Ben Edwards talks with Mark Snoeberger about different ways to approach Apologetics.
Apologetic Approaches
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Mark Snoeberger
What Should We Make of the Events at Asbury?
Evaluating the credibility of historical revivals is not a new exercise in the history of the Church. We are made aware that the multiplied “awakenings” of early American history are not all of a sort, and that some proved more credible than others. Iain...
Wanting to Be Noticed
We live in a hyper-sexualized and semi-pornographic culture. The problem dominates popular advertising, pervades our entertainment choices, and even weasels its way into our churches. The concept of modesty is no longer a standard for judgment, but an object...
Refining Dispensationalist Discourse
You can read Dr. Snoeberger's article here.
The Resurrection: More than a Giant Exclamation Point
The death and Resurrection of Christ together represent the pivotal event of the Christian Scriptures. In these two paired incidents are contained the seeds from which the whole Christian Gospel sprouts, and in them are seated the great Christian hope that I am...
The Virgin Birth
In this episode Ben Edwards and Mark Snoeberger discuss the significance of the virgin birth.
The Church and the Keys to the Kingdom
In 1964, George Eldon Ladd argued that the Church functions as “Custodian of the Kingdom” (Presence of the Future, 276). For many, this designation sounds either (1) too Catholic (salvation is found in the organized Church alone) or (2) too Reformed (the Church IS the...
Seating the “King Jesus Gospel” in Its Historical-Theological Context
For as long as I can remember, there have been waves of concern within conservative Protestantism about antinomianism, roughly one per decade. For instance, we have seen movements such as… Norm Shepherd and the movement that bears his name John MacArthur and “Lordship...
Giving Thanks
When one thinks of the more egregious sins in our world today, we tend to think of sins like murder, assault, sexual sins, idolatry, and the like. Very few, I think, would place the sin of ingratitude high on this list. The Apostle Paul, however, does not share our...
Is Pastoral “Desire” a Qualification for Ministry?
The question of a pastoral “call to ministry,” reminiscent of God’s call of biblical prophets and apostles, has long been a issue with which ordination councils have been concerned. Many operate on the assumption that no one aspiring to the ministry may proceed...
Love: An Emotion? A Choice?
With Valentine’s Day just behind us, lingering questions remain about the concept of love. What is it? Is it a choice? An emotion? Some combination of the two? Or something else? My thesis today is that this perpetual debate continues because we have lost the salient...
Synthesizing Indwelling, Omnipresence, and Sanctification
The question of the absence or presence of the indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is a relatively new question in theology. Prior to the twentieth century, the question is almost entirely absent from the literature. In fact, one is hard...
The “Reminding” Work of the Spirit and the Modern Christian
In the Gospels Christ several times promises that the Spirit will supply appropriate words to his disciples in seasons of persecution (Matt 10:19–20; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11) and will “remind” them of what Christ had told them (John 14:25–26; 15:26–27). Do these...
Providence, Sanctification, and the Substance of Faith
The fact that Christ speaks regularly and with vivid imagery of faith as having dimension (it can be little or great and can grow) and even as having material properties (it can be the size of a grain of mustard) leaves some imagining that faith by its nature is an...
On Being Conservative
Last week the satirical news site Babylon Bee made the national news with a post distasteful to some, mocking a health-and-wealth guru after she proved herself a fraud by dying. While that story was making the headlines, a less popular post titled “Conservative...
More Neo-Kuyperian than Biblical?
Back when I was in seminary, one of my professors used to warn us seminarians to be neither “more pious than Paul” nor “more Christian than Christ.” Such a stance might win us halos on earth, but no crowns in glory. This instruction was never more vivid to me than...
Biblical Reasons to Believe that the Creation Days Were 24-Hour Periods
When Justin Taylor released a blog entry last Wednesday defending a non-literal use of days in Genesis 1, and thus suggesting at least the possibility that the universe is quite ancient, both Ben Edwards and I sat down, without consulting, to write responses. While...
Biblical Inerrancy, Preaching, and Bible Translation
As a conservative instructor at a conservative school, I occasionally meet with surprise that I use and love my NIV Bible. Classed by most as coming from the “functionally equivalent” school of Bible translation, the NIV has long been viewed with skepticism by many in...
A Tale of Two Kingdoms: The Struggle for the Spirituality of the Church and the Genius of the Dispensational System
A Tale of Two Kingdoms - SnoebergerDownload
In Defense of Teaching Morals
A few weeks back I offered a tribute to my dad for being a good parent to an unbelieving child (yours truly) by (1) being an agent of common grace, introducing me to “received laws” that God communicates generally to man in his image (language, logic, conduct,...
The New Coach: A Parody on Sanctification
“OK, men, everyone gather around, and let’s get this football season under way,” Coach Paul deTarsus bellowed out. As the young recruits swaggered over, jostling each other manfully, Coach deTarsus continued gruffly, “This year the school steering committee has asked...
Union with Christ or Justification as the Heart of the Gospel?
The recent tiffs over the role of personal obedience and activity in sanctification is symptomatic of a much deeper theological struggle that has intensified in the last decade, viz., the definition of union with Christ and the relationship of that union with...
Depravity, Regeneration, and Sanctification: Take Two
In the wake of the furor of my last blog post, I was heartened this week to discover a helpful post by Rick Phillips that cuts to the very heart of the question of the believer's participation in sanctification. The post, titled Thank God that Christians Are Not...
Tebowgetics
I'm a cynic and a pessimist by nature. Usually, if "everybody is doing it," I don't. I can't tell you whether it's my sin nature, my metacultural bent, or a regenerate distrust of fads and mania in general. And maybe in this case it's my affinity for the Pittsburgh...
Not Ashamed of the Gospel: The 2012 Student Global Impact Conference
The parent church of DBTS, Inter-City Baptist Church, hosts a conference every second January to stimulate and cultivate interest in foreign missions. The next Student Global Impact (SGI) conference is just two weeks away. Scheduled strategically to accommodate...
Implications of John 5:16–30 for the Doctrine of Eternal Generation
The eternal generation of the Son has been a staple element in Christian orthodoxy since Nicaea, and its formulation doubtless occurred earlier:((Dr. Snoeberger is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. An earlier...
Theologically Loaded Catch-Lines, Episode 1: What Does It Mean to “Cease Striving”?
I’ve decided to start a mini-series of blogposts on historically freighted phrases/clauses/mantras that have been detached from their moorings and have become cliché in contemporary Christian-speak. Most of the time these lines are intrinsically innocuous (i.e.,...
Volition: A Function of Person or Nature?
As questions in the ongoing Trinitarian controversy become more refined, the “pieces” of the broader discussion are coming under greater scrutiny. One of these appurtenant issues is the locus of the will, that is, whether volition is seated in one’s substance (i.e.,...
Revival or Revivalism?
Ben Edwards talks with Dr Mark Snoeberger about the theological nature of Revivals.
Refining Dispensational Discourse: Reconsidering Four Common Expressions
Fifteen years ago, my late mentor Rolland McCune passed me a baton, namely, his class on dispensational theology. ((Dr. Snoeberger is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.)) Dr. McCune routinely taught that...
The Trouble with Being Reformed and Baptist
The words Reformed and Baptist mean something and they are and always have been mutually exclusive. So begins one of Scott Clark’s several diatribes on the paradox of Reformed Baptists, the latest of which hit the fan a couple of weeks back...
“Christ in All the Scriptures”?
The fact that all truth is interconnected and sourced in the Triune God means that God in Christ may be rightly connected to every datum of truth in the whole universe. Many argue that faithful preaching, in fact, will make such a connection in every sermon:...
Newsflash: Personal Discipline Is Not Legalism
I attended Bible College in the 1980s and seminary in the 1990s. The time I spent earning my Master of Divinity at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary still stands for me as the most grueling four years of my life. But I had accidentally prepared for it for years,...
If Jesus Descended to Sheol, then Old Testament Saints also Descended to Sheol
Introduction As was the case in the previous article of this journal, the question addressed in this article is the destination of the souls of Old Testament saints at death: Did they go (1) to an undifferentiated “place of the dead” to which all human souls descend,...
Some Thoughts about Heaven
“The Christian does not desire going to heaven; they desire to go to Christ, and wherever He is, there is heaven.” The twitter post caught my eye, and left me perplexed. Had the statement been that the Christian does not merely desire to go to heaven,...
On Originalist Hermeneutics
A few years back I made a proposal that we replace the label “literal translation” with a better one—originalism—a term that has been robustly defined away from competing hermeneutical ideas in the secular/legal sphere. For decades the dispensationalist has dealt...
Another Question of Discernment
In my last blog post I addressed the irrational distrust that is increasingly plaguing religious and political conservatives. Specifically, I suggested that we ask of our theories about, say, mask mandates, social distancing, and vaccines, “Why would all these people...
A Question of Discernment
About 25 years ago I was privileged to take several seminary courses that focused on the science of textual criticism. Textual criticism was really important in those days because epic battles were then raging over texts and translations as the King James Version lost...
On Simple Verbs
I teach a class on research and writing here at DBTS. I don’t consider myself a gifted writer, but I’ve tried to be a student of good writing, and I’ve had some draconian editors along the way who have helped me in no small measure (HT: Andy Naselli). People sometimes...
How Can We Simultaneously “Submit to Every Ordinance of Man” and “Obey God Rather Than Men”?
The intersection of Acts 5:29 and 1 Peter 2:13 encapsulates a tension facing many churches today. Harmonizing these texts is not a simple task. Still, it can be done. The simplest harmonization goes something like this: “We must obey the government unless the...
Dispensational Ethics?
Over the years, dispensationalists have been called antinomian for many reasons. Mostly it’s been because of our tension with the so-called “third use” of the Mosaic Law: the appeal specifically to the Decalogue to inform Christian righteousness. Most...
Not Ashamed?
Christian media outlets have a lot to say these days about the idea of shame, mostly trying to convince us that shame is bad. And in many circumstances, they are right. For instance, (1) we need not be ashamed before God for sins committed in our pre-conversion past:...
Praying for Healing
The Bible teaches that Christians ought to pray for healing and that God routinely answers such prayers (Jas 5:14–15 et al.). But what exactly should we expect from God when we pray to him for healing? As I see it, there are basically five discernable responses to...
Trusting and Obeying
There it was in my Facebook feed. One of those ubiquitous memes from well-meaning fellow believers: God does not want you to try harder, he wants you to trust him deeper. Stop trying. Start trusting. But is it true? Does God really not want us to “try hard” to become...
Reading the Bible Supernaturally? A Review Article
Reading the Bible Supernaturally Review Article - SnoebergerDownload
2018 DBSJ Now Available
It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of the 2018 Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, now in its 23rd year of publication. This year’s selections give attention to a thorny question in Zechariah, the curiosity of Paul’s reticence to directly cite the...
“We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross.”
…so said the late R. C. Sproul in a timely and succinct blog post just last year. Sproul was a master of theological summary, and it is only fitting that we remember him for this service to the Christian Church in the wake of his recent departure. Despite Sproul’s...
The Whole Good News
Last week on this weblog Bill Combs offered a corrective against using the hammer of justification to answer questions better answered with appeals to regeneration/sanctification. This problem is not, I think, an incidental concern, but an endemic one, and one of some...
“Peace, Peace” When There Is No Peace (Repost)
One of the more troubling mis-translations in the history of English Bible translation (at least in terms of its popular acceptance and impact) is the King James rendering of Luke 2:14 as “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Despite...