exploring approaches to apologetics ca513 o apologetics t ... · impersonal causes however good....

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics

Transcript - CA513 Exploring Approaches to Apologetics © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 21 of 24CA513

The Psychological Viability of Christianity

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics

In Revelation 15:7 there is this statement, “Yes, Lord God, Almighty, true and just are Your judgments. And again in chapter nineteen, “True and just as His judgments.” These are the true words of God and Jesus Christ is called faithful and true.

And Lord Jesus, we pray that we might be as faithful and true as are You. We pray that you will make us devoted to the reality that is all about us and to the highest values for which you came to live and to die. For the sake of your kingdom we pray. Amen.

In recent lectures we briefly summed up Edward John Carnell’s approach to the science of apologetics. He argues if one believes in the God revealed in Jesus and Scripture, one has not only a coherent account of empirical clues, but also the fulfillment of humanity’s highest values. Our lasting values are what we prize most and they are not momentary pleasures, material security, or impersonal causes however good. The most rewarding values in life are the infinitely, variable, personal relationships with God and others guided by moral justice and Christ-like love.

Carnell’s distinctive appeal to the internal data was not limited to values, however. In The Kingdom of Love and the Pride of Life, he pointed out that our deepest anxieties about our existence are relieved by accepting the God disclosed in the Jesus of history and the teaching of Scripture. Carnell’s holistic verificational approach, having appealed to fact, logic, and our highest values, is now shown to meet our psychological well-being.

Existentially and psychologically, people suffer not only from specific fears or phobias, but also from a general anxiety. As we mature, the majority of young people face the loss of their childhood faith. Often the worldview in which they were reared is compared with university teaching. In that light, the immature notions no longer seem to fit scientific facts, logical reasoning, or crucial values. Without that childhood faith in a divine purpose

Gordon Lewis, Ph.D. Experience: Senior Professor of

Christian and Historical Theology, Denver Seminary, Colorado.



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in our lives, our existence seems meaningless. We find it hard to accept our insignificance. In a purposeless universe, we do not count; our being seems without worth. We have lost the spiritual center that gave meaning to our existence. What formally challenged now loses its appeal. We may despair of being accepted or ever feeling part of a group or a church. It may seem that no one really cares. When love is lost, all is lost. All our blood, sweat, and tears seem to have been shed for nothing. Life becomes anxious because all the effort seems pointless.

We face not only meaninglessness, but death, separation from the living, nonbeing. After all the arguments for our immortality are understood, the thrust of our own death continues to disturb. Built into our metaphysically, finite, and morally fallen existences is an anxiety about our own nonbeing. This form of anxiety is the state in which a person is aware of his or her possible nonbeing and is threatened by the thought of nothingness.

A third component of anxiety arises from a sense of guilt. We have never achieved our ideal of perfection; however, we may have lowered the standard from complete Christlikeness. We have come far short of using all our potential, arising from the ambiguity between the ideal and the actual is the feeling of guilt. Guilt feelings may drive us toward complete self-rejection, a feeling of being condemned and losing our reason for being.

Anxiety compounded by life’s meaningless, shortness, and objective guilt leads to despair. We may not often honestly face up realistically to our own inner tension and anxiety. Pride keeps us from admitting the meaninglessness and guilt of our existence. But an irrational causal necessity leads toward death. In our most honest moments, we must acknowledge our need for mercy, grace, and love.

Science, Carnell insists, is no substitute for love. Limited to sense data by its methodology, science provides no basis for moral judgments. It fails to meet our needs for respect, for dignity, for inalienable human rights—consideration, forgiveness, love, and eternal life. Limited to quantitative measurements, science in itself cannot deal with personal psychological need. But the limited good of science and the values of ethics combine in a physician who is both skilled and morally caring.

Philosophy also fails to meet the psychological needs of people, plagued with anxiety and despair. Philosophy may lead us away



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from the realities actually experienced. It may also confuse conceptions with the realities to which they refer. Philosophical universals may become depersonalizing. The quest for generalizations leads to a neglect of individuals in their unique freedom and unpredictability. The search for universal categories often leads to neglect of the one and only living God who is uniquely personal. An intellectual detachment may postpone too long the possibilities of decision, commitment, involvement, and participation.

Christ’s way of love, in contrast, as exhibited in His love for the relatives and friends of Lazarus, who died as recorded in John 11, stands in contrast to the other ways of life. Followers of Christ weep with those who weep, as Jesus did at the grave of Lazarus. We acknowledge the dignity of individuals and respect all God’s other image bearers as did our Lord. Christians are not discourteous or selfish; instead they are considerate of people like Mary and Martha as they actually are in their sorrow. And disciples of the Messiah do not accept only people with power and influence. They accept all persons unconditionally. Even though they may not agree with certain behaviors and are disturbed at the lack of faith, they will accept the inherent worth of persons anxious as were Mary and Martha. Christ’s way of love, furthermore, demands complete honesty with the facts. He faced them; Lazarus was dead and buried three days. His body was already decomposing. Christ’s way of life shatters hypocrisy and self-righteousness as well. He calls for repentance from sin and shows the need for mercy and grace in the loving acceptance of anxious sinners.

In what ways does love help alleviate the psychological problems of our race? Well for one thing, love like Christ’s has faith that death is not the end of the story. It is not the final event. The resurrection of Lazarus showed that and Christ’s resurrection supremely provided good reason to hope for the resurrection of our bodies. Those who have received the gift of eternal life need never fear nonbeing. At death our spirits go to be with Christ and when He returns, our bodies will be raised.

Christian love, furthermore, puts personal fellowship above impersonal forms, but it does not disparage true doctrine in the process. True teachings guide devotion to the highest moral and existential way of life. Christian love also refuses to yield to temptations to seek status and power more than love. Although a dominant Christian purpose of love may not make Christians perfect in this life, it nevertheless makes their lives substantially



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different.

Why is it, then, that Christian hope and love are not mere wishful thinking and subjective myths about pie in the sky by and by? The fidelity of the person of Christ and His teaching is supported by the evidence of miracles such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead. In addition, there is the conviction of the heart that Jesus of all people is supremely trustworthy. He not only taught justice and love, He exemplified them and roundly condemned hypocrisy, injustice, and pride. Through faith in Christ, the Spirit-endued can overcome pride and face up to their own insignificance, mortality, and guilt.

The psychological difference Christianity makes has been beautifully displayed by Dr. Vernon Grounds of Denver Seminary. He explained that those who turned to Jesus Christ find in Him the antidote to their basic psychological needs. In place of senselessness, the Christian finds a meaningful role in Christ’s kingdom. Instead of futility, believers discover the courage not only to be, but to lovingly serve the unlovely. The Christian’s fear of death is overcome by confidence in the resurrection of the body. Neurotic hate is displaced by self-giving love. Objective guilt and guilt feelings are erased by the joy of being forgiven and becoming an agent of forgiveness. Alienations are overcome in enduring fellowships of the reconciled. Powerlessness is overcome by enduement. An inadequate self-image is replaced by self-understanding, self-identity, self-acceptance, self-release, and self-investment. Despair is replaced by hope.

The world has yet to see what could be done by apologists who would accept Carnell’s challenge to do more in defense of the faith from the standpoint of Christ-like love and its psychological benefits. Why then, if Christianity can do all this are Christians not more free from these psychological problems? Two basic reasons can be noted. First, inadequate teaching may result in a misunderstanding of the Gospel and its psychological resources. Second, even when the Gospel’s psychological relevance is understood, it may be misapplied. Misapplication of the Good News may result in unnecessary psychological difficulties. So Christians do need counselors from time-to-time and ought not to hesitate to seek them.

It is important, then, to be clear on when psychiatry can help and when it cannot help. Psychiatrists and counselors may be able to help us discover important symptoms of our most basic anxiety.



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Although non-Christian specialists can administer some aspirin to minimize certain symptoms, they do not have the resources to cure the basic disease. Psychologists in themselves may point out our sins, but only Christ can remove real guilt against the moral law and nature of God. It is on account of the ground of His just atonement for the forgiveness of sins that He can pronounce us justified. Jesus Christ’s death in our place provided the one basis on which God can remain just and justify the ungodly, and Christ’s resurrection supplied the one answer to the basic anxiety about existence beyond the grave. Those who accept His forgiveness and receive eternal life will not lack for purpose in life. For amplification of these points, read chapter nine in my Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims.

A psychological state similar to that of anxiety is called a sense of unreality. Indifference and aversion may occur. Nothing in this state seems to satisfy. The events of life seem to be useless and unreal. William James described Tolstoy’s experience as a well-marked anhedonia, of passive loss of appetite for all of life’s values. Psychologists sometimes label the extreme manifestation of this condition autism. The autistic may be delivered from this state of unreality, William James thought, by either religious or nonreligious worldviews. But John Dewey held that whatever restores unity and significance to a person with a sense of unreality is religious. I would argue that for a permanent healing, one needs the development of a sense of reality derived from a Christian theistic view of the world of history and of each life on earth. A pragmatic consideration of what would give a sense of reality cognitively, emotionally, and volitionally for seventy years is insufficient. The wise need to consider what works not only for time, but also for eternity.

A sense of reality, while it may be obtained suddenly or through a long process by the individual or with outside help, includes three specific characteristics. First, self-consciousness is required as a person employs the ability to step back and become aware of herself and her condition. She must exercise the capability of self-transcendence, and then she discovers her own objectivity in learning of her own subjectivity. A second characteristic is that of intelligent reflection. One learns from other’s points of view. Third, one’s own position takes on significance as one consciously adopts it on the basis of objective evidence. One’s realization of things causes them to stand out in vividness and thus the actual becomes significant. Accompanying the intellectual elements in a sense of reality are emotional and volitional elements.



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“Any satisfying system of orientation,” said Erich Fromm in his Psychoanalysis and Religion, “implies not only intellectual elements, but elements of feeling and sense to be realized in action in all fields of human endeavor.”

If we are to help people with some degree of anxiety or a sense of unreality, we need to offer holistic health, intellectually, emotionally, and volitionally. We need to help them see that if they start with the Christian hypothesis, they can discover a sense of reality of what actually exists and what is existentially real. That restored belief needs to be based on verifiability, by public and independent data, not produced by the person’s own activity. “Real” in this usage means “actual,” according to standard criteria for distinguishing the existent from the nonexistent. Either the Creator and Redeemer of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Matthew, Luke, and Paul exists or He does not. An intellectual sense of reality must overcome a sense of intellectual unreality in relation to our ultimate source—God.

Some may follow the evidence in argument for God’s reality intellectually, but not respond to God affectionately. They suffer from a sense of emotional unreality. A sense of emotional unreality is best described by William James in his classic, Varieties of Religious Experience. He said, “It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional comments. Since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in different persons and at different times in the same person, and there is no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the sentiments it may happen to provide. Conceive of yourself if possible suddenly stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it as it exists purely by itself without your favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. It will be almost impossible for you to imagine such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one portion of the universe would have importance beyond another, and the whole collection of its things and series of events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective. Whatever of value, interest, and meaning our respective worlds have, are thus pure gifts of the spectator’s mind.”

The practically real world for each one of us,—the affected world of the individual—is the compound world; the physical facts, and emotional values in indistinguishable combination. Withdraw or pervert either factor of this complex resultant and the kind of experience we call pathological results. On the one hand, if we



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commit ourselves to philosophical analysis and dissect sentences the rest of our lives, we tend to ignore the emotional component of a healthy psyche. On the other hand, if we devote ourselves to existentialism with passionate involvement, we tend to overlook objective evidence necessary to a healthy soul. If then we consider commitment to the God revealed in Christ and Scripture, we find the most coherent account of all our outer sensory experience and our inner emotional experience. Thus, the Christian faith is recommended as the way to a healthy sense of reality—mentally and emotionally. The Christian world and life view presents to our spirits the inclusive ideal personally and socially. We wisely offer to Jesus Christ the best our minds and affections can offer.

Autistic persons suffer from an extreme disparity between their existential reality and their affective and volitional realities. Autistic persons believe and do what they want to. They will not follow the evidence or remain open to evidence concerning objective existence. The prudent bow their minds, affections, and wills to Christ’s teaching, love, and purposes. We need not be anxious then about our thoughts, desires, and conduct if our ultimate concern is to know, love, and serve Christ. In some measure, all maturing people go through a process of recovering from childish notions. We begin in the play world of infancy, a world of sheer fantasy, then we proceed to the parental world of authority. When we get away from home and on our own, the mature engage the real world of intelligent action with appropriate emotional responses and decisions. Infants may burn themselves on the stove or cut themselves with a knife. The child avoids these dangers by obeying the parents even when not understanding the reasons. A mature person understands the dangers and chooses apart from any other authority to act intelligently in order to avoid the problems.

In throwing off the shackles of parental authority, young people may repudiate the Christianity and culture in which they have been reared. But as youth mature, they need to subject religious claims to criteria of verification. Initially a divergence may appear between the existential reality of science and the affective reality of associated with Christianity. The divergence may become so great as to result in an inability to act. The sense of reality may take the form of a disorder of belief, emotion, or purpose. It may also include all three. A sense of unreality is not an illusion or a delusion. In those a person is not conscious of the problem, but in a sense of unreality, a person is conscious of the problem and the resultant anxiety. The goal for recovery, then, is two-fold. First,



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the unification of the whole self with an intellectual, emotional, and volitional sense of reality. Second, a growing adjustment to reality, to God, and others, and the world and in even one’s eventual death.

Ways to help a person suffering a sense of unreality include several steps. First, help a person see the various facets of the problem more explicitly. One must realize that there is an underlying ontological problem. One cannot go on trying to escape reality or living in a dream castle. If Christianity is true, people must humble themselves to follow the evidence where it leads and face its realities. Second, assist the person consciously to accept adequate criteria for distinguishing existential reality from the unreal. Many tend to work with criteria that are too narrow or that exclude elements of reality. If God is Spirit, we cannot limit knowledge of all reality to sense data. William James, the noted psychologist, cautioned, “A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth, if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.”

Third, encourage intelligent reflection on one’s position in comparison and contrast with the positions of others. If one is not surprised by what other’s consider real, unnecessary anxiety will be relieved. Fourth, as a result of the comparison and contrast, help people to appreciate vividly the significance of the position they have adopted. When it stands out to them with meaning, it will evoke appropriate emotional and volitional expressions.

Christian apologetics with an open method of knowing and solid criteria of truth helps to meet this vital need of psychologically disturbed people. It should establish an attitude of openness to all the good in reality and contribute to the meaningful experience of the whole person. It should help provide the framework for deliverance from the anxieties resulting from a sense of unreality. Our apologetic is not merely pragmatic, however. We do not argue here that Christianity is true because it works for people with psychological need. Rather, it is because Christianity is true that it helps to meet our total need.

Although our moral predicament was addressed from the standpoint of psychological need briefly, it deserves attention from the standpoint of ethics more fully. Carnell devoted another entire book to an apologetic addressed to our human moral predicament. Let us try to sum up briefly this approach in



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his work, Christian Commitment. In three basic ways he sought to show that the Christian hypothesis fits the facts of internal human experience. He appealed to our inner values and our inner psychological needs. Now he appeals more fully to the universal experience of distinguishing right from wrong. Humans distinctively are responsible for distinguishing good from evil, and we hope people accountable for moral evil, even though we personally are unable to enforce the moral law. Note the essential aspects of Carnell’s analysis of the phenomenon of morality among human beings.

Psychologically healthy people cannot avoid action. As we walk in a park or a shopping mall, we must act in one way or another as we encounter other persons. When we can anticipate the consequences of our action—we are responsible for them. We are responsible, for example, for knowing nature’s regularities. When driving, we are responsible to know how long at certain speeds it takes to stop a vehicle of the weight we are driving. We are also responsible for knowing our own volitional factors. We must be aware of our own speed and reaction time. These responsibilities hold as we drive in relation to the possible destruction of property and animals, and they are heightened when we drive in the presence of other humans. Responsibility implies an obligation to moral rectitude and blameworthiness for wrong action.

People who fail to take account of natural laws—relating to speeding vehicles and to the phenomena of their own condition as drivers and the rules of safety—are blameworthy for the consequences of their careless or reckless driving. This responsibility holds not merely because of cultural standards. Moral accountability is universal and necessary wherever we confront other human beings. This implies a universal norm or standard of judgment. The cultural mores of a given country may not be as morally accepted as they ought. So prophets speak out about cultural behavior that is not morally discerning, and comparative judgments of better or worse societies imply the existence of universal norms by which they are evaluated.

If there are such moral absolutes obligatory everywhere, we ought to be able to name some. Here are some samples: We ought always to respect the dignity and rights of other persons. No one ought to murder another. We ought always to say in words what we intend in meaning. One ought never to lie under oath against another. No one ought ever abuse a spouse or a child, physically or verbally. No one ought to rape another. No one ought to steal



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what belongs to another.

When we violate objective, universal, and necessary norms like these, we have more than guilt feelings; we have real guilt. We have violated the order of the universe, not just the laws of nature, but the laws of morality. Sometimes our guilt feelings are unwarranted, but in cases like these, whether we feel guilty or not, we are guilty before principles transcending our cultures and our civil laws. What, then, are the implications of such universal and necessary obligations? We imply from these realities a real guilt and that real guilt implies there must be an administrator of justice. But we ourselves are not free to administer a proper penalty to individuals. We must not take the law into our own hands. Beyond individuals, justice must be administered by court systems and societies; then justice must be administered to judges and to court systems and governments.

In order for the basics of morality to be meaningful, there really must be an all-knowing, all-just administrator of justice. Every student knows that if a school does not enforce the rules in the student handbook, they can be ignored. Obligations unenforced are pointless. If the moral considerations so pervasive in every culture universally are not to be meaningless, they must be enforced. But in a day of moral decay and crisis, people need to understand why and to whom they are accountable. Criminals may get away with murder in their nations and cultures, but not in the final analysis. Justice will ultimately triumph; love of what is right is stronger than death.

Christianity, better than other world and life views, show how human moral concerns are meaningful. If we are dependent on God, then we can account for our consciousness of duty in the presence of other people reflecting the divine image. Christian theists can also account best for our sense of obligation to respect the dignity of others. And we can appreciate the moral predicament in which we find ourselves when we know that someone has committed murder; but we are unable to take vengeance. We know that vengeance belongs to God. We cannot become accuser, judge, jury, and executioner all in ourselves. But justice must be done. Although we cannot enforce it ourselves and our nation’s courts come far short of doing so, we know that the divine Judge will do what is right in assessing every person responsible for moral discernment. A Christian hypothesis consistently accounts for personality in the image of God— for our moral and spiritual environment, for love as the law of life, the spiritual defect in



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the human mind, the affections and will, and the necessity of repentance—as well as the need for a substitutionary atonement.

Christianity shows how God can remain just and justify the ungodly. At the cross of Christ, God has demonstrated an uncompromising commitment to justice and to mercy, grace, and love. To the atonement of the Messiah, sinners need to respond in repentant, trusting love. That brings a life of gratitude, humility, justice, consideration, and love.

One of the characteristics of the unbelieving world today is the lack of gratitude. Thanklessness is the characteristic mentioned in Romans 1 of those who suppress the truth concerning God and creation and suppress the obligations of the moral law in the heart. How great it would be if people responding to the truth of the Christianity would become grateful to God, grateful to parents, and parents grateful to children who relate to them in consideration and love.

Another of the characteristics of one who is committed to a Christian theistic worldview is humility. We need a childlike ability to follow the evidence where it leads. The fact is that often the pride that permeates our minds, keeps us from acknowledging our obligations or our failure to live up to them, and it keeps us from crying out, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus said that those who would enter His kingdom must become as little children. That does not mean becoming ignorant; it means becoming willing to follow the evidence where it leads.

Justice is obligatory upon every human being, and surely every Christian ought to exhibit that characteristic. In justice we treat one another fairly; we give each one what is deserved. The fact is that often we may not be as far as we ought as teachers or as students in talking about our teachers. We may come short of the ideal of fairness in relating to relatives who are not as responsive to us as we might like. The ideal of fairness is a two-edged sword. The more we demand it of others, the more it comes back upon ourselves.

Carnell brings out a fact that I have not seen in many other places; that the Christian not only must treat others fairly, but considerately. By that he means that we will consider a person’s unique needs. In justice we treat all in the same way without respect of persons as God does. In consideration, we take into account an individual’s unique allergy to tomatoes, and we don’t


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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serve tomatoes as the main dish when we invite them to our home. We consider the unique factors which are important for that individual’s well-being. And then, of course, in addition to consideration, there is love. As we sense our need morally and the need of others around us, we know that we need more than justice and consideration; we need undeserved mercy, grace, and love. The Good News of Christianity is that God has provided that in His Son at Calvary, and those who consider the truth claims of Christianity are considering a way of life that calls for self-sacrificing love. It is an agape love, a love that does not like erotic love seek to get pleasure, but to give of itself for the well-being of another. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,” and as we meet the needs of people morally, we must love them enough to give our very selves for their sake, that they might know the satisfaction of justice and of love that Jesus provided as a gift at Calvary.

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