My Doctrinal Beliefs

 Welcome to Defending The Faith Apologetics Blog.  My name is David Lee Chu Sarchet and I am thankful to the Lord that you are reading this right now. I hope and pray that you find this edifying to you and glorifying to God. For my first blog post I will be explaining what my doctrinal beliefs are and then in later posts I will be starting a blog series where I critique Christopher Hitchens' book "God is not great: How religion poisons everything". This post will be split up into seven parts: Doctrines of Grace, Apologetics, Cessationism, Creation, Mental Illness, the Fall, and Marriage. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this and thank you very much for giving me your time, 

Part 1: Doctrines of Grace 
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The doctrines of grace also go by the names of Calvinism and Reformed Theology. Although, I do prefer to use the name doctrines of grace because Calvinism comes with certain expectations that non-reformed Christians pin on you when you tell them you are a Calvinist. However, I am not ashamed to admit that, yes, I am a Calvinist. I am a Calvinist because I believe that Reformed Theology is the most consistent with Holy Scripture. What are the doctrines of grace, you ask? Well, the best way to remember these doctrines is with the acronym T.U.L.I.P, but the acronym does not fully represent Calvinism. The acronym stands for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverence of the Saints. I will now briefly explain what each of these mean: 

Total Depravity: Man is completely sinful and depraved and wicked because of The Fall of Adam. Man is not as sinful and wicked as he could be because God's hand of grace is restraining the evil in all of human being's hearts. 

Unconditional Election: Before God created the entire universe and before the foundations of the world, The Lord God predestined certain individuals unto salvation. His electing of individuals had nothing to do with anything good or worthy in themselves but it is dependent on God's free grace. 

Limited Atonement: Jesus Christ died on the cross and took the full wrath of the Father for the sake of the elect individuals and no one else. 

Irresistible Grace: When someone who is of the elect hears the Gospel, the Holy Spirit will regenerate them and make them into a new creation and only then will they come to The Father through Christ. 

Perseverance  of  the Saints: When someone becomes a Christian, they will never lose their salvation, nor will they walk away from the faith, but will persevere until the end. They may stumble for awhile but God will bring them back to Himself because they belong to Him. He will not lose anyone who belongs to Him. 

Part 2: Apologetics
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First off, I am not an evidentialist. I subscribe to the Christian philosophical apologetic called Presuppositional Apologetics as it was founded by Cornelius Van Til and popularized by Dr. Greg Bahnsen. What is the difference between evidentialism and presuppositionalism? Evidentialism is usually a defense of generic theism by the use of providing physical evidence to the unbeliever. Presuppositionalism is the direct defense of Christian theism by attacking the unbeliever's worldview and exposing that they have no ground to stand on philosophically when it comes to topics such as morality, ethics, knowledge, the uniformity of nature, beauty, and existence itself because their worldview cannot account for them. Yet, they will live their lives as if they can account for them and thus demonstrating that they really do believe God exists as Romans chapter 1 tells us, It is because of this fact that they live inconsistently with their worldview and must borrow from the Christian worldview just to argue against Christianity, which reduces their worldview to absurdity! Cornelius Van Til rightly said that the unbeliever lives on "borrowed capital" because they borrow their founding principles for their worldview from the Christian faith. 

Part 3: Cessationism
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What is cessationism? It is basically the belief that miracles and God speaking has ceased since the last apostle of Jesus died. In order for me to justify why I subscribe to this belief I would have to explain what a biblical miracle is. Back in the days when we still had kings and queens, if a king wanted to send a message to another king via a messenger, he would put his insignia on it. The insignia would confirm the message as being truly from the king. What does this have to do with God? Well, according to the Bible, God only performed miracles through his messenger when He was confirming that the message being preached was from God himself. Hebrews 1:1 tells us that all of the miracles were only temporary and that they all culminated in Jesus Christ. Therefore, there is now no new message and thus no need for miracles anymore. Does this mean that God does not heal people anymore? By no means! However, the Lord works through ordinary means now. For example, when someone gets cancer, God heals them thrpugh doctors, chemo therapy, and medicine. This actually brings more glory to God  than saying He only heals through supernatural means because it does not limit God to only one method and thus magnifies God's sovereignty. 

Part 4: Creation
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I am an Old Earth Creationist but I am not that invested in this debate. I believe that this is a non-essential issue and so I rather focus on only the Gospel. However, I will briefly give an explanation about what I understand old earth creationism is. Old earth creationism is the belief that the Bible supports the theory that the universe is billions of years old, as science says, not thousands of years old, as young earth creationists say. Some OEC's accept darwinian evolution, but I do not accept it. For a more detailed account of what old earth creationism is I will refer you to Dr. Hugh Ross' website www.Reasons.org or you could read his book "A Matter of Days". 

Part 5: Mental Illness
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 This is where I get personal with you. I do struggle with a severe mental illness called Schizoaffectuve disorder Bipolar type. What that means is I have intense mood swings like Bipolar disorder but in between those mood swings I have periods of hallucinations and grandiose delusions. Some days are better than others but I always need to take my medication. If I miss even one dose I could spiral out of control. I do believe that mental illness is the result of the Fall, which I will get into later. Basically, when Adam fell into sin, we all fell into sin and brought death and decay into the created order. As a result of this, our bodies are subject to decay and this includes our brains. Psychiatric medications and therapy are God's way of healing mental illness. 

Part 6: The Fall
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Adam, as our covenant representative, was put in the Garden of Eden on a probationary period as a prophet, king, and priest. As such, he was to cultivate the ground and consecrate creation to God. However, since Adam desired to be autonomous from God, he ended uj rebelling and throwing all of creation into sin and corruption. 

Part 7: Marriage 
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Christ is the head of the husband, the husband is the head of the wife, and the wife is the head of the children. These roles must not be reversed or mixed because if they are it messes up the whole created order of God. God designed marriage this way because this is how it works best and marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship with His Bride, the body of believers. For this reason, marriage is between one man and one woman and the husband must lay down his life for his wife like Christ laid down his life for his church and the wife must submit to her husband like the church submits to Christ. 

This pretty much sums up m doctrinal beliefs . Watch out for my next blog on the first chapter of Christopher Hitchens' book. Again, thank you for reading this and giving me your time and attention. God bless you all!!

-David Lee Chu Sarchet 
Christian apologist and mental health advocate 

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