The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 6): Ancient Rome (and how the USA is its reincarnation)

With the rise of the Roman Empire, there is yet another aspect to the ancient world that is relevant to understanding our world today. It was within this world dominated by the various Greek philosophical schools that the ancient Republic of Rome began to expand, grow, and eventually develop into the Roman Empire. Now, even…

Continue reading →

The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 5): Classical Greek Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, and Cynics…Oh My!

The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle ended up having a great deal of significance throughout Church history (as we will eventually see). Yet our understanding of the philosophical outlook of the Greco-Roman world would be dreadfully incomplete without at least a few brief words about Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Cynicism. As should be obvious, no society…

Continue reading →

The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 4): Classical Greek Philosophy: Aristotle–Finding the Universals in the Particulars

Aristotle was Plato’s student, just as Plato had been the student of Socrates (He’s the guy in in blue, in the middle of the picture, pointing downwards). Yet, even though he was originally a disciple of Plato (the guy on the left, pointing upwards), he ended up disagreeing with Plato on the most fundamental of…

Continue reading →

Answers in Genesis Really Doesn’t Like Peter Enns: Accommodation and…Apollinarianism?(Part 2)

Yesterday, we began to look at an AiG post from 2012 about Peter Enns and his book, The Evolution of Adam. Today, we will conclude our look at AiG’s post. We are now at the point in the post where AiG finally gets around to fleshing out the title: “Was Jesus Wrong? Peter Enns says…

Continue reading →

Answers in Genesis Really Doesn’t Like Peter Enns: Supposed Liberalism and the Documentary Hypothesis (Part 1)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a couple of posts that discussed the way Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have misused the term “heresy.” At the time, I mentioned there was one more blog post AiG had written, particularly about Peter Enns, that further illustrated some rather odd (and downright false) claims by AiG….

Continue reading →

The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 3): The Philosophy of Classical Greece: Plato’s Academy…Virtues, Forms, and What’s Really Real

Alfred North Whitehead famously stated that the Western philosophical tradition “consists in a series of footnotes to Plato.” This statement is perhaps a bit simplistic, but is still nevertheless generally true. Plato was a student of Socrates, and the man who preserved Socrates’ teachings. After witnessing the unjust sentence of Socrates carried out in 399…

Continue reading →

The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 2): The Philosophy of Classical Greece (479-323 BC): A Very Brief Look at Socrates–Democracy, Tyrants…and the Unexamined Life

Around 500 BC, a major political shift occurred in Greece. After the defeat of the Persians, the Greek general Pericles (495-429 BC) led Athens into a golden age. It was this time that Greek democracy was introduced and flourished, if only for a short time. In 404 BC, at the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War,…

Continue reading →

Ken Ham’s Accusation that Peter Enns is a Heretic: An Ironic Condemnation of Himself

Yesterday, I wrote about the response Troy Lacey of AiG gave to the question, “Can someone promote heresy and yet not be a heretic?” This question had been asked because someone was confused by Ken Ham’s criticism of Peter Enns, where he accused Enns of spouting heresy, but then turned around and said, “I’m not…

Continue reading →

Answers in Genesis Can Use “Heresy” as Well…or more properly speaking, they MISuse the term “heresy”

Earlier this month, I came out with my book, The Heresy of Ham, in which I take a long, hard look at young earth creationism against the backdrop of, not only science, but more importantly, Church History and Biblical Exegesis. I argue that merely thinking the earth is only 6,000 years old, or merely thinking…

Continue reading →

The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 1): Ancient Greece–Frolicking with the gods on the shores of the Aegean Sea

We are going to begin our semester-long journey through Western culture in ancient Greece. We all know the names of philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but my guess is that beyond name recognition, not too many people know much about what these men actually taught. And far less probably are familiar with the other…

Continue reading →