Tag: Eternal Decree

Christian Individualism and Cosmic Intelligibility, Part VII: Can God Communicate Infallibly? On the Conditional Necessity of Biblical Inerrancy.

After a considerable hiatus, I conclude a series of posts wherein I engage Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella about philosophizing before and after Christ. (See Parts I, II, III, IV, V, and VI.)

I thought I was finished repurposing for Substack my site’s 2024 series on philosopher Bill Vallicella’s criticisms of my worldview approach to defending the Christian faith.

Last week, however, he added “Biblical Inerrancy and Verbal Plenary Inspiration”; please study it before considering my comments. He does not name me but seems to have me (among others) in mind.

A while ago, he declined an invitation to “rejoin” the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS), an outfit to which he had never belonged. He had published in EPS’s journal, Philosophia Christi, but that’s as far as things went. He cannot in good conscience join because of the first sentence of the Society’s doctrinal statement:

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the original manuscripts.

Bill is unable to identify without qualification the Scriptures with “the Word of God” because the latter symbol also applies to the timeless Second Person of the Trinity who became flesh as Jesus Christ in time. Continue reading “Christian Individualism and Cosmic Intelligibility, Part VII: Can God Communicate Infallibly? On the Conditional Necessity of Biblical Inerrancy.”

The Reformation of Philosophy: Ordering Philosophical Questions in the Light of God’s Eternal Decree. A Christian Individualist’s Reformation Day Meditation, Dogmatically Expressed.

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God has worked all things according to the counsel of His will.[1]

How do you like them apples, O Man?

Every breathtaking sunset, every animal-immolating forest fire.

Beethoven’s Fifth. Auschwitz’s gas chambers.

The regeneration of every healthy cell, the proliferation of every tumor.

Every orgasm, every rape.

Five hundred eight years ago today, Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk of the Augustinian order, proposed to debate in public certain theological propositions, 95 in all. He famously listed them on paper affixed (probably not nailed) to Castle Wittenburg’s door, the German farming town’s bulletin board.

Thus began the “Protestant Reformation,” without which there would be no Christian Individualism. The latter is downstream from the Reformers’ (partial but significant) work of recovering Biblical truth.

As a Christian Individualist, I do not subscribe to any Reformed ecclesiology,[2] yet I happily adopt the motto of Reformer Jodocus Van Lodenstein (1620-1677), semper reformanda.[3]

The object of continuing reformation, however, is not the society we call a “church,” but the individuals whom the Holy Spirit is progressively conforming to Christ through their obedience to His Word. Continue reading “The Reformation of Philosophy: Ordering Philosophical Questions in the Light of God’s Eternal Decree. A Christian Individualist’s Reformation Day Meditation, Dogmatically Expressed.”