In terms of teaching apologetics my Unit 1 are lessons on Worldview, Unit 2 here is on historical apologetics but from a Presuppositional Apologetics angle.
I thought I put together the MP3s in a table of content of unit two below.
May 10, 2024 by SLIMJIM
In terms of teaching apologetics my Unit 1 are lessons on Worldview, Unit 2 here is on historical apologetics but from a Presuppositional Apologetics angle.
I thought I put together the MP3s in a table of content of unit two below.
Posted in apologetics methodology, christian apologetics, Christianity, Cornelius Van Til, Covenantal apologetics, Greg Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics, presuppositionalism, Reformed, Theology, Van Til | Tagged Covenantal Apologetics | 16 Comments
Excellent brother Jimmy! Thank you for the resources. 🙂
I’ve added these two to the TDFT link page on my site. God bless you brother! 🙂
Wow brother I am humbled!!!
Thank you for checking out the resource!!
🙋♂️ On the OT argument for the NT was that sister Mandy who read Scripture?
YEs that is. her! Wow you are a detective!
In the OT Textural Criticism 3 MP3 file, you were discussing the Qur’an and that reminded me of some interesting transmission history from Dr. White’s book on: Qur’an: What Every Christian Needs to Know.
In the section entitled: A Startling Set of Ahadith, “The hadith literature encompasses thousands of sayings from Muhammad and his Companions, collected into many written volumes…Without question, and thankfully, the most important set of ahadith for our study here is found in the most authoritative collection of such materials, Sahih Al-Bukhari. We refer to volume 6, numbers 509 and 510.8 This section gives us the earliest Islamic version of the story of the Qur’an’s collection, who was involved, and what motivated the project. It is startling because it is far more directly honest and frank than one might expect from a few centuries after the fact. It traces its origin to one of those directly involved with the process that has become known as the “Uthmanic Revision.”
You’ll have to go to his book for the background and further details. However, Uthman, around AD 650, “…But Uthman had something far more extensive in mind.
They did so, and when they had written many copies, ’Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. ’Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt….according to this hadith, Uthman sought to make this new recension, this now official version, the supreme authority. All others are to be destroyed. Why? The concern was already expressed. But he is taking a major step, and in so doing determining that only he, as Caliph, has been able to determine the actual Qur’anic text.
The Uthmanic Revision places the Qur’an in a completely different classification than the New Testament. The latter had multiple smaller books by multiple authors from multiple locations, each starting out with its own transmission history, first brought together into smaller collections (like the Gospels or Pauline Epistles), and finally coming together as a single body in free, uncontrolled transmission. There is never a Christian Uthman, never a Zaid bin Thabit. The Qur’an had one author (according to Islamic orthodoxy), one compilation, then two decades later, a revision, followed by the concerted central-government effort to destroy any competing textual form.
With revision and a controlled transmission, one would expect a much “cleaner,” more unanimous text. Combine governmental propagation with the Qur’an being shorter than the New Testament and undergoing around six hundred years less time in pre-modern transcription, and the result should be obvious: a very stable text with few textual variants. And by and large, this is what we find with the Qur’an. Muslims see this as a great advantage, even an example of divine inspiration and preservation. In reality, just the opposite is the case.
When a text has a major interruption in transmission—as with Uthman, his committee, and the effort to suppress competing versions—one’s certainty of being able to obtain the original text becomes limited to the materials that escape the revisionist pen. For the Muslim, Uthman had to get it right, because if he was wrong, there is little hope of ever undoing his work. Yes, we have evidence, as we will see below, of other text types, but not [p. 263] enough to have a sound basis, at least at this point in history, of re-creating a pre-Uthmanic text. So if Uthman was at all biased, at all influenced by the debates and struggles of his times, the resulting text could be altered forever. And how would anyone know? This is the danger of a controlled transmission: You have to have ultimate trust in the controller. If there is any reason to distrust those who control the form and content, the resultant trust you can place in the text is commensurately reduced. We will see that one such textual variant is directly related to the struggle for power in the Islamic state. How can we determine the original reading? Unlike the New Testament, the Qur’an had no wide variety of freely reproduced texts from all over the Islamic state to draw upon to determine the earliest text. With every one of those early manuscripts destroyed at Uthman’s command, the light dims on the original Qur’anic text.”
Dr. White’s book is excellent for Christians to read about the Qur’an and Islam.
I enjoyed White’s book immensely! I should incorporate the point about the Quran into my Textual Criticism series! Thanks for listening to these Mp3s brother!!!
Wow! Thanks for the great resources.
Blessings.
Thanks for checking them out!!!
Thanks for the listing! I’ve learned a lot about presuppositional apologetics thanks to you.
Wow thanks for that encouragement! How goes your Friday???
Friday’s going pretty well, thanks! The family is coming over tomorrow for Mother’s Day due to some Sunday conflicts, so I’m doing a little prepping.
How’s your day going?
Thank you for the links!
You are welcome brother!
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