdom. Across the world, believers still suffer precisely becau…
Read article →Simon Greenleaf · Legal examination of testimony · 1846
…e case for the trustworthiness of the Gospels. This is a work of nineteenth-century legal apologetics, not a modern historical or legal consensus. Greenleaf assumes traditional Gospel authorship and uses rules of evidence from his own period; neither courtroom analogy nor profess…
View recommendation →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
Does Matthew 16:18 Establish Church Infallibility? Few promises offer Christians greater assurance than these words of Jesus: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” — Matthew 16:18 The Church belongs to Christ. He builds…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
Did Jesus Really Die? The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an Christianity and Islam cannot both be correct about the death of Jesus. The Gospel declares that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried and rose bodily from the dead. His…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
Is the Qur'an a Miracle? Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation Christians are frequently placed on the defensive. Has the Bible been corrupted? Did Jesus really claim to be God? Was He actually crucified? Has the doctrine of the Trinity compromised mono…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…xpressly records that God heard Ishmael, protected him and promised to make him fruitful. Christians have no reason to erase what Scripture affirms. But blessing is not the same as covenant election. God named the covenant heir before he was born. He repeated that choice after hi…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…s not possess. But they do not remove the problem. Daniel 9 existed within Judaism before Christianity. Its prophecy places the cutting off of an anointed figure before the destruction of the city and sanctuary. Jesus appeared during the Second Temple period, was recognised as th…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…that the coming of Muhammad was written in the Torah and the Gospel possessed by Jews and Christians: "Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them" (Surah 7:157, Pickth…
Read article →J. C. Ryle · Doctrinal and pastoral essays · 1874
Nineteen clear statements from an evangelical Anglican standpoint addressing salvation, Scripture and private judgment, baptism and regeneration, the Lord's Supper and real presence, the Church and ministry, confession, worship, the Sabbath, doctrinal novelty, ministerial fallibility, and idolatry.
View recommendation →Tal Brooke · Christian investigation · 1979
…about death, consciousness, spirit guides, reincarnation, and the afterlife alongside the Christian revelation and asks what these experiences actually prove. It is useful apologetic and discernment reading for a subject on which personal testimony is often allowed to outrun care…
View recommendation →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…inger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible, “Idioma”. An explanation shared by Jewish and Christian interpreters This understanding is not a recent apologetic invention. Rashi, following Targum Jonathan, understands verse 25 as God surrendering the people to their sinful inclinat…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…ent of that reception in John 6 is faith—not the physical mechanism of a sacrament. Early Christian witnesses including Tertullian and Augustine reached the same conclusion from the text. Their testimony is not offered as an infallible authority alongside Scripture. It demonstrat…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…many false prophets are gone out into the world.” —1 John 4:1 Ecstasy is not exclusively Christian Certain features appear repeatedly in accounts of spiritual ecstasy: a diminished awareness of the body, the weakening of the distinction between self and world, extraordinary ligh…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…cestry cannot exclude anyone who is united to Him. But the argument does not rename every Christian Israel. Abraham's seed is a wider and earlier category than the nation descended from Jacob. Equality in Christ does not erase Jewish and Gentile identity. Paul's one disputed use…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…n precisely the direction of the attitude Paul forbids. The passage does not accuse every Christian who interprets the Church as Israel of personal arrogance. It does establish that the metaphor was designed to prevent Gentile believers from treating Jewish exclusion as proof of…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…the date of a system's formulation does not determine whether its interpretation is true. Christian theology repeatedly developed more precise vocabulary when questions forced believers to bring biblical truths into a coherent account. Later systematisation can clarify Scripture…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…roves—and what it does not The historical objection is often stated in absolute terms: no Christian taught the rapture before John Nelson Darby devised it in the nineteenth century. The conclusion then follows that pretribulationism cannot be apostolic. Two questions are being co…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…guity is real, but it cannot decide the identity of the one being named. English-speaking Christians, Muslims and Hindus may all use the word God while intending radically different conceptions of the divine. Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims both use Allah. A common noun do…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…ise is certain in the divine purpose fulfilled through Christ, but it does not make every Christian Noah or give every believer the sign and historical commission given to him. God promised that Sarah would bear Isaac, that David would have an enduring royal house, that Mary woul…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…onclusion is overstated. What Paul actually says Paul's immediate concern is the grief of Christians whose fellow believers have died. He assures them that the departed will not miss the Lord's coming: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice o…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…preservation through trial from removal before it. Pretribulationism should never promise Christians that they will avoid the hatred of the world. It claims that the Church is not appointed to the eschatological wrath God pours upon the earth and that the gathering to Christ occu…
Read article →Matthew, the Hebrew word almah, and a sign whose meaning reaches beyond Ahaz
…ust the pattern of the surrounding chapters. We need to consider the Hebrew term, the pre-Christian Greek translation, the historical sign to Ahaz, and Matthew's understanding of fulfilment together. What does almah mean? The Hebrew noun almah refers to a young woman of marriagea…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…an answer from the context, not the slogan that Matthew concerns Jews while Paul concerns Christians. The contextual differences must be demonstrated, and the similarities must not be denied. The Olivet Discourse is anchored in Daniel and Jerusalem Jesus' teaching begins with the…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…promised covenant includes national Israel transformed by an inward work of God. Present Christian participation demonstrates the power and inauguration of the covenant; it does not prove that its named national recipients have been permanently excluded from its complete fulfilm…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…ted day and night has spoken it. Christ confirms rather than dissolves the promises Every Christian interpretation must be centred upon Jesus Christ. He is Abraham's Seed, David's Son, the mediator of the new covenant, and the only Saviour of Israel and the nations. No promise re…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…nd sacrificial blessings to believers who approach God through Christ. Jewish and Gentile Christians therefore enjoy genuine new-covenant forgiveness, the indwelling Spirit, and direct access to God. These are not borrowed blessings of uncertain ownership. They were secured for u…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…hrist while remaining busy in the work He has assigned. After repeated false predictions, Christians may be tempted to protect themselves by abandoning expectancy. That gives human presumption the power to cancel a divine promise. The remedy for bad prophecy teaching is better ex…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation In an article published by the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff argues that the pretribulation rapture has no biblical basis. He presents it as a system in which God has two unrelated peoples and destinies, C…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…emain with Him for ever. His concern is pastoral. Some Thessalonian believers feared that Christians who had died would miss the Lord's coming. Paul assures them that the dead will be raised and that the whole company will be reunited in Christ's presence. He concludes, “Wherefor…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…gospel of Jesus Christ. They are therefore a legitimate and necessary mission field, and Christians should desire their salvation rather than treating their present national restoration as though it removed their need of Messiah. Nor does their present unbelief cancel God's cove…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…the prophets, the teaching of Jesus, Acts, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and the history of Christian interpretation, the cumulative answer is no. God has judged Israel severely. The nation remains largely in unbelief and cannot inherit saving blessing apart from Jesus Christ. Yet…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…rs, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came." —Romans 9:4-5 These are not Gentile Christians or an invisible spiritual category. They are Paul's physical relatives, the nation which had received the covenants and produced Messiah according to the flesh. Yet many of them h…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…theology" is a useful popular label, but it can also conceal important differences. Many Christians accused of teaching that the Church replaced Israel would reject that wording. They believe that the Church is the fulfilment, continuation, or expansion of Israel rather than its…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…aders assume the answer is obvious. The New Testament applies the language of election to Christians, so the elect in Matthew 24 must be the Church. If they are gathered after the Tribulation, the passage appears to place the rapture there as well. The first premise is possible.…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54). The question is not whether Christians should believe in that gathering. The question is where it belongs within the wider prophetic programme. Pretribulationism gains its strength from several strands which converge.…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…rument through which God acted? The problem is not confined to careless modern preaching. Christians were struggling with its underlying questions in the early fourth century, even as they defended the eternal deity of the Son. Eustathius of Antioch saw one danger with unusual cl…
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