The gospel doesn’t make sense: God was mad at mankind
because of sin so he decided to torture and kill his own Son so that he could
appease his own pathological anger. God is the weirdo, not me.
Aside from the abusive adjectives, Bob’s argument can be
summarized as follows: The gospel is irrational. Everything else Bob
says in this objection is, well, to put it bluntly, nasty rhetoric. He uses the
adjectives pathological and weirdo. All this is little more than
a tactic to shame people for believing such things. So, don’t be weak-minded.
Now, there is an apologetic method, specifically, classical
apologetics, that would take the approach that Bob’s view is an obstacle to
belief and my goal as an apologist is to try and remove that obstacle so that
he may proceed to belief in Jesus Christ. Let me state this as plainly as I
can: Christian apologetics is nowhere defined in Scripture as removing
obstacles to belief. The only obstacle to belief is sin. Only God can remove
sin. Therefore, only God can remove obstacles to belief. Apologetics is about
proclaiming the gospel, answering questions where appropriate, and refuting the
claims of those who contradict the truth. And we are to do this in the manner
prescribed in Scripture for the glory of God out of love for our neighbor. It
really is that simple.
Does the gospel make sense? The best place for the apologist
to look when answering this question is 1 Cor. 1:18: For the word of the
cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is
the power of God. Here, the word of the cross is the gospel. Notice
that the experience of the gospel is described in two ways: it is folly and it
is the power of God. The Greek word moria is where the English word
moron is derived. It means quite simply, foolishness. It is used most often for
mental dullness and its cognates always have that sense. The word 22x in
the NT and 9x in the OT. Because the lexical data from the OT is minimal, the
best path for understanding this word is the lexical data from the NT. It falls
within the sematic domain of understanding and the subdomain of lack
of capacity for understanding.
Paul not only tells us that the word of the cross
carries two different experiences or meanings, he attaches those meanings to
two different kinds of people. To the perishing ones, the non-Christian, the
unbeliever, for purposes of this blog, to people like Bob, the gospel is
moronic. It is foolishness. But to the ones being saved, the gospel is the
power of God. So, Bob is right when he says that for him, the gospel is
foolishness. But Bob does not really say, “to him, the gospel is foolishness.”
He makes a more absolute statement: the gospel is foolishness. And in that
regard, Bob is dreadfully misguided. He is, in fact, deluded, self-deceived. To
the unbeliever, the gospel is foolishness. Paul could have not been clearer.
Paul goes on to say that the unbeliever does not come to know God through his
own wisdom. Now this word wisdom, from the Greek, sophia, in this
context means the capacity to understand and function accordingly. It is not
within the natural capacity of the unbeliever that they come to know God. The
unbeliever does not have the capacity to remove obstacles to belief with or
without our help. Paul goes on to say that it God considered it good and right
to save unbelievers, sinners, through the moronic concepts of the preaching of
the cross. Now, the ultimate purpose for God’s design is his own glory. The
immediate purpose for God doing things in this way is so that no human being
can boast about being in Christ. It is because of him that we are in Christ,
not because of our own intellectual abilities to examine evidence and
arguments. The way into Christianity is not the use or exercise of natural
human reason. It is the power of God in the gospel that saves and it is because
of God, not me or you, or any other Christian. Atheists like Bob do not
understand this. In fact, atheists like Bob cannot understand this. Something
in them has to change before they understand this profound truth. That is why
Jesus used the language, “born from above.”
Additionally, Paul added to this theme just a few verses
later when he said, The natural person does not accept the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them
because they are spiritually discerned. Bob is a natural person. A natural
person is not able to understand the things of the Spirit of God. Therefore,
Bob is not able to understand the things of the Spirit of God. Notice that the
text does not say that Bob is not able to understand these things unless a
sharp classical apologist can show him how to understand them. It says that he
lacks the capacity necessary to understand the things of the Spirit of God. Alvin
Plantinga has done excellent work in this area. He writes, “A thing’s design
plan is the way the thing in question is ‘supposed’ to work, the way in which
it works when it is functioning as it ought to, when there is nothing wrong
with it, when it is not damaged or broken or nonfunctional.” [Plantinga, Warrant
and Proper Function, 21] What the apostle Paul is getting at with the
Corinthians is that there is something fundamentally and radically defective in
the cognitive functions of unbelievers. Their cognitive abilities have been
impacted, deformed by sin so that now, in their unregenerate state they are no
longer able to function according to their original design. Add to this the
fact that Paul indicts, not just the cognitive function, but the volition as
well. The unbeliever willingly embraces this malfunction rather than sincerely
searching for a cure. There are no true seekers. The sinner loves his sin. This
spiritually blind love their blindness. Bob loves his ignorance. He wallows in
it like a pig in its slop. That is just downright offensive language to describe
unbelievers. Indeed it is! I am not selling God! I am painting an accurate
picture of the state of affairs as it has obtained.
In summary then, Bob is both right and wrong, in a sense
anyways. Bob is right to say that the gospel is foolishness if he means that it
is foolish so long as atheistic presuppositions about what is reasonable and
unreasonable really can stand up to scrutiny. But we know that atheism has no
grounding to support such absolute claims. Given the monistic tendencies of
atheism, the idea of a normative standard seems to be a fundamentally
implausible concept. From that perspective, it is difficult to fathom how Bob
arrives at his conclusion. In short, atheistic presuppositions about justified
belief cannot stand up to scrutiny. Their theories collapse because of the
foundation upon which they are constructed.
Finally, Bob isn’t even attempting to interact with the
Christian doctrine of atonement. He presupposes his atheism and criticizes the
Christian doctrine under the assumption that his version of atheism is true.
The atonement is the most profound event in all of Scripture. God creates man.
Man rebels. God redeems rebellious men by sending his perfectly holy Son to the
cross in our place. Jesus takes the punishment that was rightfully ours. He
does so willingly. As a result, our sins are forgiven, grace prevails, mercy is
extended. Because Christ died for us willingly, God’s righteousness is
preserved. The only way for God to extend grace to sinners while remaining just
was to ensure that sin was punished. He did that at Calvary. The cross displays
divine justice and divine love together in one act. God punishes sin, God forgives
sin.
Is the gospel reasonable? Is it rational? Christianity must
cohere as a system if it is to be considered rational. This does not mean that
we must understand just exactly how it coheres in every way. But there can be
no obvious contradictions in the system because Christianity affirms a
perfectly rational God. What this means is that the gospel has to cohere with
all the other beliefs within Christianity. For example, if God is perfectly
just, then forgiveness of wicked sinners is a problem. What does Christianity
teach? It teaches that Christ, the sinless man took the punishment in our
place. This preserves God’s just character while making forgiveness possible. A
second problem for Christianity is the claim that only the righteous can enter
into the kingdom of God. How can a wicked sinner be made righteous?
Christianity teaches that God credits the righteous life of Christ to the
account of the wicked sinners he has forgiven. Now, Christians may enter the
kingdom of God, having been made righteous by the blood and obedience of
Christ! But this justification is an accomplished by the work of Christ alone.
Christians do not possess saving faith until they are saved. Justification then
is by faith alone and that faith itself is a gift that God gives to those whom
he forgives, whom he calls to himself. God remains perfectly holy, perfectly
just, and loving beyond anything we could ever hope to comprehend. It would be
irrational to claim that God is perfectly just but that he could just forgive
sin without punishment. What just judge just lets the murderer go because he
says he is sorry?
Bob’s objection then that Christianity is foolish in the
absolute sense is a straw man because it is not an accurate depiction of what
Christianity teaches. And the reason it is not an accurate depiction of what
Christianity teaches is that Bob does not possess the capacity to understand
what Christianity teaches. And if that is the case, how could one ever trust
his assessment? I will close with a syllogism:
1)
The gospel is irrational to
me
2)
Whatever is irrational to
me must be irrational to everyone
3)
Therefore, the gospel is
irrational
It is easy to see that Bob is assuming (2) without lifting a
finger to demonstrate why he is the standard for what is and is not rational.
To say that the Biblical story doesn’t make sense, Bob, is not an argument. At
best, it is an admission of your own ignorance.
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