Jake Alba

  In the mind of Tsung-I Hwang, he wanted to develop for an alternative methodological framework of Apologetics. In his search, he leaned for insights on various academic disciplines such as Christian Theology, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, and to other social scientific studies wherein he developed an alternative with a framework of ethical issues, common ground towards indirect apologetics, presuppositional method, and common solution. Tsung-I Hwang did all of these for the very reason that the classical method of apologetics that time doesn’t seem to fit well in the Asian context. He finds Evidential Apologetics to be ineffective and flawed. This apologetical stance seems to undermine or closes potential dialogue with the non-Christian people. This is why he made an alternative for he learned that ethics should be the common ground which he thinks the starting point. Before I continue, I would like to share my brief knowledge about Evidential Apologetics. As far as I can...

The scope of this short blog of mine will only cover the early days of Van Til in developing his Apologetical view, the summary of the combined ideas/elements of each Apologetical view of his two great influencer, and lastly, my reflection to Van Til’s genius mind. In the time of Cornelius Van Til, there are several religious groups that has different traditional method he observed ineffective and faulty in using to defend the faith. Some of them were the Roman Catholicsm and the Arminianism. However, he found satisfaction in the Reformed method of Apologetics because of its Scriptural derivation. And while he was studying to develop his view, he had two great Reformed teachers who influenced him and shaped his Transcendental Presuppositional Apologetics. These two were Abraham Kuyper and Benjamin Warfield. Though, these two who influenced reliable Christian Scholars are both Reformed in their theology, they had never met even an eye in their Apologetics stance. Disagreement in eac...

In our class in Apologetics, our professor shared to us the topic about Classical and Reformed Epistemology of Apologetics where the two major apologists involved here were William Lane Craig; for the former, and Kelly James Clark; for the latter. Back there he shared to us the position of some apologists where he quoted paragraphs from our main material/article and then he discuss why we should disagree or why is it need to be furtherly elaborated. But in this short blog of mine, I will just give my ideas and reflect on some parts where we discuss the topic about Classical Apologetics. Before I proceed to my objective, I would like to briefly share my knowledge about Classical Apologetics. As far as I can recall, Classical Apologetics is one of the five views in Apologetics that we first discussed in our Apologetics class. In my little understanding about this, this view and use of Apologetics can move someone to the phase of faith from the phase of complete unbelief and this is by ...

It was year 1928 when an important point in progress was recorded in the history of Apologetics. Cornelius Van Til, under the leadership of J.Gresham Machen in the Westminster Seminary, developed a new approach in Christian Apologetics. His primary aim was to establish Apologetics on a new basis, which is on Christian foundation. Van Til’s desire was to establish Apologetics on the ground of Christian foundation, and move forward from its old cradle which is on the empirical foundation, and as what Dr. Knudsen noticed and recorded, it has caused a great leap to the development of Apologetics. Some of the well-known empirical Christian apologists back then are Bishop Butler, and William Paley. And Van Til wants to reinstate the way Christians defend their faith because the empirical foundation allows their critics to occupy a neutral ground for their reasoning against them. For me, what Van Til did before for Apologetics to move unto progression is very admirable. He did what he thi...

Being thrown with false accusations is an inevitable experience a true follower of Christ will encounter in his life. It is an ugly experience a normal person does not want to undergo through. The reason why all of us Christians will never escape from being slandered by the world is because we serve and worship Christ and our faith is centered to Him, as well as our new identity as a new creation can be found in Him. During the New Testament time, Apostle Paul and other followers of Christ, and ancient believers had experienced to be falsely accused and severely suffered because of it. Even our Lord Jesus Christ has experienced the same thing in the hands of the Pharisees and the Sadducees when he was led into the Jewish Sanhedrin to face his trial before the high priest and to the religious authorities (Mark 14:55-56). And from these examples of being falsely accused, we can be so certain that this thing can possibly happen to all of us. As Bahnsen gleans a powerful lesson for 20 ...

In his book “Varieties of Christian Apologetics”, Bernard Ramm gave us a concise overview of the three systems of Apologetics and the issues surrounding this academic discipline.   He also presented a brief historical background of Apologetics where he discussed how Apologetics exist. Ramm also presented to us the three various groups of Apologetics where he called it the Systems of Apologetics. From what I learned from Ramm, Apologetics first originated from Ancient Greek, specifically in Athens, during a legal proceedings in a courtroom where the accused who is in the hot seat had to defend himself through giving his statements of his defense or reason.   “Apologia” in Greek, which means to “speaking in defense” or to “speak away the accusations” from what I learned from our professor in the class. Ramm also saw this activity of Apologetics from the ancient world in the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, and this continued in the early church in ...