The Christian Vanguard

 A common question you might hear from Muslims is, "Does Jesus have a God?" The answer is Yes, of course He does. He says this repeatedly in scripture. Romans 15:6, 2 Cor 1:3, Ephesians 1:3;7. Now where this goes from here is usually with a follow up question: How is this possible? I've listened to many Christians stumble in trying to answer this question and get steamrolled by Muslims. And I've seen it happen enough to motivate me to write down an answer.  How is possible that God have a God? There are a couple ways to answer this. The first is to analyze what "to have a God" means. Because this could be interpreted in a few different ways, I suspect that Muslim apologists get a lot of mileage out of not defining this relation. What it means to "have" a God is commonly meant as something like creator. We commonly understand the Christian God to be our Creator and Sustainer. So, to say that Jesus has a God would mean that Jesus is also a created be...

I have a conversion story that some people find entertaining. I think I am a good story teller, and sometimes, I will hear, "Yeah, I just have a boring testimony, if you even want to call it that. I was just baptized and raised in the faith. Nothing crazy." I make it a point, if I ever hear this, that those are stories that really matter. The boring stories where nothing dramatic happens. Those are more important. Why? Because obviously, some people need grace. The guy who murdered his friend in cold blood and found himself in prison for 20+ years, or the drug dealer who ruined many lives, or the porn star who found a way out of the industry, yes, all these people need grace, and it is very obvious that they need saving grace. And often times, these are interesting stories to hear. But the worry is that such stories of conversion downplay the work of Christ in everyone else's life. The worry is that if you didn't lead that bad or crazy or dramatic of a life, you don...

Probably the most well known objection to St. Anselm's Ontological argument, usually attributed to Kant, says that existence is not a predicate. When we inquire into the nature of things, we say that it is this shape and that color, and these statements have some meaningful content to them because we are able to predicate something to them. They tell us something about the object. However, saying that X exists tells us nothing about the nature of the object. So being is not a predicate.  This is not the view of the scholastics, and definitely not the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, who does say being (or existence) is a predicate. So how then do we deal with the above objection? Let's look at the mode of inquiry. When we ask what something is, we answer by giving a more common term to which we add a specific difference. So when we ask what a cat is, we say it is a mammal that has this or that distinguishing feature. We may ask what this more common thing is as well, and we ...

This was an essay I turned in for class. Locke’s Argument for God Locke’s argument comes in two stages. In the first stage, he argues for a first cause, and in the second stage, he argues for identifying that cause as God. It can be summarized thusly: 1. There are beings that have a beginning 2. All beings that have a beginning have been produced by something eternal 3. Therefore, something eternal exists In support of the first premise, Locke points to our own existence as a thing that exists. His reasoning here is that if one truly does not exist, then one is nothing. Yet at some point, Locke is confident, that the one claiming he is non-being will eventually be hungry or have pain, which is only possible to being, not to non-being. This may sound like a practical argument, and practical arguments are not always the strongest arguments, but Locke also says that non-being cannot produce being. Non-being cannot have properties, sensations, passions, or anything whatsoever, predicated...

I was asked to give a short talk to the Newman club here at CSULB, and they asked me to answer the question: How did you fall in love with God? Now, I'm not the sentimental type, and this was definitely out of my comfort zone, but they asked for a short 5 minute talk, and I figured it wasn't that bad. So here is what I wrote up. I didn't read it out, but I typed it so that when I gave the talk, I knew in my mind what to say. Here it is.  How I Fell In Love With God Many of you have already heard my long and dry conversion story from atheism, that is, my move from believing that there was no such thing as God and no such person as Jesus, to not only believing such people did exist, but that they were legitimately Lord of my life. While many people are interested in the arguments and evidences of my beliefs, I don’t really talk about how my relationship with God developed. I’ve said a lot about how I came to know God, but not how I came to love God.  The two are ...

No. God knowing what you will do in the future does not mean you don't have free will. Whatever it is that makes something true, God knowing it isn't a truth maker. If God knows I'm going to wear jeans today, His knowing it isn't what makes it is true. Whatever makes it true is how God knows it, otherwise, he wouldn't know it at all since there would be nothing true to know (or, if God knowing something in the future makes it so, how did He know it in the first place?). To make the case more apparent, say I am currently wearing jeans. Then God currently knows I am wearing jeans. But God knowing I am wearing jeans at this moment isn't what is making me wear jeans at this moment, anymore than God knowing the past is makes makes the past true, and so, it isn't true of the future as well. 

Here is my review of Trent Horn 's contribution to the Catholic Answers "20 Answers" series.

Much has already been said about whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Why another drop in the ocean? Because I haven't seen anyone make this point, or at least explicitly make this point, and so that justifies me adding to the noise. That point is that the distinction between de re and de dicto is relevant here.  Take the following syllogism: 1. Mary Jane believes Spider-Man is a hero 2. Spider-Man is Peter Parker  The temptation is to conclude that  3. Mary Jane believes that Peter Parker is a hero But this would not be true if Mary Jane does not know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. So how do we account for this? We do so by making the semantic distinction between de re and de dicto. De re means "of the thing" and de dicto  means "of what is said." (3) follows from (1) and (2) on the de re  interpretation, but not on the de dicto .  For example, take the proposition, "Adrian believes that someone is a fr...

I have this thing, where when I get mad, I demand an explanation. Sometimes, this is more important than an apology, though it probably shouldn't be. So for example, if someone calls me, with malicious intent, "Fatty", and once they have expressed sorrow, regret, and everything else, I usually ask, "Okay, but why'd you do it?" I now see that asking such a question may be futile.

I LOVE reading atheists hating on Tim Tebow! LOVE IT! It's so freaking encouraging. All I can do is laugh. Here is one particularly hateful post about Tebow from a popular atheist blog. Strong language. http://freethoughtblogs.com/physioprof/2011/12/15/fucke-christmas/ And former CNN news anchor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z_YZObTX64 One common complaint about Tim Tebow and God is that God does not care about football. I would like to defend God and Football. I would like to discuss whether or not God actually cares about football. I'm only half serious.

I've come to realize that there are actually two interpretations of this question. The first is the one I'm most familiar with, which is the one coming from the atheist or skeptic who is not really seeking to know God, but to look for a quarrel, and the other is from the inquiring Christian. Since I'm not sure which interpretation I'm faced with, I'll go ahead and explain both.