7/16/2015st 780 apologetics three1 apologetics. 7/16/2015st 780 apologetics three2 varieties of...

04/19/23 ST 780 Apologetics Three 1

APOLOGETICS


VARIETIES OF APOLOGETICSBernard Ramm’s Taxonomy

• Systems stressing Subjective Immediacy– Pascal, Kierkegaard, Brunner

• Systems stressing Natural Theology– Aquinas, Butler, Tennant

• Systems stressing Revelation– Augustine, Calvin, Kuyper


VARIETIES OF APOLOGETICS

• Approaches emphasizing Evidence

• Approaches emphasizing Reason

• Approaches emphasizing Verification

• Approaches emphasizing Presuppositions


EVIDENCES

• John W. Montgomery: Emphasizes the philosophical and historical investigation of the evidence, evidence that overwhelmingly validates the biblical view of reality. Among the most significant of all evidences is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Our apologetic must be modeled on the Christ who offered objective evidence of his power to forgive sins by healing the paralytic and who convinced the unbelieving Thomas that he was God and Lord by the undeniable presence of his resurrected body.” John W. Montgomery, “Once Upon an A Priori,” in E.R. Geehan, ed., Jerusalem and Athens, 390.


EVIDENCES• “Christianity is radically different from the welter of

religious options of past and present in that it does not demand a ‘leap of blind faith’- an amputation of the head- as prerequisite for inner confirmation of its message. True as with any life commitment (marriage is an obvious example), Christianity’s subjective attestation comes only with the personal entrée into it, but that entrance can be made with full confidence that the evidence warrants it. To appropriate Christianity subjectively is to respond in the most reasonable manner to the powerful objective evidence of its truth.” Montgomery, Christianity for the Tough Minded, 14-15.


EVIDENCES

• Josh McDowell: Emphasizes the philosophical and historical reasons that prove the truthfulness of Christianity. Believing in the “correspondence theory of truth” (ultimate truth corresponds to reality, or what is, McDowell employs logic, common sense, and evidences to demonstrate the that the Christian interpretation of the facts of history is the best and most consistent.


EVIDENCES

• McDowell explains his own experience: “I took the evidence that I could gather and placed it on the scales. The scales tipped in favor of Christ as the Son of God, resurrected from the dead. The evidence so overwhelmingly leans toward Christ that when I became a Christian, I was ‘stepping into the light’ rather than ‘leaping into the darkness.’” Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands A Verdict, xxxii1.


EVIDENCES

TRUTH

DATA

InductiveProcess


REASON• Stuart Hackett: Beginning with the assumption that the laws

of logic are innate, Hackett appeals to the data of evidence to demonstrate the truthfulness of Christianity (he makes use of the Kantian synthetic a-priori), a truthfulness that is most probable, but not demonstrable. “. . . apologetics may therefore be defined as the systematic, rational formulation and defense of beliefs about knowledge, reality, and conduct. And in particular, Christian apologetics would consist in the attempt to show that only the Christian World View satisfactorily meets the ultimate demands of reason in its approach to experience.” The Resurrection of Theism, 20,21.


REASON• Gordon Clark: Beginning with the

presuppositions of the existence of God and his revelation in the Bible, Clark argues that logic is an expression of the nature of God and, thus, along with Revelation, the arbiter of all truth claims. “That Logic is the light of men is a proposition that could well introduce the section after next on the relation of logic to man. But the thought that Logic is God will bring us to the conclusion of the present section. . . . Cont.,


REASON• The law of contradiction is not to be taken as an

axiom prior to or independent of God. The law is God thinking. For this reason also the law of contradiction is not subsequent to God. If one should say that logic is dependent on God’s thinking, it is dependent only in the sense that it is the characteristic of God’s thinking. It is not subsequent temporally, for God is eternal and there never was a time when God existed without thinking logically.” G. Clark, An Introduction to Christian Philosophy, 67,68.


REASON• “We may assert that every proposition is true because

God thinks it so . . . but the whole is based on Scripture. Suppose this were not so. Then ‘God’ as an axiom, apart from Scripture, is just a name. . . . Hence the important thing is not to presuppose God, but to define the mind of God presupposed. Therefore Scripture is offered here as the axiom. This give definiteness and content without which axioms are useless. Thus it is that God, Scripture and logic are tied together. . . . Emphasis on logic is strictly in accord with John’s prologue and is nothing other than a recognition of the nature of God.” Clark, ICP, 72


REASON• “The Christian axiom, as Clark puts it, is

twofold, including the existence of God and the truth of His revelation in the Bible.” G. Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims, 108.

• Since only that which is logical can be true, Clark seeks to show that non-Christian systems can be reduced to absurdity.” Lewis, 111.

• “The entire history of philosophy, Clark finds, leaves the scholar with a choice between skeptical futility and a word from God.” Lewis, 113.


REASON• Norman Geisler: Geisler considers himself to

be in the line of classical apologetics, in continuity with Augustine, Aquinas, Hodge and Warfield, among others. After demonstrating the inconsistency of all non-theistic systems, Geisler seeks to establish the existence of God. “First, we have argued that every major nontheistic world view may be internally noncontradictory, but that they are, nonetheless, somehow self-defeating and false.” N. Geisler, Christian Apologetics, 237.


REASON• The theist need not claim that everything has a cause; he

need not use the Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason. Rather, he can return to the thomistic principle of existential causality which claims that every finite, contingent, and changing thing has a cause. If this principle is sound and leads to an infinite, necessary and unchanging Being, then this Being will not need a cause. God will be the Uncaused Cause of everything else that exists. Such is the direction this chapter will take in developing a proof for the existence of God.” N. Geisler, Christian Apologetics, 238.


REASON: Geisler’s Proof• Some things undeniably exist (I cannot deny my own existence)• My nonexistence is possible• Whatever has the possibility not to exist is currently caused to

exist by another• There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes of existence• Therefore, a first uncaused cause of my current existence exists• This uncaused cause must be infinite, unchanging, all-powerful,

all-knowing, and all-perfect• This infinitely perfect Being is appropriately called “God” • Therefore, God exists• This God who exists is identical to the God described in the

Christian Scriptures• Therefore, the God described in the Bible exists, N. Geisler,

Christian Apologetics, 239


REASON• Sproul/Gerstner/Lindsey: Confessing

themselves to be in line with classical apologetics, this trio of “Ligonier” cadre reject irrational or fideistic apologetics (i.e., Barth, Tillich, etc., but preeminently C. Van Til) and affirms instead the legitimacy, not only of General Revelation but of Natural Theology. There are three non-negotiables in the “Ligonier” apologetic: 1) The Law of Non-Contradiction, 2) The Law of Causality, and 3) The Basic Reliability of Sense Perception.


REASON• “Why apologetics? Because we are rational

creatures. Because we are by nature rational, we must be approached with reasons. Because, as creatures, it is essential that we know about our Creator. Because we are rational animals who need religion, we must be given reasons for believing the true religion.” Sproul/Gerstner/ Lindsey, Classical Apologetics, 16.

• “Simply stated, natural theology refers to knowledge of God acquired through nature,” 25.


REASON

Axiom . . . . . . .

Rationalism


THEISTIC PROOFS

CosmologicalTeleologicalOntological

MoralUniversal Consent

GOD


VERIFICATION• E. J. Carnell: Carnell begins his apologetic with the

human condition, where we are and who we are. This is a temporal starting point. Nevertheless, while recognizing the importance of experience, Carnell does not want to begin his argument with experience. Similarly, Carnell recognizes the importance of reason and empirical evidence, but he does not want to begin with logic or sensory data. Instead, Carnell begins with the existence of God and seeks verification for this hypothesis. This is a logical starting point.


VERIFICATION• “By the one assumption, the existence of the God

Who has revealed Himself in Scripture, the Christian finds that he can solve the problem of the one within the many, and so make sense out of life. . . Seeing this connection between Christ and the one within the many, the Christian is immediately in possession of a basis for truth and faith. Truth is propositional correspondence to God’s mind and the test for truth is systematic consistency.” E. J. Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 354.


VERIFICATION

• C.S. Lewis: Lewis argues that a true explanation for all that is must account for all the facts, including the laws of logic, the nature of morality, the sense of longing for God that humans experience. Lewis argues for “mere Christianity,” not for any particular variety and appeals to reason to verify the “Christian hypothesis.”


VERIFICATION• “Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the

best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times. . . . It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 6,9


VERIFICATION• “Let us suppose we possess parts of a novel or a

symphony. Someone now brings us a newly discovered piece of manuscript and says, ‘This is the missing part of the work. This is the chapter on which the whole plot of the novel really turned. This is the main theme of the symphony.’ Our business would be to see whether the new passage, if admitted to the central place which the discoverer claimed for it, did actually illuminate all the parts we have already seen and ‘pull them together.’”


VERIFICATION• Francis Schaeffer: Making use of reason, Schaeffer

argues that it is necessary to push “systems” to their logical (or, illogical) extreme. Essentially, those who postulate that life is predicated upon mere chance (Schaeffer speaks of a “line of despair” that he associates with the dialectics of Hegel- the starting point of modern irrationalism) cannot live consistently with their premises. However, the Christian, who believes in an infinite and yet personal God can live consistently with his/her presuppositions.


VERIFICATION• Schaeffer attacks the notion of the two stories as

antithetical– the upper story (Faith) – the lower story (reason)

• Rather, faith is founded on adequate evidence. – “. . . there is a sufficient basis for morals. Nobody has

ever discovered a way of having real ‘morals’ without a moral absolute

– If there is no moral absolute, we are left with hedonism (doing what I like) or some form of the social contract theory (what is best for society as a whole is right).


VERIFICATION

– However, neither of these alternatives corresponds to the moral notions that men have.

– Talk to people long enough and deeply enough, and you will find that they consider some things are really right and some things are really wrong.


VERIFICATION• Without absolutes, morals as morals cease

to exist, and humanistic man starting from himself is unable to find the absolute he needs. But because the God of the Bible is there, real morals exist. Within this framework I can say one action is right and another wrong, without talking nonsense.” Schaeffer, Complete Works, I:117.


VERIFICATION

Christianity

Other Systems


BLOCK HOUSE METHODOLOGY

• What do these three approaches have in common?

• One Emphasizes Evidences

• One Emphasizes Reason• One Emphasizes Verification

(systematic consistency)


BLOCK HOUSE METHODOLOGY

Fact

Fact Fact

Fact

FactFact

GOD


APOLOGETICS

7/16/2015st 780 apologetics three1 apologetics. 7/16/2015st 780 apologetics three2 varieties of...

Documents

data of evidence

new evidence

kuyper slide

powerful objective evidence

truthfulness of christianity

reason approaches

appropriate christianity

verification approaches