K. Scott Oliphint > Quotes

“We know that when we speak the truth found in Christianity, we are automatically “connecting” that truth with the truth that God has given through his creation.4 No other religion makes that connection, since every other religion is a suppression of the truth.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“We do believe that God is one God in three persons. That is indeed a mystery. We do not know how God can be the kind of tripersonal God that he is. We have no experience of such things, neither do we have a rational principle that can exhaustively comprehend it. But we need not have such if we base what we know on his revelation to us. You see, since God’s revelation reveals himself, and his will is a part of that self-revelation (not, as in Islam, disconnected from him), we can, therefore, affirm God’s character as triune (as well as his will) without destroying the rational or the empirical. It is the rational and empirical that are, themselves, revelatory of that character. And it is his spoken Word that tells us what his character is like. We see, then, the rational and the empirical through the lenses of what he has spoken in Scripture.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“As soon as we recognize this wonderful truth”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Let’s say”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Just like Jesus’s earthly father, his heavenly Father is a carpenter. He is building a footstool for his Son”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“We believe in miracles because we believe in Christ. When we believe in Christ”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Christianity”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“The Bible is authoritative not because we accept it as such, but because it is the word of the risen Lord. It has a claim on all people. Its truth is the truth for every person in every place. Why, then, would we be reluctant to communicate that truth in our apologetics? Perhaps because we have not reckoned with the actual lordship of Christ. Perhaps we haven’t really set him apart as Lord in our hearts.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“Since, however, a covenantal apologetic affirms Scripture as foundational, it will be obvious to us that it is Scripture’s content that must be highlighted as the primary and preeminent logos of persuasion. The content of our discourse and all of its arguments must have its genesis in Scripture. What we wish to communicate, in other words, as the logos of persuasion, is the logos, or Word, of God himself, and ultimately God’s Word made flesh, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“It would not be an overstatement to say that the way to a proper understanding of God and his character is given foremost in a proper understanding of the Son of God come in the flesh, Jesus Christ.3”
― K. Scott Oliphint, God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God

“So”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Like the woman of Samaria, we come to recognize the real need for living water only when Jesus brings it to our attention.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Unshakable: Standing Firm in a Shifting Culture

“So the mystery that is God’s character is not utter darkness at all. It is a mystery that has as its expression, for us, the revelation of God’s character and the work of God in creation and in redemption. What God has revealed himself to be, in creation and redemption, in his Son and in his Word, is exactly who he is in himself. He is more than what he has revealed, but he is not contradictory to what he has revealed. There is mystery, but there is also real knowledge and not utter darkness. To be sure, the triune God is and will always remain incomprehensible. But what he has made known to us is exactly (though not comprehensively) who he is.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“Christian apologetics is the application of biblical truth to unbelief.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“He is right that we cannot move from the finite to the infinite, but he has not considered that the infinite has moved to the finite. In that light, Kant hasn’t even broached the most basic truths of the Christian God.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“There really is no naked, simple gospel. It must be spoken in human language and argued carefully.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“The Bible is authoritative not because we accept it as such, but because it is the word of the risen Lord. It has a claim on all people. Its truth is the truth for every person in every place.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“When we recognize that truth has its proper home in God himself”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“It will not do simply to say that we believe in God because of certain evidence because”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“When we consider a proper approach to the Bible”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“In the end”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Did God create evil as well? Augustine answered no to this question. It is true that God created everything. But”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Whenever you come across a miracle in the Bible”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Christians believe because of the testimony given to us in the Bible. And through Christianity we are able to properly see everything.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“Unbelief cannot sustain itself; it is unable to make sense of the facts, many of which are the most obvious facts of the world; it assumes, rather than shows, that there is no God, that the world is not created by him, that his character is not obvious in creation, and so on. Then it proceeds to argue its case not by attempting to support those assumptions, but simply by assuming them and then arguing as if the assumptions themselves are, or must be, universal if one is to be “rational.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“The lordship of Christ is basic to our defense of Christianity. Christ now reigns. He is Lord. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. That authority is the prerequisite to the command to make disciples. Without that authority, baptism and disciple making in and for the church are meaningless.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“Given Christianity’s view of sin—its pervasiveness and horrendous effects in the world—it is illegitimate to equate the behavior of Christians with the truth that Christianity teaches. No Christian would argue that anyone should believe in God based on Christian behavior. Instead”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe

“In Adam we will, even if it kills us, do all that we can to avoid what is patently and clearly made obvious to us by God himself.”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“Scripture is clear that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). In wanting to be “relevant” to those who are not in Christ, we may be displaying more of a life “in Adam” than we might think. This bodes ill for the art of persuasion in covenantal apologetics. If Christianity makes little difference in the way we walk and talk on a day-to-day basis, we should not think that there will be any obvious reason for others to want to consider a life in Christ.23”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith

“For the Christian”
― K. Scott Oliphint, Know Why You Believe