![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009mar24.jpg" ““Article”) There is no doubt that Francis A. Schaeffer broadened the appeal for biblical world-and-life view Christianity with his popular writing style and activist philosophy. Schaeffer’s popularity was extensive enough that he was recognized by the secular media as the “Guru of F [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009mar23.jpg" ““Article”) “Calvinism is back,” so says David Van Biema in the March 22, 2009 issue of Time magazine. Calvinism is listed as one of “10 ideas changing the world Right now.” It’s third on the list. When most people hear the word “Calvinism,” they bite down only on the gristle of pred [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-031609.jpg" ““Article”) You may have read that “the latest American Religious Identification Survey shows that the number of those who believe in no religion at all has almost doubled in the last 18 years, rising from 8 percent to 15 percent since 1990.”1 Then there’s the article that appeared on t [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-031009.jpg" ““Article”) Worldview conferences are springing up all over. This is a good thing. We’ve moved from Immanuel Kant’s philosophically formulated _Weltanschauung_1 to James Orr’s “view of the world”2 to Abraham Kuyper’s “life-system” to the Dutch Reformed “World-and-Life-View” to simply Wo [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-030909.jpg" ““Article”) R.C. Sproul writes that “God’s existence is the chief element in constructing any worldview. To deny this chief premise is to set one’s sails for the island of nihilism. This is the darkest continent of the darkened mind—the ultimate paradise of the fool.”1 Arguing with peop [...]

At the center of every world view is what might be called the “touchstone proposition” of that world view, a proposition that is held to be the fundamental truth about reality and serves as a criterion to determine which other propositions may or may not count as candidates for belief.[1] “Apologetics” does not mean saying you’re sorry for being a Christian. Christian [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-122308.jpg" ““Article”) When error comes, it always rides in on the wings of truth.[1] Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), Premier of the former Soviet Union, described a time in the Communist republic’s history when a wave of petty theft was sweeping through the government-owned plants. To curtai [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-112508-b.jpg" ““Article”) American Vision gets a great deal of mail. Much of it is unsolicited. Most of it is interesting and helpful. A few pieces are downright goofy. Consider the catalog from Global Vision Worldwide that I recently rediscovered. The people at Global Vision: Advance reverence for [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-111908-b.jpg" ““Article”) When error comes, it always rides in on the wings of truth.[1] Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), Premier of the former Soviet Union, described a time in the Communist republic’s history when a wave of petty theft was sweeping through the government-owned plants. To curtail th [...]

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-111108-a.jpg" ““Article”) Nearly every social commentator appeals to the conservative Christian community to be tolerant of other religious traditions. After all, we live in a religiously pluralistic society. The assumption is that religion is a benign choice, little different from picking one car [...]

Many Christians are still locked into the conviction that the Bible speaks to a very narrow slice of life. Of course, all Christians believe that the Bible has some very specific things to say about prayer, Bible reading, worship, and evangelism. But many Christians are not convinced that the Bible has some very definite things to say about civil government, the judicial system, economics, indebte [...]

Critics of the Bible begin with the premise that they know more about the geography and times of the Bible than those who actually lived during the history of the period. Dogmatic claims are often made based on incomplete archeological evidence. This has been happening for a long time. How many years have we heard there was no mention of David outside the Bible? In 1987 archeologist Kathleen Kenyo [...]

We saw in yesterday’s article “Whose Common Sense?” that the call for a Common Sense approach to apologetics is naïve and counterproductive. Competing worldviews are not “willing to work inductively, from particular facts to general conclusions” unless both sides agree (maybe) on the starting point of inquiry. Of course, establishing the starting point is the fundamental problem, the very thing th [...]

For some time now I have been receiving emails from a belligerent atheist. Some of his emails are so vile that to describe them in general terms would be enough to offend you. Atheists are like a tube of toothpaste. The harder you squeeze them to be consistent with their operating assumptions, the more they spill what is really contained deep in their God-hating soul. Jesus described it this way: [...]

“The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method,’ with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology,”[1] argued Stephen Jay Gould. Gould (1941–2002), who served as professor of geology at Harvard and New York University, stated that “no factual discovery of science (statements about how nature ‘is’) can, in principle, lead us to ethi [...]

On a flight to New Mexico last year, the in flight movie was Fracture (2007). It starred Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. Hopkins had killed his wife, and while all the circumstantial evidence pointed to him, there was no actual physical evidence to link him to the murder. The detectives and the prosecutor, played by Gosling, looked at all evidence over and over again and could not figure out how [...]

Many Christian organizations and churches exist exclusively as spiritual fire houses. When they see a fire, they send a fire engine to douse it. They then return to the fire house to polish the fire engine awaiting another call. There is certainly a need for fire engines and fire houses. But there is no real community if there are only fire houses. For the most part, a fire house is inactive. [...]

Two opinions vie for our attention in current Christian thinking regarding the legitimacy of social involvement and kingdom demonstration this side of heaven.[1] The escapist view proposes that gospel proclamation is the church’s singular duty and no more. Concern for this world is a distraction. Heaven, and heaven alone, is the Christian’s only calling and sole domain. The Christian’s citizenship [...]

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog,” and the author of the futuristic dystopian novel with the utopian veneer, Brave New World (1932). His book The Doors of Perception (1954) was the inspiration for Jim Morrison and “The Doors,” and he appears on the album cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Huxley had the fateful distinction of [...]

The ostrich with his head in the sand is the usual picture we get of cultural indifference. This image assumes the ostrich knows there’s a problem and by hiding his eyes, the problem will go away. I believe a more accurate illustration is based on an old Chinese proverb that goes like this: “If you want to know what water is, don’t ask a fish.” Never having experienced another environment, a fish [...]