I recently received the following inquiry about an alleged problem for Calvinism:

This problem is explained in a new book I’ve been reading, The Challenges of Divine Determinism, by Peter Furlong (a theist who’s agnostic about the reality of divine determinism). Furlong calls this...

In 2011, the University of Notre Dame hosted a debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on whether morality depends on God. I think it’s fair to say Craig won the debate inasmuch as he gave respectable arguments for his position and against Harris’s, and his opponent failed to...

A few months back I wrote on the incoherence of LGBT where I argued the following:

Either (1) ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are tied to physical form, in which case the concept of sexual orientation (LGB) is intelligible but the ideology of transgenderism (T) is...

Previous posts:

• Reforming Apologetics (Introduction)
• Reforming Apologetics (The Light of Nature)
• Reforming Apologetics (Common Notions)
• Reforming Apologetics (Calvin)
• Reforming Apologetics (Thomas Aquinas)

Summary of Chapter 5

The main aim of chapter 5 of Reforming Apologetics is to...

What do you call an interview where the interviewer and interviewee switch places halfway through? A ‘switcherview’ perhaps?

Whatever you call it, I recently did one with Christopher Watkin in which we talked for nearly two hours about P&R’s Great Thinkers...

The Telegraph reports:

Sir Elton John by his own admission counted Princess Diana as “one of my dearest friends” and famously and movingly sang at her funeral.

On Monday, the rock star leapt to the defence of her youngest son, in an attempt to shield the Duke of Sussex and his wife from...

For this week only, you can save 50% on more than fifty video teaching series and study guides from Ligonier Ministries, including Exploring Islamby yours truly, The New Testament Canon by my colleague Dr. Michael Kruger, and Contentment by Melissa Kruger.

Ligonier’s video teaching series are...

Previous posts:

• Reforming Apologetics (Introduction)
• Reforming Apologetics (The Light of Nature)
• Reforming Apologetics (Common Notions)
• Reforming Apologetics (Calvin)

Summary of Chapter 4

The burden of the fourth chapter of Reforming Apologetics is to argue that Van Til’s critique of Thomas Aquinas...

An article I contributed to the August 2019 issue of Tabletalk magazine.

Previous posts:

• Reforming Apologetics (Introduction)
• Reforming Apologetics (The Light of Nature)
• Reforming Apologetics (Common Notions)

Summary of Chapter 3

Chapter 3 seeks to debunk a certain myth about John Calvin, namely, that his theology marked a break with medieval scholasticism, a break that was...

A while back I wrote about the collision between feminism and transgenderism on the field of so-called abortion rights. Well, here’s an interesting update. Initial reports suggest that Leana Wen, who was removed this week from her position as president of Planned Parenthood after less than a...

A preprint version of the article I co-authored with Paul Manata, “Determined to Come Most Freely: Some Challenges for Libertarian Calvinism,” published a while ago in the Journal for Reformed Theology and summarized here, is now available here. Enjoy!

The argument I’m going to make here isn’t a new one, but it’s important enough to be restated and recirculated.

I’m not all that old, but I’m still old enough to remember when the acronym was just LGB. From a Christian perspective, the LGB movement was misguided, but at...

Previous posts:

• Reforming Apologetics (Introduction)
• Reforming Apologetics (The Light of Nature)

Summary of Chapter 2

Chapter 2 explores in more detail the idea of common notions discussed in the preceding chapter. Dr. Fesko’s overall goal is to show that Anthony Burgess’s views on common...

The post-Christian West is woefully confused and conflicted about the status of unborn human beings. Consider a striking illustration provided by two recent articles from the BBC News website (surely no friend of the pro-life cause).

The first article is entitled “What’s going on in the...

Previous posts:

• Reforming Apologetics (Introduction)

Summary of Chapter 1

Chapter 1 explores the term light of nature, primarily as it appears in the Westminster Confession (five times: 1.1, 1.6, 10.4, 20.4, 21.1). In seeking to understand what the Westminster divines meant by the term, Dr. Fesko...

In response to my post about the proper spelling of Van Tilian, Dr. Richard Gaffin, Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, sent me the following note:

I’ve read your “Van Tilian or Van Tillian? The Debate Settled” with...

Scholars have long debated the proper pronunciation of the name ‘Augustine’. Should it be aw-GUS-tin, as argued here, or AW-gus-teen, as argued here? (For the record: the former is correct.)

Equally important, if not more so, is the debate over whether one who follows the apologetic...

Carl Trueman has a good take on the latest intramural debate among American conservatives. I’d quibble with a few minor points, but the conclusion is spot-on:

So while I agree with Ahmari that French’s strategy of politeness is unlikely to...

J. V. Fesko’s Reforming Apologetics seems to be drawing a lot of attention. Since folk keep asking me about it, I’ve decided to blog through the book over the summer months. Here’s the publisher’s summary:

Challenging the dominant Van Tillian approach in Reformed apologetics,...

A couple of commentators on a previous post pointed me to an Arc Digital article by Thomas Metcalf which contends that the Simulation Argument (SA) ought to be taken more seriously. (Metcalf’s article wasn’t written in response to mine, although it appeared a week or so afterward: post...

For those interested, the lecture I gave last October on the theological foundations of modern science has been published in the May 2019 issue of Reformed Faith & Practice. Go here to read it.

After 10 years of living and driving in the US, it’s finally dawned on me that, despite outward appearances, the British “indicator” and the American “turn signal” don’t mean the same thing at all.

For Brits, the flashing light basically means: “I’m...

Heads-up: the Kindle edition of What’s Your Worldview? is on sale at $2.99 this week (until Star Wars Day — if that’s your worldview).

(Spoiler: Betteridge’s law applies.)

I’ve been asked several times recently how I would respond to the claim that we are (or might well be) living inside a computer simulation. I don’t think the folk who pose the question to me are themselves worried the claim might be true;...