Is Christian Belief Accessible to the Unregenerate Mind?

The question is usually framed a little differently in apologetic or philosophical parlance. Is Christian belief rational? While many apologists would contend that such a question is best asked of the apologist, or the Christian philosopher, I think it’s best asked of the Christian theologian. Then again, I am a wee bit biased. The task of Christian theology never really ends. It never ends because it must constantly respond to old ideas packaged in new wrappings that continue their age-old objective of contradicting Christ. And the question before us today is no different. Some would say that I am being a bit sarcastic for framing the title the way I have and I suppose there might be a degree of truth in that.

In a recent debate between Sye Bruggencate and Eric Hernandez, Eric made the following claim: “Faith is a confidence based on knowledge.” Now, the debate concerns apologetic method, and in particular, evidentialist vs. presuppositional methodologies in Christian apologetics. To be sure, Eric’s description of faith is what I want to zero in on because I think it is here that most of our differences reside. Regarding Eric’s understanding of faith, and that of most evidentialists, this is exactly what Wolfhart Pannenberg would say about faith as well. Faith is limited to that historical evidence that is accessible to reason. Many of these modern apologists seem oblivious to the fact that their understanding of faith is informed by the enlightenment move rather than by Scripture. Rather than challenge the methods introduced by the historical-critical method, theologians retreated into mythology and bowed to the majesty of human reason. It all began with John Locke. Evangelicalism had accepted the scientific method without question and the historical critical model that she brought with her. Christianity bragged that science was her best friend and there was nothing to fear: science would only always join Christianity in lock-step (pun intended) and proclaim her undying loyalty. Everything was going just swimmingly until Robert and Susannah Darwin decided that four children were not enough. Enter their fifth child, Charles.

It was like a bad dream. The Christian family had an informant among them. It would be men like Charles Darwin who would redefine science, Christianity’s bedfellow, only to have that friendship shattered by the most brutal betrayal of all time. Since the theologians had built their theology upon the assumptions of the principle of inference and scientific method, they were impotent against the attacks that science would unleash against them. Human knowledge would come through the senses. The role of the human mind would be paramount in discovering truth, in attaining true knowledge, in achieving rational thought altogether. Since the Christian theologians were committed to the inductive principle, they reasoned that the truth of Christianity could be arrived at the same as any other truth. After all, all truth is God’s truth and if induction works everywhere else based on natural law, why shouldn’t it work here as well? Now, revelation must submit to reason for its rite of passage. Even the Christian canon, Scripture, would have to give way to the canons of human reason. The final authority for how faith would be defined and even what we believe about the nature of Scripture would have to pass the tests of autonomous human reason. And so it remains true today of evidential apologetics as Eric Hernandez so aptly demonstrates.

According to the evidentialists, the Christian faith is not a faith that serves as the necessary precondition for knowledge. The regenerate and unregenerate mind alike is of the same structure and capable of making the same evaluation of truth-claims. This is a faith that is limited by autonomous human reason. Our faith can go no further than our knowledge can take us. And since that knowledge can never attain certainty, and could be wrong at any point along the way, our faith is always subject to revision, perhaps even a radical revision depending on how human knowledge goes. And since we cannot gain certainty in this arena, then the theological concept of the certainty of faith collapses within the evidentialist scheme. The evidentialist way of defending the Christian faith actually reduces it to a naturalistic exercise and in the end, unwittingly destroys Christianity by destroying its most basic claims about the nature of human beings: without Christ, we are dead in trespasses and sins.

However, Henriette and Jan Fredik Kuijper would contribute to this conversation by way of their son, Abraham. It was Abraham Kuyper’s observations of the movements taking place within evangelicalism that should grab our attention. Kuyper rejected the speculations of rationalism and of enlightenment philosophy, holding fast to his reformed Dutch theology, and more specifically, to a distinctly biblical epistemology. Kuyper pointed out that it was devastating to the Christian faith to ignore the noetic effects of sin on the unregenerate mind. Nothing is more fundamental to Christianity than that we are utterly hopeless and helpless without the work of Christ. And that work must be supernaturally applied to our person, indeed, our minds, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. It is through that work alone that men come into the true knowledge of God, of Christ, of God’s revelation of Scripture. Kuyper argues that God as revealed in Scripture is known by us, not as a conclusion of an argument but as a primary truth immediately apprehended as the result of spiritual communication to the human consciousness. Kuyper saw knowledge as an entire noetic structure while the evidentialist take the inductivist approach. The evidentialists unwittingly place themselves in a no-win situation, supposing that such evidence and arguments constituted conclusive arguments for the truth of Christianity. [Faith and Rationality]

Is Christian belief rational? If by rational you mean, does it meet the rational criteria demanded by the unregenerate mind, the answer is no. For the pagans, blasphemers, God-haters, and the lawless, Christian belief is not rational. How do I know this? For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18) According to Paul, Christian belief is moria, or moronic, to those who are unregenerate. This raises the question, why are we attempting to make Christian belief rational to someone who’s very state does not possess the necessary structure to make it so? Why then do we engage the unbeliever at all? We engage because we love to obey God and God commands us to engage. So, doesn’t God use imperfect declarations of his truth, even poor arguments to win men to himself? I suppose he can and does. But that misses the point. When I engage the unbeliever, my goal should be to follow God’s method, to honor His truth, to stay true to His message, not to see results. So the idea that it works is no excuse to slack in this area. Christian belief is rational to the truly rational mind: the mind of God.

A Presuppositional Approach to Evidence

Gary Habermas, representing the evidentialist method of Christian apologetics in the book, “Five Views on Apologetics,” remarks, “While we cannot sift though all the details here, evidentialists insist that there are a number of epistemological similarities in areas such as sensory data (perception), scientific theories, and the general rules and application of inference.”[1] 

From the start, this method compromises the antithesis put down in Scripture regarding believing and unbelieving thought. It has been said that if you are taking a long journey, you only have to start an inch off your mark to miss it by miles when the journey is complete. William Lane Craig tells us, “Apologetics is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith.”[2] When Craig talks about a rational justification for truth, the Christian apologist has to step back and ask the question, “to whom?” If we mean rational to God, then we can buy into such a definition. But if we mean to the unbeliever, well, that is a different project entirely. Habermas and Craig are right that there is evidence and justification for believing that the God of Christian theism exists. Moreover, they are right that we must engage the unbeliever with the evidence within the context of rational discourse. However, there is clearly a variety of ways in which we may work through such a dialogue as we are thinking about and presenting that evidence. According to Cornelius Van Til and the presuppositional approach, there is really only one way to present the evidence that elevates the Lordship of God and takes serious the righteous demands of God on all of humanity.

Christian evidences have to be presented within the restrictions of the Christian doctrines of God, man creation, and sin. What is man? Originally created, man was perfect. He was capable of and willing to interpret the facts of the universe in light of God’s revelation, thinking God’s thoughts after him. Although he was finite, he was not rationally deficient. He was perfect, and perfectly capable of knowledge. Man’s epistemic problem was never his finitude. In contradistinction to the idea that man’s finitude is the problem, we believe that man’s epistemic problem entered upon the fall of our first parents headlong into the sinful curse. Now that man has fallen into corruption, into a depraved condition, his approach to the facts of the universe is remarkably deficient. Rather than submit to God’s prior interpretation of these facts as facts created by God for God, man now insists on interpreting all of reality according to his own standards of knowledge. Hence, the evidence for Christianity must be presented in a way that remains consistent with God’s plan, the original scheme, without compromising with the unbeliever in their epistemological rebellion against the Creator.

To begin with, Christian theism denies the idea of brute facts. Facts are not just there, independent entities waiting for the organizing principle of the human mind to come along and give them significance. Since the mind of fallen man is corrupted by sin, it is not capable of accomplishing such a lofty goal. In addition, unless the facts were facts in relation to one another and in relation to the whole, no one could possess knowledge of them to begin with. Facts are what they are first and foremost in relation to God. “In answering the fool a Christian apologist must aim to demonstrate that unbelief is, in the final analysis, destructive of all knowledge.”[3]

The evidences for Christianity regardless of whether they are historical or empirical or otherwise must always be presented as revealing God from the beginning. We do not argue from the evidence to God. We begin with God, with Scripture, with divine revelation in nature and show how that the evidence before us is everywhere revelational of the God we serve or reject as far as it goes. This method shows the unbeliever that not only is Christian theism rational, or just as rational as alternatives, but in fact it is the only system that does not end up destroying all rationality. The God of Christian theism is not the conclusion of our argument in which we being with supposed neutral facts about which both the Christian and non-Christian agree. We see the facts only in terms of their relationship with God and insist that unless they are viewed through that grid, they are not viewed correctly. And unless they are viewed correctly, they cannot be understood or known to be what they are.

The only proper way for Christian apologists to use the evidence for Christian theism is to begin with God and with the standard of God’s revelation as the only source for epistemic justification. Every other approach places autonomous, fallen, sinful man in the position of being the judge even of that which is holy. Such an approach is a true compromise of the gospel and lessons the demands of God upon His own creation.

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[1] Gary B. Habermas, Five Views On Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan; Stanley N. Gundry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 97.

[2] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth And Apologetics (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway Books, 1984), 15.

[3] Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready, fifth printing ed (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 2002), 57.

The Incongruity of Probability Theory in Christian Evangelism and Apologetics

In a recent article published in Philosophia Christi, Richard Swinburne came to the following conclusion: “I conclude that unless my assessment of how probable the evidence of natural theology makes the existence of God is very badly mistaken, it is very probable that Jesus was God incarnate and that he rose from the dead.” Now, isn’t that a forceful, impressive, and eloquent way to speak about what Christianity claims is the single greatest event in all of human history. Before I begin commenting on Mr. Swinburne’s astounding conclusion and the confidence with which he makes it, the reader needs to understand that I come to this subject as a theologian and biblical exegete, not a philosopher. I am an apologist, but only in the sense that I think every believer has a duty to engage in apologetics. However, my education and training are not in philosophy. My education is in theology, systematics, and the biblical languages, in hermeneutics. Therefore, what my scrutiny and criticism will lack in philosophical rigor, it will certainly compensate for in theological and exegetical carefulness.

The fundamental problem with Swinburne’s approach is that it does not appeal to Scripture for its epistemic authority, but rather to human reason. It is obvious that Swinburne appeals to human reason, to argumentation, to historical evidence as his final authority for believing that Jesus was God incarnate and that He rose from the dead. In fact, what Swinburne really believes is that it is reasonable for a person to believe that Jesus is God incarnate because the historical evidence makes it highly probable that He was. Swinburne and other non-reformed philosophers and so-called apologists continually accept the criteria of justification that godless philosophers place on them. The unregenerate rationalists and empiricists insist that all beliefs must meet their criteria in order to qualify as true knowledge. Since these philosophers use inductive logic, which is based on probability, certain knowledge is impossible. If a Christian does not challenge this strategy at the beginning, their conversation will be wrought with insurmountable objections.

The resurrection can only serve as evidence for Christian theism within the world of the regenerate. The problem with Swinburne’s view is that he and other philosophers separate the epistemological significance of the resurrection from its soteriological function. This sort of reasoning fails to adequately account for the ethical problem deeply embedded in unregenerate epistemologies. Natural theology is far too optimistic in its estimation of man’s ethical neutrality where epistemology is concerned. Scripture is clear on this point: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” (Rom. 1:20) The Greek word translated “without excuse” is ἀναπολογήτους (anapologetous) and it literally means without an apologetic. There is no philosophical defense for refusing to acknowledge God, according to Romans 1:20. It is amazing to me that with great frequency, Christian philosophers actually pretend there is one. Since Scripture already says that God Himself has furnished all the proof that every unbeliever need in order to acknowledge Him, we need not waste our time trying to provide them with more proofs. Are we silly enough to think that our arguments and proofs are somehow superior to or more effective than the ones God has etched in their conscience and placed in front of their noses?

 I read Swinburne’s quote to my wife this morning and I asked her to tell me what was wrong with it. She immediately said that she did not like the sentence “it is very probable that Jesus was God incarnate and that he rose from the dead.” I asked her to explain to me why she believed the statement was wrong. Her answer was very simple but also quite profound: “because it is not true.” I asked her to elaborate. She quipped, “Jesus actually is God and actually did raise from the dead and so to say that he probably is and did these things is false.” The truth is that my wife is absolutely correct.

A major objection to Swinburne’s statement is that biblical Christianity does not teach that it is highly probable that God exists, that Jesus was probably God incarnate, and that He probably rose from the dead. Hence, Swinburne is essentially defending a belief that is not included within Christian theism. Christian theism teaches forcefully and with absolute certainty that Jesus Christ was God incarnate, that He absolutely rose from the dead for our justification, and that all those who place their faith in Him will have eternal life. Additionally, Christian theism certifies without any hint of doubt that those who reject this message of the gospel of God will surely perish and come under eternal wrath, time without end.

Another challenge concerns the reliance on probability as a valid method for arriving at what is likely the truth. What else must absolutely be true in order for probability to be true? The answer is that the validity of uniformity must be true in order for probability to be valid. We must be able to show that there is a relationship between the general and the particular. This is exactly what the unbeliever cannot do. He assumes such a relationship exists but he cannot provide an adequate accounting for it. If the world came to exist on its own, randomly, by accident, without a cause, then there is no way for us to account for any relationship between the general and the particular. Chance and uniformity are not exactly related. As we would say in the south, they’re not even distant cousins. In fact, they are opposites. Why then do Christian philosophers feel compelled to accept basic beliefs about how the world operates when these beliefs are in clear contradiction, not only with Christian theism, but also with the system with which they argue? It makes very little sense as far as I can tell.

Romans one clearly informs Christians that God has made Himself known to all men. ὁ θεὸς γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐφανέρωσεν is very clear. For God made it very plain to them. The word means to cause something to be fully known by revealing clearly and in some detail—‘to make known, to make plain, to reveal, to bring to the light, to disclose, revelation. This very same word is used in 2 Cor. 5:11, θεῷ δὲ πεφανερώμεθα, we are fully known by God. Jesus used it in John 14:21 where He promised to make Himself known to the one keeping God’s commandments. Therefore, when the unbeliever claims they do not know if God exists or when they claim that God does not exist, they lie. The question for the Christian is will we go along with that lie. Will we grant to them that which Scripture denies?

In short Swinburne’s view does not hold up under scrutiny. The very systems that use probability as a reliable test for knowledge cannot stand up under the scrutiny of their own basic claims. For instance, what happens when probability is turned on itself in a random universe? How probable is it that this world would exist in the first place? It was a one-time event. Probability does not work with one-time events. The Christ event was a one-time event. The resurrection was a one-time event. Supernatural creation of humanity was a one-time event.

In addition, probability would never be the most likely explanation for a miracle of any kind. Deceit, or delusion or exaggeration would always trump supernatural phenomena in terms of probability. It would always be more probable that someone is lying, or suffering a delusion or simply exaggerating than it would that a miracle occurred. Hence, if we concede this point of probability, the entire system of Christian theism collapses.

Christians are called to give an account for the hope that is in them. We are under no obligation to squabble with unbelievers over the existence of God or the truthfulness of the claims of Scripture. We are under an obligation to refute claims that contradict the teachings of Scripture. But that refutation does not take on the philosophical nature of unbelieving presuppositions. The refutation is Scripture. How do we refute error? We do it the same way Jesus did it: with Scripture. We don’t need to argue for why we call upon Scripture as our sole authority, outside of appealing to Scripture itself. The unbeliever cannot possibly defend their ultimate authority of autonomous human reason. They expect us to assume that human reason is completely reliable. But we all know that is not the case.

To argue that God probably exists, and that the Bible is probably God’s word, and that Jesus is probably God incarnate, and that He probably rose from the dead is also to argue that we are all probably saved and that Jesus is only probably returning one day and that divine judgment will probably happen in the future, probably. For God who probably exists probably so loved the world that He probably gave his only begotten Son! Is that the gospel? I can say with absolute certainty that this, ladies and gentlemen is not the Christian gospel. I believe it is time we begin to wrest the gospel from these philosophers that foolishly think that Christ and Aristotle can be friends. I think it could not be clearer that they are mortal enemies.