John Frame <Apologetics to the Glory of God - An Introduction> Notes and Review

2024-02-23 0 views

Apologetics: The Basics

Definitions

Christian Apologetics seeks to serve God and church by helping believers to carry out the mandate of 1 Peter 3:15-16. We may define it as a discipline that teaches Christians how to give a reason for their hope.

We can distinguish three aspects:

  1. Apologetics as proof: presenting a rational basis for faith. Apologetics confronts unbelief in the believer as well as unbeliever.
  2. Apologetics as defense: answering the objections of unbelief. Paul describes his mission as “defending and confirming the gospel”. “Confirming” may refer to number 1 above, “defending” is more focused on giving answers to objects.
  3. Apologetics as offense: attacking the foolishness of unbelieving thought. see 2 Cor. 10:5.

These three types of apolegetics are perspectivally related. That is to say, each one, done fully and rightly, includes the other two, so that each is a way of looking at the whole apolegetic enterprise. e.g. To give a full account of the rationale of belief (no. 1), one must vindicate that rationale against the objections (no. 2) and alternatives (no. 3) advanced by unbelievers.

Presuppositions

Our theme verse 1 Peter 3:15 starts by “In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord”. The apolegetist must be a be a believer in Christ, commited to the lordship of Christ.

Some theologians present apolegetics as if it were almost an exception to this commitment. We should, no this view, use criteria and standards that unbeliever himself can accept. So logic, facts, experience, reason and such become the sources of truth. Divine revalation, especially the Scripture, must be systematically excluded. This argument may appeal to common sense: since God ans Scripture are prescisely the matters in question, we obviously must not make assumptions about them in our argument. That would be circular thinking. This sort of apolegetics is sometimes called classical or traditional method.

In saying that traditional apologists espiuse “neutrality,” I’m not arguing that they seek to put their Christian commitment aside in doing apolegetics. They do, however, tell unbelievers to think neutrally during the apolegetic encounter, and they do seek to develop a neutral argument that has no distinctly biblical presuppositions.

I do believe neutrality position is unbiblical. For Peter, apolegetics is certainly not an exception to the overall commitment to Jesus’ lordship. Peter tells us, the lordship of Jesus is our ultimate presupposition. An ultimate presupposition is a basic heart commitment, an ultimate trust. Since we believe him more certainly than we believe anything else, he and hence his Word is the very criterion, the ultimate standard of truth. The lordship of Christ is not only ultimate and unquestional, not only above and beyond all authorities, but also over all areas of human life. No area of human life is neutral. Surely this principle includes the area of thinking and knowing.

Non-Chriatians are “deceived”. He knows God and does not know him at the same time. The unbeliever cannot come to faith apart from the biblical gospel of salvation. We would not know about unbeliever’s condition apart from the Scripture. Apologist must not only “set apart Jesus as Lord”, but also his argument must presuppose that lordship. In apolegetic argument, as in everything else we do, we must presuppose the truth of God’s Word.

There is no neutrality, our witness is either God’s wisdom or world’s foolishness.

Circular Arguments?

Does this mean we are called to mebrace circular argument? Only in one sense. Certain circularity becomes evident when someone asks: “What are your ultimate criteria for good attestation?” or “What broad view of human knowledge permits you to reason from eyewitness testimony to a miraculous fact?” The fact here is that Cristian is presupposing a Chrisitan epistemonlogy. In other words, he is using scriptual standards to prove spiritual conclusions.

When one is arguing for the ultimate criterion, whether the Scripture, Koran, human reason, sensation, or whatever, one must use criteria that is compatible with that conclusion. If that is circularity, then everybody is guilty of circularity.

Does this eliminate the possibility of communication between believer and unbeliever?

Certainly not:

  1. Scripture tells us that God has revealed himself clearly to the unbeliever, even to such an extent that the unbeliever knows God, although he represses that knowledge, there is at some level of his counciousness a memory of that revelation. We direct our apologetic witness not to his empiricist epistemology or whatever, but to his memory of God’s revelation and to the epistemology implicit in that revealtion.

  2. Our witness to the unbeliever never comes alone. If God chooses to use our witness for his purposes, then he always adds a supernatural element to that witness - the Holy Spirit, working in and with the word.

  3. This is in fact what we do in similar cases that are not normally religious. (Expressing our view with our presuppostion instead of other people’s presupposition when we try to convince someone)

  4. Christian apologetics can take many forms. It could be presented Socratically, e.g. How do you account for the universality of logical laws? How do you arrive at the judgment that human life is worth living?

  5. Narrowly circular and broadly circular are different. “Circularity” can be as broad as the whole universe; for every fact witnesses to the truth of God.

God’s Responsiblity and Ours

God’s sovereignty does not exclude, but engages human responsiblity. It is God’s sovereignty that grants human responsibility, that gives freedom and significance to human choices and actions, that ordains an important human role within God’s plan for history.

We have already seen that apologetics can not be succesful apart from supernatural element, the tesimony of Holy Spirit. In that sense apologetics is a sovereign work of God. It is he who persuades the unbelieving mind and heart. But there is also a place for the human apologetist. The Spirit is the one who converts, but he normally works through the word. There need not be any such competition between God’s work and ours, as long as we recognize both God’s ultimate sovereignty and his determination to use human agents to accomplish his purpose. Apologetics, rightly understood, is not playing God; it is merely practicing a divnely ordained human vocation.

Our discussion will also help us to answer those who insist that the Bible needs no defense. Charles Suprgeon is sometimes quoted: “Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion”. It is certainly true that Scripture, attended by the Spirit, is powerful. And it does defend itself. But, of course, when we as human preachers expound Scripture, we too must expound that rationale. Thus we defend Scripture by using Scripture’s own defenses. To defend the Bible is ultimately simply to present it as it is - to present its truth, beauty and goodness, its application to present-day hearers and its rationale.

Sola Scriptura

“The Bible needs no defense” can also be used as a way of invoking the Protestant principle: sola Scriptura, the sufficiency of Scripture. Sola Scriptura does not require the exclusion of all extrabiblical data, even from theology. It simply requires that in theology and in all other disciplines, the highest authority, the supreme standard, be the Scripture and Scripture alone. Theology is not only a reading of Scripture, but and applicaiton of Scripture to human need. To defend the Bible according to its own standards, even when we use extrabiblical data in the process, is not to add anything to Scripture as our supreme standard. It is simply to expose, as we saw above, the rationality of Scripture itself.

To see Scripture rightly is to see how it fits and illumines those contexts. In that sense a proper causal or historical argument does not go beyond Scripture. It simply shows the applicability of scriptural truth to some area of the world, and thus it displays the Bible in its full meaning.

I conclude that we may use extrabiblical data in apologetics, but not as independent criteria to which Scripture must measure up. Our job is to present the Bible as it is, and to do so we must often refer to it in various contexts.

Sola Scriptura and Natural Revelation

To relate Scripture to its contexts is to relate it to natural revelation. Natural revelation is the revelation of God in everything he has made. It does not reveal God’s plan of salvation, which comes specifically through the preaching of Christ. We have that preaching of Christ in definitive form in the Scriptures, and on the authority of Scripture we continue to preach the gospel to the world.

Why do we need two forms of revelation? For one thing, direct divine speech shortens the “learning curve.” Even unfallen Adam needed to hear God’s direct speech that supplemented and interpreted God’s revelation in nature. He didn’t need to figure everything out for himself; in many cases that may have taken a long time or indeed been impossible for the finite mind. After the fall, at least two reasons for special divine speech entered the pciture. One was man’s need for a saving promise that could never be deduced from natural revelation alone. The other reason was to correct our sinful misinterpretations of natural revelation. As Calvin said, Christians should look at nature with the “spectacles of Scripture”.

The difference is that Scripture is a verbal divine utterance that God gives us to supplement and correct our view of his world. We must humbly accept that assistance. In doing so, we do not make Scripture more authoratative than natural revelation; rather we allow the Word to correct our interpretations of natural revelation. To allow Scripture this corrective work, we must accept the principle that our settled belief as to Scripture’s teaching must take precedence over what we would believe from natural revelation alone.

Showing natural revelation to the unbeliever is not an invitation to him to reason neutrally or autonomously or to ignore the Scripture. Natural and special revelation must never be separated in an apologetic encounter.

Our scriptual presupposition authorizes the use of evidence, and the evidence is nothing more than the application of Scripture to our situation. The use of evidence is not contrary to sola Scriptura, but a fulfillment of that principle.

Values

What is the use, the purpose, the value of apologetics. Since apologetics and preaching are perspectivally related, the benefits of the two are the same. As preaching leads to the conversion of the lost and the edification of the saints, so does apologetics.

The specific work of giving an intellectual rationale has its usefulness within these broader contexts. For the believer, aplogetics gives reassurance to faith as it displays the rationality of Scripture itself. For the unbeliever, God may use apologetic reasoining to sweep aside rationalizations, arguments by which the subject resists conversion.

For those who never come to faith, apologetics may still be doing God’s work. Like preaching, again, it adds to their condemnation. Failure to repent and believe, despite faithful presentation of the truth, leads to more severe condemnation.

Dangers

Errors in those who teach are more serious and will be judged more severely. The apologist is a teacher; therefore the scriptural warnings about teachers apply to aplogoists.

Every aplogetic presentation has important practical contexts. Our communication with unbelievers consists not only of what we say, but also of how we live before them. If our life contradicts our doctrine, then our apologetics is hypocritical and loses credibility.

To be more specific, apologists are especially prone to sins in two areas. In Ephesians 4:15, which urges us to speak the truth in love, we may say that apologists have sometimes been guilty of speaking falsehoods and sometimes of speaking without love.

Someone might say “I must present Christianity as intellectually respectable.” Thus, various Christian doctrines are compromised. Don’t be an apologist unless your first loyalty is to God - not to intellectual respectability, not to truth in the abstract, not to unbeliever as such, not to some philosophic tradition.

The opposite violation of Ephesians 4:15 is speaking without love. Unfortunately, many contentious or quarrelsome people are attracted to the discipline of apologetics. In their heart, they are unhappy unless they are in the midst of controversy. This sort of contentiousness comes from pride, according to Proverbs 13:10. Hear also that Peter, again in our theme text, urging the virtues of “gentleness” and “respect.” Gentleness is the way of love and peacemaking, a trait quite opposed to the contentious spirit. In circles like my own that emphasize a militant orthodoxy, gentleness is the most neglected of the biblical virtues. “respect” would mean treating the unbeliever as what he is - a person created in the image of God. It would mean not talking down to him, but listening to him - not belittling him, but taking seriously his questions and ideas. We should relate the apologetic encounter to God and his purposes, rather than allow our own emotional evaluation of the unbeliever to dictate our approach to him.

The Message of Apologist

Christianity as Philosophy

Christianity is a viewpoint on everything. There are distinctive Christian views on history, science, psychology, business, economics, labor, sociology, education, the arts, the problems of philosophy, etc. One of the more unfortunate repercussions of America’s distorted view of “the separation of church and state” is that public school children are able to hear advocacy of every system of thought except those that are arbitrarily labeled “religious.” Who is to say that those truth might not be found in, or even limited to, one of these religious positions? Is it even remotely fair, in terms of freedom of thought and speech, to restrict public education to allegedly secular viewpoints? Is this not brainwashing of the worst kind?

Footnote: To those who are offended by the advocacy of religion in the classroom, it should be replied that Christians have just as much right to be offended by the teaching of various secular philosophies, which disavow our need for God. Christians ought to express this offense more consistently and severely. Why should “offensive” teaching be limited to “religious” expression in some arbitrarily narrow sense?

Metaphysics

The four most important things to remember about the Christian worldview are: 1. the absolute personality of God; 2. the distinction between Creator and creature; 3. the sovereignty of God; 4. the Trinity.

  1. The absolute personality of God; The great question confronting modern humanity is this: Granted that the universe contains both persons and impersonal structures, which is fundamental? Secular thought generally assumes the latter - that persons are the products of matter, motion, chance and so on. On this view, an ultimate explanation, a fully satisfying explanation, requires the ultimacy of the impersonal. But is that a necessary assumption?

If the impersonal is primary, then there is no consciousness, no wisdom, and no will in the ultimate origin of things. What we call reason and value are the unintended, accidental consequences of chance events. But if personal is primary, then the world was made according to a rational plan that can be understood by rational minds. Friendship and love are not only profound human experiences, but fundamental ingredients of the whole world order. Instead of a gray world of matter and motion and chance, in which anything could happen, but nothing much (nothing of human interest) ever does, the world would be the artistic creation of the greatest mind imagable, with a dazzling beauty and fascinating logic.

We are called to stand firmly against the almost universal presupposition that the universe is fundamentally impersonal. We must not allow the unbeliever to suppose what he usually supposes - that of course the impersonal is more ultimate. We must challenge him to consider the alternative. And if he says he is certain of his impersonalism, and if he despises anyone who thinks otherwise as superstitious or stupid, we must ask him to give for his view the kind of proof that he demands of us. And once we show him that his impersonalism is the product of irrational faith, we will be in a good position to present the one alternative to that impersonalism, the alternative presented in Scripture.

  1. The Creator - creature relationship. According to Scripture, God is both transcendent and immananent.

He is radically differnet from us. He is Creator and we are his creatures. He is absolute, we are not. Even his personality is different from ours, for his is original and ours is derivative. God is wholly personal and in no way depends on the impersonal, while we are dependent on impersonal matter and forces to keep us alive.

God’s immanence is his involvement in all areas of creation. Because he is absolute, he controls all things, interprets all things and evaluates all things. We are akin to him. We are his “image”. God continually seeks to converse with, to have fellowship with, and to dwell with his people. God is the planner of, and the main actor in, human history. Ultimately, it is with him that we have to do. The ultimate questoin is how shall we respond to God and his word? Behind all the challenges and difficulties of this life, our ultimate challenge is whether or not we shall honor God and obey his Word.

Transcendence reminds us of the Creator-creature distinction. Non-Christian radically deny the biblical Creator-creature distinction. Liberal theologians regularly picture God’s transcendence, not as his absoluteness, but as his remoteness, his “beyondness”. God is “wholly other” - so far beyond us that we cannot speak or think correctly about him.

It is equally important to maintain a biblical view of God’s immanence. Non-Chrisitan thinkers, including liberal theologians, often use the rhetoric of immanence to suggest that world is really divine in some sense, or God is identical with the historical process.

As Van Til put it, the Christian worldview involves a “two level” concept of reality. Two circles, one under the other, connected by vertical lines of “communication”. The larger, upper circle represented God; the smaller, lower circle represented the creation. All non-Chrisitan thought, he argued is “one-circle” thought. It either raises man to God’s level or lowers God to man’s.

  1. The sovereignty of God. God’s sovereignty means God’s control, authority and presence. Even arminiansim concedes the Calvinist point without admitting it. Therefore some Arminians today have abandoned the premise that God forknows everything and have moved to a view more akin to that of process theology. But this move is exceedingly dubious scriptually.

The divine rulership is important to apoologetics, beacuse it destroys the unbeliever’s pretense of autonomy. His plans determines what things are, what is true or false, and what is right or wrong. For us to make judgment in these areas, we must consult his revelation in nature and Scripture, seeking humbly to think God’s thought after him.

  1. The Trinity. Finally the Christian God is three in one. Anti-Trinitarianism always leads to a “wholly other” God, rather than a God who is transencent in the biblical sense. Paradoxically, at the same time, it leads to a God who is relative to the world, rather than the sovereign Lord of Scripture. It leads to a blank “One” rather than the absolute personality of the Bible. It makes the Creator-creature distinction a different degree rather than a difference of being.

When we search for ultimate criteria or standards, we look, not to some “maximum unity” or “utter uniqueness” within the world, but to the living God, who alone furnishes the ultimate criteria for human thought. Thus the trinity also has implication for epistemology.

Epistemology

God interprets everything definitely. So when we want to know something, we must think God’s thoguhgt after him. God controls all things by his wise plan. All of our knowledge originates in him. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge”.

As we saw under “Metaphysics”, it is evident that true Christianity is the alternative to the conventional wisdom to the consensus of philosophers, religionists, liberal theologians and popular thinkers. Our time is one in which everyone seems to claim autonomy, the right to “do your own thing.” God calls that foolishness.

Ethics

Ethics investigates such matters as good and evil, right and wrong. Chrisitan ethics is distinctive.

God is the supreme criterion of truth and falsehood. He is also the supreme standard of what is good and evil, right and wrong.

Christian is the alternative to human autonomy that seek to avoid responsibility to obey God’s laws. Only Chrisitanity, has the answer to lawlessness.

Christianity as Good News

Christianity is not just an alternative to the secular philosophies or a set of moral standards better than those of current society. It is gospel, good news. Scripture teaches that human beings, made in God’s image, sinned against him. We today bear the guilt of Adam’s first sin and the weight of our own sins against God. According to the Scripture, existing eveils of heredity, environment, sickness, and so on are due to the Fall. And what is the solution? John 3:16. The scripture directive is not for us to work harder to achieve God’s favor, but to accept God’s mercy through Christ as a free gift. No philsophy, no liberal theology, not even any Christian heresy offers any solution to human sin, beyond encouragements to try harder.

Allow me to draw the application that evangelism is part of apologetics. The apologist must always be ready to present the gospel. He must not get so tangled in arguments, proofs, defenses and critiques that he neglects to give the unbeliever what they needs most.

We see that Christianity, both as philosophy and good news, is the alternative to the conventional wisdom. Tweedledum and Tweedledee all claiming implausibly to be able to explain the personal by means of the impersonal, all claiming automy (denying God’s sovereignty), all claiming to find ultimates not in God but in creation. Without a dime’s worth of difference among these conventional ideologies - it certainly makes sense to give a high priority to investigating Chrisitanity and its claims. Indifference to such uniqueness is not wise.

Apologetics as Proof: Some Methological Considerations

Faith, Scripture and Evidence

Faith is not mere rational thought, but it is not irrational either. It is a trust which rests upon sufficient evidence. Faith does not believe despite the absense of evident; rather faith honors God’s word as sufficient evidence. e.g. the main trust in 1 Corinthians is: you should believe in Resurrection because it is part of the apostolic preaching! See verses 1-2 and 11.

Scripture often contains its own reasons for the things itself, e.g. Romands 8:1 “therefore”. When we proclaim Scripture, we may also proclaim that authoritative reasoning process, the biblical rationale.

The Concept of Proof

Van Til says that “there is absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism.”

I do not agree that persuasion should be incorporated in the concept of proof. That would limit our proofs to those which actually persuade people. But Scripture teaches that good proofs do not always persuade, for unbelievers repress the truth. This repression is not always successful; sometimes unbelievers recognize truths, even truths about God. There is no argument guaranteed to be persuasive to all people. To have such a guarantee, we would have to be able to predict both the devious process of suppression and the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit. One might note that this process of suppression is not raitonal. Therefore, unbelievers do not fall under the definition of “rational person” in the proposed definition of proof.

The only restriction on apologetic argument which emerge from our discussion so far are these: (1) The premises and logic of the argument must be consistent with biblical teaching (2) The premises must be true and logic valid. (3) The specific subject matter of the argument must take into account the specific situation of the inquirer: his education, interests, questions etc. The third point means that apologetic argument is “erson variable.”

The Need for Proof

Scripture never rebukes childlike faith. One who requires proof may be doing it out of ungodly arrogance, or he may be thereby admitting that he has not lived in a godly environment and has taken counsel from fools. God’s norm for us is that we live and raise our children in such a way that proof will be unnecessary. Still as we saw in the previous section, there are some who claim that proof is necessary for them. Often the most effective thing is for the inquirer simply to read the Bible. God’s Word is powerful as the Spirit drives it into the heart. Another is for inquirer to be as open as he can be to the creation itself.

Once we get beyond simply pointing the unbeliever to the creation and the statements of the Scripture, proof becomes a fairly complicated matter. It is interesting in this connection to ask how people actually come to faith in Christ. Few Christians list any argument or proof at all. For most, the issue is not intellectual; for them, Christianity was believable enough. The issue was, rather the person was not yet motivated to repent of sin, seek forgiveness, and obey the Christian revelation.

We want to find an approach that (1) will be intellectually understandable to our inquirers (2) will arouse and maintain their interst (3) will perheps inteact with some area in which they admit weakness or uncertainty, pressing it harder (4) will contain some element of suprise, so that their prepared responses will be nullified and they will be forced to think (5) will set forth the truth without compromise, and (6) will by its manner communicate the love of Christ.

Transcendental Argument

Van Til understood the need to set forth the truth without compromise to require a specific kind of argumentation, which he called “presuppositional”, but some of his followers have called “transcendental”.

Transcendental Argument originates from Kant, transcendental method does not try to prove that genuine knowledge is possible; rather, it presupposes that it is. Then it asks, what must the world, the mind and human thought be like if this presupposition is true? The transcendental method then goes ahead to ask what the necessary conditions of human knowledge are.

Van Til noted that in Scripture, God is the source of all reality, and hence all truth, all knowledge, all rationality, all meaning, all actuality and all possibility. So the answer to the conditions that make knowledge possible is first all all the existence of the God of Scripture. To Van Til, this principle is not only a fact, but an argument for the existence of God.

I agree with Van Til that theistic argument should have a transcendental goal. And indeed, part of the biblical teaching about God is that God is the source of all meaning. But I have some questions.

  1. I question whether the transcendental argument can function without help of subsidiary arguments of a more traditional kind. How is the premise of the existence of God to be proved? Is it that the meaning-laden character of creation requires a sort of designer? But that is the traditional teleological argument. Is it that meaning-structure of reality requires an efficient cause? That is the traditional cosmological argument. Is it that meaning entails values, which in turn entail a valuer? That is a traditional values argument.

  2. I do not agree that the traditional arguments necessarily conclude with something less than the biblical God. e.g. teleological argument of purposefulness of the natural world implies a designer. It doesn’t say that God is merely a designer, only that he is a designer, which he certainly is.

  3. Traditional arguments often work. They work because they presuppose a Christian worldview. For example, the causal argument assumes that everything in creation has a cause. The premise is true according to a Christian worldview, but is not true in worldview like that of Hume or Kant. For some, usually the unsophisticated inquirers, one or more of the traditional arguments may be sufficient. For more sophisticated ones, we need to be more explicit about differences of presupposition, differences of worldview, in concepts like causality.

  4. Van Til’s slogan, “Christian theism is a unit” should be understood with such qualifications. I agree that the slogan is true in the sense that one cannot compromise one doctrine without compromising others, and in the sense that accepting one doctrine provides a logical motivation for accepting others. But I do not think an argument should be criticized because it fails to prove every element of Christian theism. Such an argument may be part of a system of apologetics which as a whole establishes the entire organism of Chrisitan truth.

  5. If we grant Van Til’s point that a complete theistic argument should prove the whole biblical doctrine of God, then we must prove more than God is the author of meaing and rationality. Thus for another reason, the transcendental argument requires supplementation by other arguments.

  6. All this suggests a further reason why there is no single argument that will prove the entire biblical doctrine of God.

Therefore, Van Til’s transcendental argument (like every other argument) is not sufficient, by itself, to prove the existence of the biblical God to everyone’s satisfaction. But certainly the overall goal of apologetics is transcendental. That is, the God we seek to prove is indeed the source of all meaning, the source of posibility, of actuality, and of predication. The biblical God is more than this, but certainly not less.

We should certainly not say anything to an inquirer that suggests we can reason, predicate, asses probabilities, etc. apart from God. Part of the lordship of Christ is his lordship over our intellectual life. Surely evangelistic apologetics is never complete without a presentation of Christ as Lord as Lord of all. He is lordship over our wealth and economic life, marital and sexual lives, our relationship with God. But he didn’t specifically describe all the areas of his lordship to every inquirer; he restricted himself to mentioning those areas which were of particular temptation to each individual. Intellectuals are often proud of their autonomy (“neutrality”, “unbiased objectivity”, etc.) and that pride must be absed. It is important for us to tell inquirers that Jesus demands all, not some, of our loyalty. And that includes loving him with the mind - which may well entail holding some unpopular views on scholarly matters.

Negative and Positive Arguments

Van Til also insists that if arguments are to be authentically presuppositional, they must be “negative” rather than “positive”. A negative or indirect argument is sometimes called a reductio ad absurdum. One tentatively adopts proposition A and then deduces from it a logical contradiction or some proposition that is obviously false. That shows A is false. But I have question about them:

Are indirect arguments really distinct from direct arguments? In the final analysis, it doesn’t make much difference whether you say “Causality, therefore God” or “Without God, no causality, therefore God.” Any indirect argument of this sort can be turned into a direct argument by some creative rephrasing. Therefore, I think that Van Til’s restriction of the apologist to the exclusive use of negative arguments is unreasonable. I also reject the tendency among some Van Tillians to equate negative arguments with transcendental arguments.

Absolute Certainty and Probablity

It is true that believers do sometimes doubt both the truth of God and their own salvation, but they have the resources and the right, both logical and supernatural, to come to full assurance on at least the major points of the gospel message. This is the certainty which we seek to communicate in apologetics, as in preaching and witnessing. It is the certainty of a person concerning the revelation of God.

But the word certain has been attached not only to persons, but also to evidence. “Certain” evidence is evidence warranting certainty of belief. “Probable” evidence warrants a level or degree of belief less than certainty, but possibly of great importance.

Van Til: “We should not tone down the validity of this argument to the probability level. The argument may be poorly stated, and may never be adequately stated. But in itself the argument is absolutely sound.” What is this “argument” that is “absolutely sound”, even though the statements of it may all be inadequate? I would prefer to say that the evidence is aboslutely sound, and the argument conveys that evidence with more or less adequacy insofar as the argument conveys the evidence truly, it also conveys the absolute certainty inherent in the evidence.

Point of Contact

“Point of Contact” is rather ambiguous. Some may assume that it refers to some common interest which the apologist may share with an inquirer for the sake of friendship and conversation, an interest that may eventually lead to an opportunity to present the gospel. But it’s different in theology.

The issue: Granted that the unbeliever is totally depraved, what is there in him, if anything, that is capable of receiving God’s grace? Arminian answers “Man’s reason and free will”. Karl Barth: “Nothing at all”. In Barth’s view, God’s grace creates its own “point of contact.” Orthodox Calvinists, recall that God make man in his image - an image that is marred by sin, but not destroyed. Van Til argues that part of that image is knowledge of God, which, though repressed, still exists at some level of his thinking. This is the point of contact to which the apologist appeals.

Is it necessary in an apologetic encounter to tell the unbeliever what our point of contact is? I would not recommend intentional concealment, we can surely appeal to the unbeliever’s represed knowledge even when we do not say that is what we are doing.

The question of the point of contact boils down to this: are we accepting and thus addressing the unbeliever’s distorted worldview, or are we accepting and thus addressing the undistorted revelation which he holds within himself despite his distorted worldview?

Are we so impressed by the unbelieving “wisdom” that we seek to gain the approval of unbelieving intellectuals based on their own criteria? We can guard against it by reminding ourselves that our job is rebuke unbelieving criteria, not affirm them. Our appeal is not to those criteria, but to that knwoledge of God which the unbeliever has “deep down”.

Some Conclusions: A Presuppositionalism of the Heart

One this account of transcendental direction, negative argumentation, certainty and point of contact, there is less distance between Van Til’s apologetics and the traditional apologetics than most partisans on either side have been willing to grant. Perhaps presuppositionalism is more of an attitude of the heart, a spiritual condition, than an easily describable, empirical phenomenon. Our biggest need in apologetics (as in other areas of life) has always been spiritual at its core. And our “presuppositionalism of the heart” is not something vague and indifinable. The presuppositionalism we are talking about is:

(1). a clear-headed understanding of where our loyalties lie and how those loyalties affect our epistemology

(2). a determination above all to present the full teaching of Scripture in our apologetic without compromise, in its full winsomeness and its full offensiveness,

(3). especially a determination to present God as fully sovereign, as the source of all meaning, intellgibility and raitonality, as the ultimate authority for all human thought, and

(4). an understanding of the unbeliever’s knowledge of God and rebellion against God, particularly as it affects his thinking.

Apologetics as Proof: The Existence of God

Nothing is intelligible unless God exists, and God must be nothing less than the Trinitarian, sovereign, transcendent and immanent absolute personality of the Scripture. This argument will not be appropriate for every witnessing situation - no argument is since apologetics is “person variable”. Nontheless, many educated adults from traditional Western culture should be able to follow its main trust and appreciate its logical force.

The proof should help the reader to see in what sense the evidence for God is “obvious”. I will be arguing, essentially, “Moral values, therefore God”.

Epistemological argument: start wtih the phenomenon of human rationality and ask ow that can be;

This chapter also mentioned the traditional metaphysical arguments of the existence of God: the teleological argument, the cosmological argument, the ontological argument.

Apologetics as Proof: Proving the Gospel

Proving the truthe of a historical narrative is rather different from proving the truth of a general worldview. In the latter case, we can deal with common features of our experience, such as values, truth, cause and purpose. But in the former, we are pretty much restricted to evidence relating to a historical period in the distant past. The primary sources are the Scriptures themselves. Extrabiblical sources confirm what the early Christians beleived, but they do not add much to the biblical testimony concerning the events themsevles.

Scripture’s Doctrine of Scripture

It is that God’s people gain their assurance of the gospel from the Word of God. There is no higher authority, no greater ground of certainy - though of course the Holy Spirit enables us to believe, understand and use the Scriptures rightly. The truth of Scripture is a presupposition for God’s people.

I have been emphasizing Scripture in this chapter in order to show the reader merely a peripheral element in that tradition, but the central consititutional authority. Second, Scripture, as that written constitution, is not merely a product of human thinking, not merely a historical source - rather, it is the Word of God.

In the traditional apologetic, inquirers are told not to presuppose the full authority of Scripture as God’s Word until after that authority has been proved by the apologist. However, in the first place, even the general reliability of Scripture is contested by many scholars. Second, we should never tell inquirers to presuppose less than the truth. Third, the Bible’s own argument for Christinity presupposes its own authority in the fullest sense. Fourth, people have to begin where they are. If one does not believe in bibilical authority, he cannot simultaneously presuppose it.

But What about Biblical Criticism?

It is a continual embarrassment to Bible-believing Christians that many professional Bible scholars and theologians, who are in the best position to defend the gospel, are themselves sharply critical of historical Christianity. Rationalists presupposed that supernatural events never occur and that the human mind functions best independently of any purported divine revelation. These presuppositions clearly amounted to flat denials of biblical theism. These denials were made, not on the basis of Bible study, but before that study even began. These presuppositions were intended to govern the very method of Bible study itself; they were in no way influenced by actual teaching of Scripture.

Is Scripture’s teaching about itself credible? Consider: (1) No other doctrine is compatible with absolute-personality theism. (2) Like all biblical teachings, the doctrine of Scripture will be credible to you if the Holy Spirit opens your mind to it. (3). This doctrine was taught by many different biblical authors, from many different times and settings, with many different strengths and weaknesses. None of them found fault with the Bible; all accepted it as their covenant constitution. (4) Above all, this doctrine was taught by Jesus, by the apostles whome he appointed to communicate his teaching and by the prophets of the Old Testament.

Scripture’s Rationale for the Gospel Message

  1. The argument from prophecy, is actually an argument from the whole Old Testament and is in reality an appeal to the extraordinarily rational structure of Scripture itself. Here we have a wide variety of human authors, writing across many centuries, with very different interests, concerns, styles, and levels of intellectual sophistication, saying many different things, and yet, at the same time, saying one thing: Jesus is coming, and this is what he will be and do.

  2. The New Testament witness to Christ. The concept of a perfectly sinless man is unique, not only to our experience, but also to biblical history. But of Jesus, the central figure, there is no critique. His sinlessness became proverbial in the early church. Coming from such witnesses, is that testimony not credible?

  3. Miracle and Resurrection. We ought to be open to the evidence for miracles. We must look at that evidence, not from Hume’s presuppositions, but from Christian ones. When we do, we assume the primacy of the divine absolute personality. If he wishes to work “irregularly” in the universe he has made, who will prevent him or find fault? The greatest miracle, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The fact is, that the Resurrection is as well established as any fact in history - indeed better than most, for it is attested by the Word of God itself. God’s Word makes this gospel “absolutely certain.” Jesus - God in the flesh - has died as a sacrifice for the sins of his people and has been raised to glory.

Conclusion

What Scripture teaches, it teaches credibly. Biblical religion alone provides an authoritative answer to the question we most need to ask of God: How can my sins be forgiven?

Is its credibility absolutely certain? Ultimately, yes, for it is the Word of God himself and therefore deserves to be presupposed as the highest standard of credibility. how can we be persuaded of that certainty? By the Holy Spirit’s witness to us, reinforcing the credibility inherent in the text itself.

Apologetics as Defense: The Problem of Evil, 1 - Questions, General Principles and Blind Alleys

In defense, as in proof, Scripture supplies the fundamental standards and criteria which the apologist must employ. We are not, however, restrictd to Scripture for the data of our arguments.

Is There a Problem of Evil? Is There an Answer?

A typical formulation of the Problem of Evil:

Premise 1: If God were all-powerful, he would be able to prevent evil. Premise 2: If God were all-good, he would desire to prevent evil. Conclusion: So, if God were both all-powerful and all-good, there would be no evil. Premise 3: But there is evil. Conclusion: Therefore, there is no all-powerful, all-good God.

The mystery of God’s relation to evil is one that will, I am convinced, never be completely dissolved in this life, and may even the next. But I do think we can provide answers in another sense. If what you want is encouragement to go on believing in the midst of suffering. Scripture provides that, and provides it abundantly.

Jay Adams in The Grand Decomonstration shows that the reason for the Problem of Evil is God has prepared vessels to demonstrate his justice and vessels to demonstrate his mercy (Romans 9:22-23). And that’s the answer that is given in the Scripture. We could continue to ask why but there is no further answer after this in Scripture.

Focus on the Bible

There are other methods, but in my mind, a direct inspection of biblical teaching is often the best way to defend the faith against objections. In that respect, our treatment of the problem of evil will furnish a model for the treatment of other difficulties.

What the Bible Does not Say

The first thing we can learn from Scripture is what it does not say. It is instructive to see that many of the devices used by philosophers to solve the problem of evil are not present in Scripture. We will consider here most of the defenses and theodicies used in the historical discussion. Some thinkers have combined two or more of the following strategies.

The Unreality-of-Evil Defense

Some Eastern Religions maintains that evil is really an illusion. Even Augustine classified evil as nonbeing, a “privation”.

There is no reason for us to think evil is an illusion. There is no point in creating a distinct metaphysical category for evil. The problem is simply that God is sovereign over all events, good and evil, and however one analyzes evil metaphysically, it is part of God’s plan.

The Divine-Weakness Defense

Many have urged a sort of divine weakness or inability defnese: God does not overcome all evil because he cannot do so - although he does do his best. This is the answer of process theology and also the popular book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. This denies divine omnipotence, omniscience and sovereignty, while seeking to preserve God’s attribute of goodness. But Scripture itself firmly contradicts it.

One may get a solution to the problem of evil, but he loses any sure hopefor the overcoming of evil. He gains intellectual satisfaction at the cost of having to face the horrible possibility that evil may triumph after all.

The Best-Possible-World Defense

Philosopher Leibniz and others have argued that this world, for all its evils, is nontheless the best world which God could have produced. The reason is the very logic of creation. Certain evils are logically necessary to achieve certain good ends. Including evil might be required for the best overall result.

But does a perfect world logically require the existence of evil? God himself is perfect, but there is no evil in him. And, according to Scripture, the original creation contained no evil. The consummate new heavens and new earth - the ultimate perfection of the created order - will also be without evil.

The bottom line is: I don’t know whether this world is the best possible world. So far as I know, God is free to make things that are either imperfect or perfect. So we cannot solve the problem of evil by saying that we know a priori that this is the best possible world and that all evils are logically necessary for its perfection.

The Free-Will Defense

The most common defense among professional philosophers today is based on human free will. It says that evil came about by the free choice of rational creatures. Since that free choice was in no sense controlled or foreordained or caused by God, he cannot be held accountable for it. Therefore the existence of evil does not compromise God’s goodness. (One of the most influential formulations is of Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil)

Scripture does teach that man is, or can be, free in certain senses. (1) He does what he wants to do, acting in accord with his desires, whether those are holy or wicked. (2) Adam had the freedom or ability to choose either good or evil. The Fall removed this freedom from us, for fallen creatures can do only what is evil. But redemption restores this freedom to those who believe. (3) Redemption brings to us an even higher freedom, a freedom from sin and its effects altogether. “Freedom from sin” is the usual meaning of “freedom” in the New Testament. (4) We are free in the sense that we are not the helpless victims of historical determinism. Scripture does not allow us to plead deficiencies in heredity, environment, psychological balance, self-esteem and so on, as excuses for violating God’s commandments. We are, in all our actions, responsible to obey the Lord.

Scripture does agree with the defenders of free will in teaching that the blame for sin rests on man, rather than on God. Even when Scripture specifically mentions God’s forordination of an evil event, the blame for the evil rests exclusively with the human perpetrators.

However, Scripture does not teach - in fact, it denies - free will in the sense that it is used by the free-will defense. For on that view, man’s free choices are not in any way forordained or caused by God. But Scripture frequently speaks of God determining our free choices.

See Romans 9 for a through refutation of the assumption made by the people using the free will defense. especially Romans 9:15: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

Scripture never uses the free-will defense in any passage where the problem of evil is up for discussion. you will not find it in the book of Job, in Psalm 37 or in Psalm 73. All of these passages presuppose the ususal strong view of divine sovereignty.

The Character-Building Defense

The fifth unbiblical defense we shall consider is sometimes called “Irenaean,” after the church father Irenaeus. In modern times it has been urged by John Hick, who calls it the “soul-making” theodicy. The argument is that man was created in a state of moral immaturity. For man to come to full maturity it was necessary for him to undergo various forms of pain and suffering.

I think it is unbiblical to make this a full-scale theodicy. For one thing, Scripture teaches that Adam was not created morally immature with a need to develop character through suffering. Furthermore, Scripture teaches that not all suffering builds character. Unbelievers suffer and often learn no lesons from it. And not all character imrpovement comes through suffering. Believers are created anew in Christ. The basic change from sin to righteousness is a gift of God’s grace. Our santification will be perfected in heaven - not through a purgatory of suffering, but through God’s own action.

The Stable-Environment Defense

C.S. Lewis in his Problem of Pain, argues that a stable environment is necessary for human life. But, a stable environment opens up the possiblity of evil. It means, for example, that the law of gravity will not be temporarily repealed to save me from falling down the stairs.

But does a stable environment necessarily produce evil? Is it a sufficient cause for evil? Certainly not. God created Adam and placed him in a stable environment, but without evil and pain. So, although some evils may certainly be traced proximately to natural laws in a stable environment, these are not a sufficient explanation for evil. To do so would be to blame creation rather than our own hearts.

The Indirect-Cause Defense

The indirect-cause defense is commonly found in Reformed theology. The argument seems to be that since God is the indirect cause of evil, he bears no blame for it.

But indirectness of causality does not in itself mitigate responsibility - at least on the human level. Scripture warns us that enticing someone else to sin is itself a sin. Is God so different from creatures in this respect that the indirectness of his role in evil insulates him against moral censure? Scripture never says that the is different in that way. And it would picture God as some kind of giant Mafia boss who keeps his hands legally clean by forcing his underlings to carry out his nasty designs. Is that picture a biblical one? Is it compatible with the goodness of God which Scripture teaches us?

The ex Lex Defense

Gordon Clark also argues that God is ex lex, which means “outside of the law.” The idea is that God is outside of or above the laws he prescribes for man. Morally he is on an entirely different level from us. Therefore, he has the right to do many things that seem evil to us, even things which contradict scriptural norms.

Clark forgets, however, or perhaps denies, the Reformed and biblical maxim that the law reflects God’s own character. To obey the law is to imitate God, to be like him, to image him. There is in biblical ethics also an imitation of Christ, centered on the atonement. So God does honor, in general, the same law that he gives to us. But on this basis, the problem of evil returns. If God prohibits us from tormenting others, how can he allow his creatures to be tormented?

An ad Hominem Defense

Some Christian apologists have approached the problem of evil on the theory that the best defense is a good offense. Thus when an unbeliever questions the consistency of God’s sovereignty with his goodness in the face of evil, the apologist replies that the unbeliever has no right even to raise the question, for he cannot, on his basis, even distinguish good from evil.

The point is correct, as far as it goes. Moral values presuppose the absolute personality revealed in Scripture. If there is no such God, then the world is governed by chance or by impersonal laws, neither of which commands the loyalty required by moral values. If we seek to think and live without God, we have no basis for identifying or describing good and evil.

However, valuable as this pint is in itself, it is not really an answer to the problem of evil. It is an ad hominem argument; that is, it is addressed to the person rather than to the issue.

Scripture does, as we shall see, rebuke people who raise the problem of evil in certain ways. And Scripture is not entirely averse to some types of ad hominem response. But its typical response are rather different from the one presently udner discussion.

Apologetics as Defense: The Problem of Evil, 2 - A Biblical Response

God is the Standard for his Actions

Scripture never assumes that God owes us an explanation for what he does. In a number of biblical passages, the problem of evil arises for the reader, but the text itself never comments on it.

There are examples in Genesis, in Job. e.g. in Job, the charges are reversed. Job intended to bring charges against God. But the result is that the complainer is convicted of sin. Notice that Job never learns why he has had to endure suffering. The reader knows a bit more than Job, for he can read the prologue, in which Satan is permitted to tempt Job in order to prove his faithfulness. But that is not a complete explanation of why Job suffered. The reader then wants to know why God allowed Satan to do such a thing. The book provides no answers to these questions. In the end, the reader’s questions must be handled in the same way that God handled Job’s questions. For, like Job, we were not there when God laid the foundations of the earth. None of us knows who marked off its dimensions or stretched a measuring line across it. We need to be cautious in probing the problem of evil. Similarly in Roman, no explanation was given but only rebuke on the objecters. God has the sovereign right to do what he wishes, and no further explanation is necessary.

To summarize: God, as sovereign Lord, is the standard of his own actions. He is not subject to human judgment; on the contrary, our judgment is subject to his word. Once we are thus clear on our epistemological situation, we can be assured, despite our questions, of God’s good character, for on that matter the Word of God is clear.

This is not to say that we must trust God’s goodness with blind faith. We have only seen part of the biblical response to the problem of evil, and when we see the rest, it will not seem to be a blind-faith at all. The Word includes its own rationale and points to extrabiblical facts which also rationally confirm its teaching. Nevertheless, although faith is not blind, it is different from sight.

Scripture Gives Us a New Historical Perspective

Why are the biblical writers so sure of God’s justice and goodness? One answer, of course - essentially the answer of the last section - is: God says so, and that ought to be enough. That answer is perfectly proper, and it is important, for it keeps our hearts fixed on their proper presuppositions. But Scripture also tells us how God reveals, and vindicates his goodness. God vindicates his justice by giving us a new historical perspective, by helping us to see history through his eyes.

The Past: The Wait and the Dialectic

Many mysteries in theology boils down to the mystery of time. Certainly a great part of the problem of suffering lies in the fact that our suffering is drawn out in time. We cry out to God, and he does not seem to hear. Or, rather he in effect tells us to wait. Scripture tells us a great deal about this waiting process. It shows us how God’s people are tested by the passage of time over and over again. But it also shows how God brings the waiting periods to an end, vindicating himself and ending the suffering of his people. In perspective, the long wait of the Old Testament period accentuates the problem of evil - not just because of length - but also because it produces a kind of dialectic between justice and mercy. The prophets proclaim justice: Israel will certainly be judged for her disobedience. But they also proclaim grace: God is coming to redeem his people. And then comes Jesus. The wait is over. Christ is the theodicy of Romans 3:26. The atonment vindicates both God’s justice and his mercy.

The Present: The Greater-Good Defense

Scripture’s new historical perspective enables us to look at our own present experience in a new way. In short, God is even now using evil for his own good purposes. Scripture deals with the problem of evil in its typically theocentric, as opposed to anthropocentric, way. So many traditional treatments of the problem assume that God’s ultimate purpose is to provide happiness for man, and of course that is not so. God’s ultimate purpose is to glorify himself, and indeed man’s own chief end “is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.” Greater-Good defenses often fail to see this point, and thus they arrive at a doctrine hard to distinguish from pagan hedonism. At the same time, theocentricity does not require us to ignore the happiness of human beings. Self-denial and persecution are, of cours,e part of the Christian life, but the passages which stress these also emphasize that they lead to the most enduring happiness. Suffering is for a while; glory is for eternity.

God’s greater glory does bring with it a “greater good” for creation in general, and for those who love God (Rom. 8:28), but not for every indiivudal person or thing in the universe. With those clarifications, it is possible to learn from Scripture some of the ways in which God is using evil to bring about greater good. It does show how God has used some evils to advance his purposes. Those purposes include:

  1. Displaying his grace and justice
  2. Judgment of evil, now and in the future

  3. Redemption: Christ’s sufferings are redemptive in an obvious way.

  4. Shock value to unbelievers, intended to gain their attention and promote a change of heart
  5. Fatherly discipline of believers
  6. Vindication of God

We cannot always understand why God has chosen evil events to accomplish these good purposes. We do know that God never foreordains an evil event without a good purpose. Everything he does reflects his wisdom. But he is under no obligation to give us his reasons. Nevertheless, as we see evil used for good again and again in Scripture, can we not accept in faith that those evil which are as yet unexplained also have a purpose in the depth of God’s mind?

We do not have a complete theoretical answer to the problem of evil. What we do have is a strong encouragement to trust God even amid unexplained suffering.

The Future: Some Scripture Songs

The third dimension of our new perspetive on history has to do with the future. We have not seen how all of God’s purposes result in good. God promises us that in the future he will be totally vindicated and we will be fully delivered from all evil. As we have indicated, the pattern is that of suffering now and receiving glory later.

At any rate, we may be assured that in the last day there will be no problem of evil. There will be no more doubt, no more complaint. If there is a residual theoretical problem, it will be one which we will be completely happy to live with. And if we believe now that that day will certainly come, can we not be content in the present?

Scripture Gives Us a New Heart

Finally, Scripture gives us faithful hearts. As indicated earlier, the Word of God is powerful to save. As the Holy Spirit speaks in the Scriptures, he turns our skepticism into faith. Our hearts are warmed as we hear the gospel. The marvelous thing, is not that there is evil in the world, but that God has forgiven the evil in our own hearts for the sake of Christ.

Believers, even with their new hearts, do continue to ask about the problem of evil. The believer sipmly looks at the world with values different from those of the unbeliever. And the change in those values is perhaps the closest we can get, at this point in history, to a theodicy.

Apologetics as Offense: Critique of Unbelief

The Unbeliever’s Twin Strategies

Atheism

Atheism can be either practical or theoretical or both. The theoretical atheist denies God; the practical atheis simply lives as if God did not exist.

The natural result of atheism is a loss of standards and values. Atheists tend to be relativists. Indeed, many find atheism attractive for just this reason. Like all forms of unbelief, atheism is essentially an escape from responsibility.

Unbelievers tend to go to extremes, in this case the extreme of denying objective meaning altogether. The unbeliever may resist this extreme, for he knows it is implausible, but there is nothing in his adopted philosophy to guard against it.

Idolatry

The other major form of unbelief is idolatry, namely, giving one’s ultimate allegiance to some being other than the God of Scripture. Again, the unbeliever tends towards an extreme. If the idol is to fill the role of God, he must have some divine attributes and fill some divine roles.

Atheism and idolatry are the only alternatives to Christianity. In order to reject Christianity, one must either deny all gods or select some god to worship other than the God of Scripture. In reality, of course, they together form a single alternative, for even atheist must, practically, allow for some absolute, usually his own reason. To say there is no God is to say the most ultimate reality is impersonal - but that in itself is idolatry.

Like atheism, idolatry can be thoretical or practical. The “god” can be theoretical like human reason, evolution etc. or practical reality like money, pleasure, family, self etc. Like atheism, idolatry is an escape from responsibility to the true God. It seeks freedom and autonomy. Unfortunately, the natural result of it is slavery - bondage to the idol.

Idolatrous Atheism

Atheism needs idolatry: you cannot live consistently as a relativist without some constant, absolute meaning in life. And relativists are always dogmatic about excluding nonrelativist ideas. Also, idolatry needs atheism: the choice to worship a false God is ultimately irrational and rebellious. Thus most unbelievers combine these motifs in various ways.

Christian Apologetic Responses

Against Atheistic Relativism

When you find an unbeliever who stresses the atheistic relativist side of unbelief, be persistent in asking these questions: (1) How can you be sure that relativism is right, when it itself rules out all assurance? (2) How can you live as a relativist? Having no assurance of anything must be a terrible strain, rationally, emotionally and volitionally. What basis do you have for making decisions, for criticizing the treatment you receive from others? How can you say anything is wrong, unfair, or unjust? What basis do you have for trusting logic, or your own mind?

Against Idolatrous Rationalism

When you meet someone who stress the powers, rather than the limits of autonomous thought and action, you will likely be dealing with someone in the grip of an idol. Find out what his idol is and take aim by asking these questions: (1) What basis is there for thinking that this idol is absolute? (2) Does your god really do the job of a god? Did it create the world? Is it the ground of logic, mathematics, ethical value and universal judgments in science? Is it adequate as a final standard of meaning, truth and right?

Against Atheistic Idolatry

Press the fundamental contradiction in this rationalistic-irrationalistic combination: a proof that there are no proofs, an absolute statement that there are no absolute statements. Argument itself will not be enought; God must intervene. Thus, prayer is the ultimate apologetic weapon.

Review

In this book, John Frame defines apologetics as “the discipline that teches Christian to give a reason for their hope” and shows the job of apologetics is to provide a proof for the rational basis for the faith, as a defense, to answer objects of unblief and as an offense to how the foolishness of unbelief. He explains and critically reviewed Van Til’s prepositional method. He refutes the common misconception that there is a neutral position that people can take to start reasoning about the issues such as the existence of God and shows that everyone has a presupposition and all arguments are eseentially circular reasoning, but there is a distinction of narrow circular reasoning and broad circular reasoning.

Then how do we communicate with nonbelievers, since the problem is fundamentally there are two different presuppositions? Frame first uses moral argument to prove the existence of an absolute personal being (since everyone has the concept of “ought”, of moral laws, it must come from an absolute personal being instead of being derived from impersonal beings). In the meantime Frame addresses the problem of evil, saying that it is a secondary issue compared to the faith in God and we may be assured that in the last day there will be no problem of evil. And in fact it’s addressed in Bible in Job, Romans with an ad hominem response. We cannot always understand why God has chosen evil events to accomplish these good purposes. We do know that God never foreordains an evil event without a good purpose. Everything he does reflects his wisdom. But he is under no obligation to give us his reasons. Finally Frame also analyzes atheism and idolatry as two types of religions that unbelievers typically have and their problems. But in the end it is the work of Holy Spirit that gives unbelievers a new heart and convinces them their sins and the way of salvation from the Lord.

This book makes many problems in apologetics and evangelism clear. Especially around how we view the fallen reason, what it means for reason to be “fallen”? There are many definitions of “reason”, as mentioned in Appendix A: laws of logic, the psychological faculty by which we make judgments and draw inferences, the judgments and inferences themselves, systems of thought. I agree with Frame that reason as a psychological faculty is not affected by the the fall, so both Christian and unbelievers have the same faculty and can discover truth, just like in Creation, everything is good since God is the fountain of all good things. As a psychological faculty, reason has the choice of operating according to a number of different principles: different systems of logic, different philosophical schemes, different religious commitments. The important question is, what criteria of truth ought our reason to acknowledge? This choice is fundamentally a religious one.

The fall is a moral defect, applying to reason, it means that the presupposition taken by unbeliever is against God, they will suppress their knowledge of God in their heart (Romans 1:21) and does not honor God. And this is the meaning of autonomous reasoning from Van Til. Why do people need complex arguments in order to believe? The noetic effects of sin in the faculty of reason is not the intellectual weakness in unbelievers, but moral refusal to accept what is clearly revealed. “The intellectual problem is produced by the moral problem, not the moral problem by the intellectual one.” I have mentioned similar points in my other note. Although it is clearer to first define what we mean by reason.