Category Archives: Church History

Why could God not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?

Posted on by
Reply

Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world if the Judaeo-Christian God exists? This question presents us with the challenge known as the logical problem of evil. The solution to this problem, Scripturally and logically, is the high value placed on significantly free (ie libertarian free will (LFW)) people (see post).

Irenaeus

Irenaeus

A common challenge to the free will defense (FWD) is that God could create a world in which significantly free people never “go bad”.  The FWD, as posited by philosopher Alvin Plantinga, however, rests on the idea that creating people with LFW makes such a world impossible (quotes).

God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all. … He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.

C.S. Lewis would agree with Plantinga, a world in which people are significantly free yet never do anything but good is not possible, even for an omnipotent God. Continue reading →

Survival Guide to the End Times

Posted on by
1

If you are looking for how to survive a zombie apocalypse you might be in the wrong place. But during a recent discussion about the end times, as it relates to Jesus’ return, it became clear that the various terms and views can be very confusing.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is my attempt to lay out the various views of the end times. Given my background as a software engineer, you might see some resemblance to a flowchart.
EndTimesGuide.jpg

C.S. Lewis on the Historical Point of View

Posted on by
Reply

As Screwtape passes on his wisdom in how to keep people out of the Enemy’s camp (and thus away from Christianity), we find that one of the main tactics of the demon is ignorance. 

As always, the first step is to keep knowledge out of his mind.

For example, the Enemy (God) wants us to be concerned with eternity (thinking about Himself) and the Present, Wormwood is reminded that his chief task is keeping the patient distracted and focused elsewhere.

Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. … [The Past] is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past… It is far better to make them live in the Future. … [as] nearly all vices are rooted in the future.

Continue reading →