Evil, Miracles, & Atheist Faith – Ep.365 – The Great Debate – Q&A – Part 2
Evil, Miracles, & Atheist Faith We finish off with the debate with the final four questions including evil, agnosticism, the nature of logic, belief, and show that an atheist faith is present and the atheist in this debate stumbles over himself and accidentally admits it – twice. TIMELINE: 00:00 – Introduction 01:27 – Question 3 […]
Atheist Knows How God Would Act If He Did Exist – Ep.351 – The Great Debate – Stein’s 2nd Opening – Part 2
Atheist Knows How God Would Act If He Did Exist Throughout this second part of Stein’s opening, he shows himself to be an atheist who doesn’t believe in God but definitively knows how that god would act if he did exist. Stein attempts to conflate logical contradiction with a psychological ickiness he perceives in the […]
Where Can One Stand To Call Out Evil? – Ep.350 – The Great Debate – Stein’s 2nd Opening
Where Can One Stand To Call Out Evil? For the second opening to The Great Debate, Dr. Stein wants to call out Christians for not having any good proofs and also having a system that allows evil to be present in a world created by God. However, one must ask, where can one stand to […]
Integrating Answering Evil, Miracles, & Jesus – Ep.284 – Faith Has Its Reasons – Reasons For Hope – Integrating Diverse Arguments In Apologetics – Part 2
Integrating Answering Evil, Miracles, & Jesus Concluding with our look at the Integrative Approach we look at integrating answering evil, miracles, and Jesus. What have you thought about this approach? Does it allow each approach to shine or does it falter by including non-working relationships? Timeline: 00:00 – Introduction 02:18 – Integrative Approach On The […]
Your Own Personal Jesus – Ep.276 – Faith Has Its Reasons – Calling People To Encounter God In Jesus Christ – Part 2
Your Own Personal Jesus For the final three apologetic questions answers, the Fideist point to the fact that one has your own personal Jesus. In that when it comes to the problem of evil or miracles or who Jesus is, it should always lead to answers in the personal nature of God and one in […]
The Centrality Of Scripture For Life’s Big Questions – Ep.268 – Faith Has Its Reasons – Taking Every Thought Captive – Part 2
The Centrality Of Scripture For Life’s Big Questions With the final four apologetic questions for the presuppositional Reformed apologetic method we see these apologists keep going back to the centrality of Scripture for life’s big questions. Is there a God? What about evil in the world? Are miracles possible? Who is this Jesus person in […]
Evil, Miracles, & Jesus As Evidence – Ep.260 – Faith Has Its Reasons – Presenting Evidence That Demands A Verdict – Part 2
Evil, Miracles, & Jesus As Evidence The final portion of the positive case for evidentialism is on evil, miracles, & Jesus as evidence. Evidentialists have developed 2 theodicies and also a 3 fold test for miracles. They’ve responded to Hume’s critique of miracles. They’ve also developed the minimal facts approach to the Resurrection. Timeline: 00:00 […]
Cave To The Cross Apologetics – Scott Christensen Interview Redux
Scott Christensen Interview Redux In this redux episode, we talked with Scott Christensen and interviewed him about the book we spent almost a year on, What About Evil? This book does an excellent job of laying out the issue, giving the definitions, the different answers, the issues with other theories, and the answer Christensen has […]
The Universe, Evil, Miracles, & Jesus For Classical Apologists – Ep.250 – Faith Has Its Reasons – Classical Apologetics – The Rationality Of The Christian Worldview – Part 2
The Universe, Evil, Miracles, & Jesus For Classical Apologists We conclude the classical apologetic answers with looking at the universe,evil, miracles, & Jesus for classical apologists. We cover the mighty Kalam Argument and the main approach of using free will to explain evil. Then the fact that miracles are not violations of reality is pushed […]
John Frame’s Explanation For Evil – Ep.232 – Apologetics By John Frame – The Problem Of Evil A Biblical Response – Part 2
John Frame’s Explanation For Evil Now we come to John Frame’s explanation for evil. He wants to derive the answer not from a faceless god but from the God of The Bible. He doesn’t want just a philosophical answer for evil but one derived from The Bible. Frame wants to not just look at an […]
No Obligation To Answer For Evil – Ep.231 – Apologetics By John Frame – The Problem Of Evil A Biblical Response – Part 1
No Obligation To Answer For Evil We see John Frame call again for us to turn to Scripture to see what he believes is The Bible’s explanation for the problem of evil. Frame surveys many parts of Scripture, both OT & NT, and finds that in the number of places where man asks God why […]
Lacking Explanations For Evil – Ep.230 – Apologetics By John Frame – The Problem Of Evil What The Bible Does Not Say – Part 3
Lacking Explanations For Evil Rounding out this chapter, Frame covers six different theodicies he says are lacking explanations for evil. Frame critiques process theologians, open theists, and even some in his Reformed camp. Timeline: 00:00 – Introduction 01:20 – Character Building Theodicy Issues 05:18 – Stable Environment Theodicy Issues 07:28 – Divine Weakness Theodicy Issues […]
Free Will To Do Evil? – Ep.229 – Apologetics By John Frame – The Problem Of Evil What The Bible Does Not Say – Part 2
Free Will To Do Evil? One of the most subscribed to answers to theodicy is that as humans we have free will to do evil. It is all our fault and God has nothing to do with it but can work with us in our fallen state to bring about His will. And that’s all […]
What The Bible Does Not Say About Evil – Ep.228 – Apologetics By John Frame – The Problem Of Evil 1 – Part 1
What The Bible Does Not Say About Evil While this may seem like familiar territory to friends of the show, it will be interesting to see the similarities and differences presented by John Frame on the problem of evil. Starting out at looking at what The Bible say or more so, does not say about […]
Why? For God’s Glory! – Ep.181 – Scott Christensen Interview On What About Evil – Part 2
Why? For God’s Glory! Scott Christensen has written an amazing book that is not just a dry, academic look at the question of why evil exists. Why? For God’s Glory! Pastor Christensen joins us to talk about his Greater-Glory Theodicy that places God at the center of the picture of the ultimate story of reality. […]
Free Will Theodicy Failure – Ep.180 – Scott Christensen Interview On What About Evil – Part 1
Free Will Theodicy Failures We have the pleasure of welcoming back to the show our first guest, our first returning guest, and author of the book we recently finished “What About Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory” – Pastor Scott Christensen. This was such a great discussion we wanted to break it up into […]
The Greater Glory Effect – Ep.179 – What About Evil? – The Grace And Glory Effect – Part 2
The Greater Glory Effect And now comes the end. The Great-Glory Theodicy showcases the greater glory effect. It is seen in the forgiving nature of the Christian as it reflects the forgiving nature of God. Even the worse of humanity, the most painful, the most destructive nature of man is no match for the grace […]
How Should We Then Live? – Ep.178 – What About Evil? – The Grace And Glory Effect – Part 1
How Should We Then Live? We live in a world infested with evil. We live in a world held in the sovereign hand of God. How should we then live? The Christian life is one led in a moment of three simultaneous instances of sight. We look back on our lives that were in rebellion […]
The Coming Redeemer – Ep.177 – What About Evil? – The Cosmic Redeemer – Part 2
The Coming Redeemer No, we’re not doing The Return Of The King, but we are looking forward to the end of this book as we are looking forward to the end of The Book of the Coming Redeemer. These books will have a single ending unlike a certain 3rd movie you might be thinking about. […]
The Resurrection Explained! – Ep.176 – What About Evil? – The Cosmic Redeemer – Part 1
The Resurrection Explained! Why was the end of the Incarnation of Jesus on Earth important? What does it mean to people before, during, and after the Cross? How does the Resurrection ensure a believer’s redemption? Well, this is the first part of the Resurrection explained! What does it all mean? Everything! With the Resurrection of […]
The Suffering Redeemer – Ep.175 – What About Evil? – The Suffering Redeemer – Part 2
The Suffering Redeemer The Christian story emphasizes a focus on the suffering of Jesus Christ. He is our suffering Redeemer. Being born, living in the ancient Near East, being hungry and poor, and ultimately being nailed on a cross illegally as the most innocent person ever involves suffering. Not only does this not seem to […]
Does God Have Emotions? – Ep.174 – What About Evil? – The Suffering Redeemer – Part 1
Does God Have Emotions? When we talk about Jesus as God and as the Suffering Servant the question of, “Does God have emotions?” is to be asked. Is God able to have emotions like us humans? Is He surprised at the evil He sees in the world? Is prophecy, then, just a lucky guess by […]
Fully Man & Fully God – Ep.173 – What About Evil? – The Peerless Redeemer – Part 2
Fully Man & Fully God Jesus not only is fully man & fully God but He must be both in that full capacity to accomplish everything He must for our salvation. To deny His humanity is to not have a stand-in for humanity. To deny His Godhood is to not have the ability to pay […]
Why The Incarnation Had To Happen – Ep.172 – What About Evil? – The Peerless Redeemer – Part 1
Why The Incarnation Had To Happen The Greater-Glory Theodicy centers on the character of who God is and the reasons He has in glorifying Himself in a world of evil. With that in mind, why the incarnation had to happen was to uniquely and completely deal with all the evil in full. Once Christians were […]
Romans 9 Answers Why Evil Exists – Ep.171 – What About Evil? – God’s Redemptive Glory In Scripture – Part 2
Romans 9 Answers Why Evil Exists The promised chapter on how Romans 9 answers why evil exists is here! Continuing from our look at the Old Testament we look at Paul’s answer to why there exists evil and how God uses it for His glory. We are unable to divorce ourselves from the Old Testament […]
God Redeeming Evil In The Old Testament – Ep.170 – What About Evil? – God’s Redemptive Glory In Scripture – Part 1
Redeeming Evil In The Old Testament One of the goals of the Greater-Glory Theodicy is to find not just the best logical explanation for why evil exists. It is also to see if the special revelation of God details its reason. In this episode we look at how is God redeeming evil in the Old […]
Was The Fall Necessary? – Ep.168 – What About Evil? – The Fortunate Fall & God’s Greatest Glory – Part 3
Was The Fall Necessary? One of the biggest questions that comes from the Greater-Glory Theodicy is this – Was The Fall necessary? Because that’s what it seems to imply. Well, that’s actually what it comes right out and says. It’s nothing to blush at or be embarrassed about. It’s the necessary outcome for God’s purposes. […]
God’s Glory Seen In Evil – Ep.167 – What About Evil? – The Fortunate Fall & God’s Greatest Glory – Part 2
God’s Glory Seen In Evil Now that we’ve laid out the Greater-Glory Theodicy that Scott Christensen has presented we unpack what it actually does that others don’t. In this theodicy, God’s Glory seen in evil is established. This doesn’t come from a novel, clever way to get around popular theories. This comes from the overall […]
The Greater-Glory Theodicy – Ep.166 – What About Evil? – The Fortunate Fall & God’s Greatest Glory – Part 1
The Greater-Glory Theodicy We’ve knocked down the standard explanations. We’ve established who God is and what He desires. We’ve told His story in history from a story tale. Now, we get to tackle what Scott Christensen believes is the best explanation for evil with all those elements put together – The Greater-Glory Theodicy. In this […]
God’s Purpose With Evil – Ep.165 – What About Evil? – The One True Story – Part 2
God’s Purpose With Evil After setting the scene with Creation and The Fall, we are now able to see what God’s purpose with evil is. Following the story paradigm, we see God’s story played out in the rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. Each part covers an evil plot point where God is able […]
Evil’s Purpose In God’s Story – Ep.164 – What About Evil? – The One True Story – Part 1
Evil’s Purpose In God’s Story What is evil’s purpose in God’s story? To begin to understand the answer we look at the fact that God’s written story, The Bible, is more than just propositions and commands – it is also stories. As it is the first story by the original Author we can call it […]
The Structure Of God’s Story – Ep.163 – What About Evil? – Everyone Loves A Good Ending – Part 2
The Structure Of God’s Story Now that we looked at what myths are and what the monomyth of God’s story is; we look at what the structure of God’s story is – as well as all other stories follow. The shared collective consciousness of humanity reflects what it cannot help – the reflection of their […]
God As The Monomyth Storyteller – Ep.162 – What About Evil? – Everyone Loves A Good Ending – Part 1
God As The Monomyth Storyteller The term “myth” has a colloquial understanding of being made up or fake. But that’s not the true meaning of the word. Myths are stories told in a worldview used to relay information to a group and that story is made to stick. This universal concept derives itself from God. […]
God Is Free Of Evil – Ep.159 – What About Evil? – The Challenge Of Moral Responsibility – Part 1
God Is Free Of Evil God is free of evil because of who He is and His transcendence over His creation. But is He still considered the “author of evil”? Looking at people like the authors of the Westminster Confessions, Jonathan Edwards, and John Frame we see the Reformed tradition is not caught off guard […]
God’s Work In Evil – Ep.158 – What About Evil? – Walking Through The Bible’s Dark Forest – Part 2
God’s Work In Evil Now that we’ve established the character and nature of God and seen that The Bible doesn’t shy away from attributing God’s control to evil actions of humans, we look at two other aspects of evil The Bible talks about. In divine hardening, we see that God steers the desires of humans […]
Is God The Author Of Evil? – Ep.157 – What About Evil? – Walking Through The Bible’s Dark Forest – Part 1
Is God The Author Of Evil? Is God the author of evil? That’s the question that Reformed Christians must be able to answer especially after dismantling libertarian free will. Here we begin to look at the characteristics God embodies that informs the discussion of his sovereignty over evil. Looking at God’s absolute goodness and holiness […]
What About Compatibilism? – Ep. 156 – What About Evil? – The Transcendent Author Of History – Part 2
What About Compatibilism? We delve into the topic of God’s choosing and man’s choosing as it relates to evil. If you’ve ever wondered, “What about compatibilism? What is it and is it true?” this episode will break down the concept for you. First, we finish up the last two secondary characteristics that stem from God’s […]
God Is Transcendent – Ep. 155 – What About Evil? – The Transcendent Author Of History – Part 1
God Is Transcendent Now that we’ve toppled over the main theodicies that have been preeminent in the discussion of evil; we turn back to what should start off any conversation rooted in the Christian worldview – the character and nature of God. Specifically, God is transcendent. God didn’t just happen upon the universe; He made […]
Divine Judgment & Hell – Ep. 154 – What About Evil? – Working For The Greater Good – Part 3
Divine Judgment & Hell Looking at one of the last main theodicies, we look at the topics of divine judgment & Hell. After laying out the argument from the divine-judgment defense we see that while this argument does have some merit to it, it is not an all-encompassing view of evil. With two interesting problems, […]
Soul Making In The Best Possible World – Ep. 153 – What About Evil? – Working For The Greater Good – Part 2
Soul-Making In The Best Possible World Two of the subset theodicies of the Greater-Good Theodicy are the Soul-Making Theodicy and the Best-Of-All-Possible-Worlds Defense. In these, soul-making in the best possible world gives a purpose to evil existing as a means to an end. From the soul-making side, we see this as a desire in our […]
Greater-Good Theodicy – Ep. 152 – What About Evil? – Working For The Greater Good – Part 1
Greater-Good Theodicy – Good From Evil Looking at another explanation for why there is evil in the world, we turn to the Greater-Good Theodicy. With this, we see a focus on the good that is accomplished as a result of the evil that occurs. From the evil actions of people or evil in the natural […]
Gratuitous Evil, Free Will, & Natural Law – Ep. 149 – What About Evil? – Guarding The Sacred Treasure Of Free Will – Part 4
Free Will, Gratuitous Evil, & Natural Law Free Will, Gratuitous Evil, & Natural Law are all topics that are related in the free-will theodicy. Free will must deal with the same implications that compatibilists deal with and that’s the appearance of evil without purpose. We look at the different theories free will theists put out […]
Problems With Free Will – Ep. 147 – What About Evil? – Guarding The Sacred Treasure Of Free Will – Part 2
Problems With Free Will We continue to look at problems with free will in light of the explanation it supposedly gives Christians when it comes to answering the problem of evil. We see why the Reformed position rejects parts of libertarian free will in exchange for soft determinism. Libertarian free will undermines the doctrine of […]
Can God Answer Evil? – Ep. 145 – What About Evil? – Justifying The Ways Of God
Can God Answer Evil? Can God answer evil and the problems caused by suffering? That is what a theodicy attempts to do. It provides a justification for why suffering and evil exist and that God exists as presented. This is a reason why one has to stake a claim in a specific God like the […]
The Battle Of Two Moral Standards – Ep. 144 – What About Evil? – Probing The Darkness – Part 2
The Battle Of Two Moral Standards After finishing with defining our terms we look at ways in which those definitions play out in our worldviews. Here’s where the battle of two moral standards starts to interact and separate. Each side has a burden of proof since each side has a problem of evil. Where the […]
Defining Evil – Ep. 143 – What About Evil? – Probing The Darkness – Part 1
Defining Evil Definitions are one of the most important parts of having any conversation. A lot of times people use different definitions as a result of their worldview. So when it comes to the topic of evil, defining evil is vital. In this chapter, we look at a secular version as well as the Christian […]
Crisis Of Secularism – Ep. 142 – What About Evil? – Theodicy And The Crisis Of Our Secular Age – Part 2
Crisis Of Secularism Picking up where we left off last time; now that the world has shirked off God because of the evil all we are left now with is us and evil. Ut oh. We are in a crisis of secularism. The second part of the modern worldview is the advancing of secularism leading […]
The Enlightenment And Evil – Ep. 141 – What About Evil? – Theodicy And The Crisis Of Our Secular Age – Part 1
The Enlightenment And Evil We ended up going long on this chapter and so we split it up into two episodes so there is a hard cut and no outro at the end of this episode. There’s a lot to cover with the Enlightenment and evil. Where did the problem of evil really become a […]
What About Evil Summary – Ep. 140 – What About Evil? – Introduction – Part 2
What About Evil Summary Along with the answer to the question, “What about evil?”, at the beginning of the book; Scott Christensen also gives us a What About Evil summary of the book too. Here is the chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the book with just a small take on what’s included. Within the book, we get […]
The Answer To Evil…Already? – Ep. 139 – What About Evil? – Introduction – Part 1
The Answer To Evil…Already? Scott Christensen takes the first part of the introduction to his book “What About Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory” and does something interesting – he gives you the answer to evil at the start! First, he presents the idea that there does, in fact, exist evil and suffering in […]