Dr. Baggett felt inspired to write this book about a Michigan campmeeting when his mom was sick and in the hospital in Lansing, Michigan about nine months before she died. As he walked the grounds at the Eaton Rapids Campground in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, thinking about her physical decline, he felt nostalgic thinking about his parents’ love of the place and its formative role in his upbringing. The idea occurred to write a history of the 130 year old holiness campmeeting, and now, four years later, the book by him and his wife, with Joelee Bateman, is done and available for purchase. It’s called At the Bend of the River Grand, and available at, for example, Amazon.com. The price currently listed on Amazon.com is 45 dollars, but that’s going to change to 31.50 very soon. For those acquainted with campmeetings, you’ll appreciate reading the book and may well recognize much of what’s discussed; for those less familiar, we hope the book brings a little bit of campmeeting to you. Before too long we at MoralApologetics.com may feature a Campmeeting writing contest, the winner of which will receive a free copy of the book. If you’re wondering how campmeeting connects with moral apologetics, that will become clear in the course of the interview, but quickly: campmeeting is about both evangelism and living a victorious Christian life. So it touches in a very practical way on what we here at the site call the performative variant of moral apologetics: how by God’s enablement we are made able to live victoriously, finding victory over sin, and, ultimately, being conformed entirely to the image of Christ.
In this week's podcast, we hear from Dr. David Baggett as he discusses two of C. S. Lewis' most psychologically insightful works, A Grief Observed and The Great Divorce. Dr. Baggett helps us understand how Lewis thought we should deal with intense emotional pain, how the love of God "has teeth," and how moral transformation may require much suffering.
On this week's episode, we hear from the co-author of Good God, Dr. David Baggett. Dr. Baggett explains how Lewis' moral argument works, what makes it effective, and the impact it has had on contemporary moral apologetics.
On this week's podcast, Dr. Mark Foreman gives a Christian perspective on some key bio-ethical issues. Dr. Foreman helps us understand how we should think about trans-humanism, fertility treatments, abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Working from a Christian and Aristotelian and natural law perspective, Dr. Foreman explains how right action results from careful consideration of human nature.
On this week's podcast, we hear from philosopher and bioethicist Mark Foreman. Dr. Foreman explains in aboutten minutes why pre-born humans are persons and deserve all the rights due to human persons.
On this week's podcast, we hear from Dr. Mark Foreman. Dr. Foreman is a professional philosopher who specializes in both Christian apologetics and bioethics. The main topic of this episode is theism as a natural law ethic. Dr. Foreman will explain what a natural law ethic is, why we should prefer it, how it can be applied in moral dilemmas, and how to use it in apologetics. But before we get to that, we'll also get to hear some thoughts from Dr. Foreman on the relation of faith and reason.
On this week's episode of the podcast, we sit down with Dr. David Baggett for his thoughts on the importance of mothers to morality. Dr. Baggett shares how his mother shaped his own character, how God can heal those who've lost their mothers, and how mothers reveal the love of God.
On this week's episode, we hear from David Baggett. Dr. Baggett is a professor of apologetics and the Liberty University School of Divinity and the co-author of Good God, Christianity Today's 2012 Book of the Year in Apologetics. Dr. Baggett gives us a preview of the chapter on the problem of evil in the upcoming sequel to Good God, God and Cosmos. He explains why the problem of evil really is a problem, for both atheists and Christians, and why Christianity has a better response to the problem.
On this week's podcast, we hear from Dr. Chad Thornhill on the impeccability and humanity of Jesus. Dr. Thornhill explains whether Jesus could sin, what impeccability has to do with Jesus being truly human, and why all this matters for morality.
On this week's episode, we continue the discussion started on the last episode. The previous episode lays out some of the basic issues related to moral knowledge, including what exactly moral knowledge is, the kinds of moral knowledge available, and the general problems associated with saying we have moral knowledge. This second part aims to answer the question, "How do we have moral knowledge?" Dr. Baggett will discuss and critique some atheist explanations of how we have moral knowledge before offering his own theistic account.
On this week's episode, we hear from Dr. David Baggett. Dr. Baggett and co-author Dr. Jerry Walls have just sent in their manuscript of God and Cosmos to the publisher. God and Cosmos is a sequel to Christianity Today's 2012 Apologetics Book of the Year, Good God. In Good God, Walls and Baggett offer an abductive moral argument for the existence of God. In God and Cosmos, they focus their attention onvarious secular ethical theories and show why these theories do not provide as robust an explanation of morality as theism. One of the chapters in the book is "Moral Knowledge" and its that chapter we will be discussing today. This is a substantive topic, so we will be dividing the conversation up into three parts. The first part lays out some of the basic issues related to moral knowledge, including what exactly moral knowledge is, the kinds of moral knowledge available, and the general problems associated with saying we have moral knowledge.
On this week's episode, we will be discussing whether or not it is good to be human. We will mainly consider this question from an atheist and Christian perspective. We will see that in order to answer the question, one must first explain what it would mean for something to be good and second what it would mean to be human. What we suggest is that Christianity provides the best explanation of the goodness of humanity.
On this week's podcast, we hear from Dr. Brian Scalise. Dr. Scalise is an adjunct professor at Liberty University. He teaches New Testament Greek and recently taught an intensive to graduate students on Islam. A few weeks ago on the podcast, Dr. Scalise explained the difference a Trinitarian versus Unitarian understanding of God makes for our understanding of love. This week, we're going to be returning to that topic. In this lecture, Dr. Scalise carefully explains why the Christian Trinity provides an account of love that is richer and fuller than what is possible from an Islamic perspective.
This week we are continuing our discussion with Dr. Leo Percer, professor of New Testament and Greek at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, on the impeccability of Jesus. Last time, we discussed the meaning of impeccability and what counts as temptation. This week, we will explore what it would mean for Jesus to be tempted and whether or not he could actually sin. And we will think about what it means to say Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. Finally, we will also discuss the relevance of Jesus’ temptation for our own moral transformation.
This week, we will be sitting down with Dr. Leo Percer to discuss the impeccability of Jesus. Dr. Percer is a professor of New Testament and Greek at LBTS. One question you might have as we start this series on impeccability is what this subject has to do with moral apologetics. Well, quite a lot actually. For one, whether or not Jesus could sin tells us something about the moral character of God and the kind of being he is. Is God, even as he was incarnate in Jesus, capable of a moral failure? On the other hand, if Jesus was not capable of sinning, in what sense was he fully human? And how could he really be understood to be the ideal man or our moral exemplar? These are important and tough questions. In this first part of our discussion with Dr. Percer, we will hear what “impeccability” means and explore the nature of temptation. We will also discuss what it would mean for Jesus, as fully human and fully God, to be tempted.
This week we will be talking again with Dr. David Baggett, co-author of Good God and professor of apologetics at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, about the doctrine of election and the love of God. Besides the main topic, we will hit on a number of related issues, like love and the necessity of free will, and the role that philosophy ought to play (if any) in interpreting the Bible. Most of this discussion takes place with a critique of Calvinism. Because conversations like these can be so divisive, Dr. Baggett wanted to give a brief statement to explain his motivation and to set the tone for the discussion. Here's the statement: I hope nothing here causes any discord or division; they’re just some reflections I have about the nature of God as essentially loving and what that seems to imply, and to my thinking they comport with the best biblical exegesis available, though I don’t claim to be a biblical scholar. To me this focus on God’s essentially loving nature seems a crucial part of moral apologetics, but I really do sincerely hope that those who may disagree with me on some of these issues don’t take any offense. It’s surely not intended. Christians of diverse stripes agree on much more than what they disagree about, and as Lewis once said, sometimes one of our disagreements is the importance of our disagreements. At times I’ve overstated the differences, and regret that, but here it’s my intention just to lay out how I see things, how some of the pieces fit together, and folks can do with it as they will. And if they disagree, that’s fine. There’s mental space and ample prerogative to do so, and I won’t be offended. But irrespective of our differences, as believers we all need to learn to love one another, and I only hope what I say here contributes to that rather than detracts from it. These discussions are important, but we’ve got to strive to avoid their becoming needlessly divisive.
On this week's episode, we have a lecture by David Baggett entitled, "Four Ways God Best Explains Morality." Dr. Baggett begins by assuming the position of moral realism, the idea that there really are moral values and duties. He then explains why theism provides a better explanation of these values and duties than does naturalism.
This week on the podcast, we are continuing a discussion with Dr. Brian Scalise. Dr. Scalise has written his dissertation on the different views of God in Christianity and Islam. Important differences for our view of love and ethics follow from the different views of God in each religion. When we build a worldview from the notion that God is absolutely one with no distinction, as in Islam, we get a deficient ethic and view of love. The Christian trinity, on the other hand, provides a robust foundation for a substantive morality and understanding of love. Since God is one nature with three persons, it turns out that God essentially loves others. And it is this key difference that we will be exploring this week. Dr. Scalise will help us see the implications of this difference by pointing out that the highest command in Christianity is to love the Lord while, in Islam, the highest command is to submit to Allah. We’ll also touch briefly on Islam and the Euthyphro Dilemma.
In this week’s episode, we hear from Dr. Brian Scalise. Dr. Scalise’s dissertation ” involved analyzing trinitarian monotheism vis-a-vis unitary monotheism. This comparison looked specifically at Islam, Trinity, and human relationships.” The subject of the discussion is the the theological implications for love in both Christianity and Islam. Specifically, we look at what follows from each religion’s view of God. What does Allah’s absolute oneness mean for love? And what does the Christian Trinity tell us about love?
This week we are continuing a conversation with Dr. Fred Smith. Dr. Smith is a professor at LBTS and has taught courses on world religions He also has a special interest in worldview and culture. Recently, he published a book, Developing a Biblical Worldview: Seeing Things God’s Way. If you’re interested in what Dr. Smith has to say about worldview today, you might check out the book for a more in-depth discussion. Last week, we discussed the nature of worldview in general and raised moral difficulties created by various non-christian worldviews. This week, we’ll be hearing Dr. Smith’s response to some objections raised to the Christian worldview and Dr. Smith will help us to see how the Christian answer to the worldview questions (Who we are? Where are we? What is wrong ? And what is the Answer?) will help us turn back objections.