The Nature of Christian Apologetics in Relationship to Biblical Theology

Christian apologetics purports to defend the very specific claims of Christian theism as a system. This is why it is never a good idea to separate Christian apologetics from Christian philosophy, theology, or evangelism. They are interdependent disciplines with one common, ultimate source of absolute truth: YAHWEH.

It is therefore critical that anyone desiring to be a good apologist must at a minimum be a good Biblicist. It is never a good idea to attempt to articulate and defend something that you do not understand. And the only way to truly understand Christian theism is to be one born into Christ by the Holy Spirit and who also understands what Christian theism actually teaches. Christian theism makes very specific claims about the kind of God that exists, the nature of reality, the nature of man and sin, and the person and work of Jesus Christ. These claims are not broad claims in any sense of the imagination. The claims are very specific and must be presented and defended with the specificity they deserve and demand.

Cornelius Van Til writes, “The question of starting-point then is largely determined by one’s theology.” [CVT, The Defense of the Faith] If you begin your defense of Christian theism with a defective view of the nature of the being of God, your apologetic method is immediately at risk of being incoherent, and not congruent with the system of truth you seek to defend. The mistake that so many apologists make is that they attempt to defend Christian theism piecemeal. This approach leads to various missteps and worse, an unorganized and sloppy approach that is easily recognizable by the mentally sharper opponents of Christianity. But that is not the reason one should avoid such an approach. God is a rational being par excellence! Hence, we should strive to reflect that excellence in all that we do and this includes our presentation and defense of the system of Christian truth.

Christian apologists may take care in how they understand and articulate the nature of God. The God of Christian theism is entirely independent. Van Til writes, “God is in no sense correlative to or dependent upon anything beside his own being. God is the source of his own being, or rather the term source cannot be applied to God. God is absolute. He is sufficient unto himself.” This is the God Christian theism must defend because it is the God that is. God is not dependent on man for anything. He is the source of all that is. Every fact is a fact as it relates to God making it what it is. This means our starting point for argumentation is God, not the particulars of the universe as supposed understood by autonomous human reason. Those particulars cannot be understand rightly apart from their relationship with the God that made them. And if you compromise with the unbeliever and assume that they can, we have no placed the unbeliever in the position of authority. They will now be the judge and jury of all that we say and worse, of all God reveals about everything to include Himself.

God is immutable. He is not subject to nor does He change. There is nothing on which the eternal being of God depends. This view is compromised by many non-reformed systems of theology on a number of levels. When it is so compromised, it is indefensible if attacked in apologetic exchange with unbelievers. God is infinite. He is not limited by space and time. He is all- powerful, carrying out His plans as He pleases, is everywhere present always, and possesses all knowledge. God is unity. He is numerically one God as well as simple in terms of aspects. The attributes of God are not different parts making up the one God. They are the eternal simplistic all encompassing nature of the one eternal unchanging independent God that is.

As should be seen immediately, this Christian doctrine has serious implications for the philosophical problem of the one and the many. The one triune God that exists created all things that have been created giving them meaning in terms of how they relate to Him and then to one another. This makes reality knowable and understandable by finite human beings. This makes human experience intelligible.

Van Til continues, “The Christian doctrine of God implies a definite conception of the relation of God to the created universe. So also the Christian doctrine of God implies a definite conception of everything in the created universe.” If it is true that God created all things from nothing, then it only follows that human beings must be dependent on God for all knowledge. That is, apart from God we would not understand anything about ourselves or about any other particulars we experience in reality.

We can only understand particulars in terms of their relationship to everything else in the universe. However, it must be pointed out that any study of the particular presupposes certain things about the general. We say that we want to paint the big picture so that we can make human experience intelligible. The problem we are faced with is that we cannot study the particulars as "stand-alones" without some reference to the other particulars and the system as a whole. But we cannot understand that system as a whole unless we understand the particulars. It is a serious dilemma.

Christian theism affirms that the particulars can only be known in terms of their relationship to the person of God and within the context of His divine plan. God created all that is for His glory and for our good. Every fact of the universe is what it is because God made it to be what it is. In this grand design we can see the problem of the one and the many, the particular and the universal, melt away as the light of God’s revelation shines upon it. This is basically where we begin our conversation in Christian apologetics. At a minimum, it is the controlling feature of everything else we should be saying about the system of Christian truth to those who reject and oppose it at every turn.

Thinking About the Transcendental Argument

We must point out to them that univocal reasoning itself leads to self-contradiction, not only from a theistic point of view, but from a non-theistic point of view as well. It is this that we ought to mean when we say that we must meet our enemy on their own ground. It is this that we ought to mean when we say that we reason from the impossibility of the contrary. [Cornelius Van Til]

Sounds a little intimidating to most Christians and for good reason. Most Christians do not read Van Til. Most Christians do not read philosophy. Most Christians do not read theology. Most Christians hardly read the Bible. In fact, many, many Christians hardly read at all. That is the very sad state of affairs that we are faced with in modern American culture. It must change!

What does Van Til mean by the little phrase “impossibility of the contrary?” Some would contend that Van Til’s argument fails precisely in this very place. They would argue that establishing the impossibility of the contrary is not really the same as showing that the non-Christian worldview is ipso facto untruthful simply on the basis that it is contrary to the Christian worldview. But this response demonstrates a lack of understanding of Van Til on this point. Let me explain what I mean.

Copi tells us that “Two propositions are said to be contraries if they cannot both be true – that is, if the truth of one entails the falsity of the other – but both can be false…Contraries cannot both be true, but unlike contradictories, they can both be false.” [Copi, Introduction to Logic, 177] The problem with applying the traditional square of opposition to Van Til’s transcendental argument is that the rule itself only applies to contingent propositions. Another problem with the claim that Van Til’s “impossibility of the contrary” fails is that the assertion seems to ignore the difference between Boolean and Aristotelian logic and the question of existential import. Can universal propositions have existential import? Whether A and E propositions (universal propositions) have existential import is an issue on which the Aristotelian and Boolean interpretations of propositions differ. [Loci, 190]

The real question here is who decides if universal propositions can have existential import? We must be prepared to answer that question. Christian theism must assert that universal propositions not only can, but some do have existential import. The Christian God is the God that actually exists. That is a universal proposition with existential import. Logic itself cannot settle the dispute and it certainly cannot be the final arbiter of truth in assessing the reliability of Van Til’s transcendental approach.

The accusation that the transcendental argument violates the traditional square of opposition is to subject the argument to the idea of contingency, something Van Til would forcefully, and rightly oppose. What then is Van Til attempting to do in his transcendental method? What does he actually mean, in simple terms, when he says that Christian theism is proved true because of the impossibility of the contrary?

First of all, it has everything to do with relating the facts of reality, as they are known, correctly and with the notion of human autonomy. The transcendental method seeks to demonstrate that unless God is our epistemological starting point in all predication that nothing can be made intelligible in human experience. The transcendental approach simply asks a very basic question: what must be the case in order for the intelligibility of human experience to be the case? It is uncontroversial that human experience is intelligible. But what has to also be the case if that intelligibility is the case?

There are only two options open to us from which to begin to answer this question. One position begins with human autonomy. Man is the ultimate reference point for rationality, for all knowledge from one perspective. The other perspective is that man is derivative of God, a creature, and as a creature his knowledge must also be derivative. In this view, God is the final reference point for knowledge. All facts must be viewed in terms of their relationship to God and His creation of them as facts.

Van Til writes, “The contrary is impossible only if it is self-contradictory when operating on the basis of its own assumptions.” Not only are contradictory claims to Christian theism unable to approach and challenge Christian truth seriously, they cannot even stand themselves up on their own two feet. The non-Christian worldview, in all its stripes, involves internal conflict, that is, self-contradiction. Hence, this alone is enough to place rational human beings in the position of abandoning it. But abandon the non-Christian worldview on purely a rational basis, fallen men do not do. Rather, fallen men hold firmly, in their spiritually dead and ethically depraved fingers, to an irrational outlook. And such behavior can only be explained by the supernatural revelation that is Scripture.

Van Til continues, “We do not really argue ad hominem unless we show that someone’s position involves self-contradiction, and there is no self-contradiction unless one’s reasoning is shown to be directly contradictory of or to lead to conclusions which are contradictory of one’s own assumptions.” How can man be free to gain knowledge in a deterministic system? Additionally, if everything is pure contingency, how could knowledge ever be gained when there can be no relationship between particulars and the general? Christians must be prepared to answer questions, but we must also be prepared to ask them as well.

I will conclude with another point that cannot be over-emphasized in Christian Apologetics. Van Til writes, “The miracle of regeneration has to occur somewhere, and all that we are arguing for is that we must ask where it is that the Holy Spirit will most likely perform this miracle. And then there can be no doubt but that the likelihood is in favor of that place where the non-theist has to some extent seen the emptiness and vanity of his own position.”

Who In Hell Do You Know?

Recently I have been reflecting on the reality of evil in the world and how that evil fits into the overall scheme of God’s plan. Couple that reflection with some additional reflection on the challenges parents face when they observe their children neglecting and ignoring the truths of the gospel they have been taught from birth. Add to these reflections, the additional reflection of trust, of grace, of being still and knowing that God is LORD over all and then trying to work through the temptations of fear and anxiety that every Christian parent must face when they see self-destructive behavior in their children. Indeed, that is a lot of reflection.

This led me to the question recently: whom in hell do I know? How many people have I known in my life either intimately, moderately, and even from a distance that have been called out of this life and have done so without Christ? I have lost grandparents. Two of them knew the Lord and the other two I cannot say. I lost my dad and he knew the Lord. I have lost uncles. Some of them knew Christ while others did not. How many people do I know that today, this very minute are living in eternal torment? The descriptions of hell and of the lake of fire are vivid, filling the mind with images of darkness, fire, and unending torment beyond anything this world knows. And there are a number of people that I have known in my life who are very likely right there right now. While I am typing these words, they are in incredible and indescribable anguish. While you are reading these words, their screams ring throughout the hallways of hell without anyone there to help. They are without any hope of ever finding relief for their suffering. Whom in hell do you know?

The doctrine of hell has come under tremendous pressure lately. This pressure even exists in so-called evangelical churches and teachers who really are nothing more than apostates that are nothing more but a shell of genuine Christianity. The arguments are constructed mostly by people employing a modern, pagan philosophical approach to God rather than an exegetical, theological method. In addition, the overwhelming majority of these individuals simply do not like the God of Christianity, even though they like some of His morals. Their goal seems to be to attempt to keep God in place while replacing all those characteristics about Him they find unappealing.

I cannot help but wonder, not if, but how the belief that there is no literal hell impacts the manner in which the gospel is positioned and proclaimed to the unbelievers in our lives. We already have the problem of numbness due to the frequency of the mention of the doctrine of hell. People just don’t give it any thought these days. And this is just as true of us reformed conservative types in some cases. We don’t think about hell that much. And if we do, we surely don’t look at it through the same lens as we see the world in which we live. Hell is some place far away, an abstract concept in the mind of preachers and theologians that none of us have to worry about, at least not today, not this hour, not this very minute, or is it.

The competition for souls is more intense than anything we could ever imagine not from the world of sports as an analogy, but from the world of wars. The competition for land, for power, to prestige, for dominance over the long course of the history of man has been fierce and relentless. I cannot help but wonder if the human race has ever experienced a time since the fall of man where men were not, in some way, in some place, at war with one another. The competitions have waged for thousands of years.

There is nothing that can compare to the war that we must wage for the truth of the gospel and for the souls of men. Hell is as real as the computer you are reading this blog on. And just as you are reading this right now, countless souls are suffering the flames of torment this very moment. What is worse is countless more souls will be lost to the flames of hell with each passing year. The war for souls and for truth is unending and relentless.

No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. 2 Ti. 2:4-7

Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen. Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed. 1 Ti. 6:12-19

Revelation and Reason: Revisiting the Dialectical Movement [Conclusion]

THE REDEMPTION OF HUMAN REASON

There is good news however to be found in the second man Adam, who came to rescues man not only from sin and death but also from ignorance, from futility, and from blindness.

       

“For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;^[1]

The Christian can attain true knowledge of God. This true knowledge comes as a result of being in Christ. Paul tells us that all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ (Col 2:3). Paul says that Christians have attained to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding and that this results in a true knowledge of God’s mystery (Col. 2:2). Clearly the apostle Paul taught by divine revelation that an epistemological antithesis exists between the believer and the unbeliever. He went on to say that Christians are being renewed to a true knowledge (Col. 3:10). The antithesis between what Paul said about the unbelieving mind and the Christian mind is unambiguous.

In Acts 16:14 we find the conversion of Lydia, a woman from the town of Thyatira. Luke informs us that the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things that Paul was saying. Here we see reason and revelation in the context of Christian conversion. Paul was preaching about the revelation of Jesus Christ, the gospel of truth. Christ opened Lydia’s heart so that she was able to reason correctly about the revealed truths of Christ. The result of this inward work on the human person was that Lydia was able to reason correctly about the facts of the Christ event and the truth of her need for repentance. In Lydia’s case we see that it was not revelation or reason, it was not faith or reason, but it was revelation and reason. In this case, Lydia’s reasoning was instantly the product of a new intellect, a regenerate mind.

Paul, in writing to the Church at Colossae informs us that the “new self” is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the One who created him. The Greek word there is epignosis and it means a definite and full knowledge. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian Christians was that God would give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:17). Concerning the false teachers, Paul tells Timothy they are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:7). Clearly there is a distinction to be made between the sort of reasoning that is unredeemed and that which has been redeemed through the work of regeneration.

Peter tells us His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge that is in him who called us by His own glory and excellence (1 Peter 1:3) According to Peter, only the work of God on the human heart can produce true knowledge of the truth. It is the genius of Protestantism to make the God of the Scriptures the final reference point of all predication.^[2] 

In the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ we see that revelation and reason are not opposites. Faith and reason are in truth intimately related to each other. In Christian theism we see human reasoning in service of God’s gracious gift of faith. Man can only begin to reason correctly when he understands who he is in relation to his Creator. That is to say that man can only reason correctly when he understands he is a sinner in rebellion against God. This is the beginning of knowledge.

CONCLUSION

Reason is considered the source of knowledge through which all experience is interpreted and that such knowledge can be obtained through reason alone.  It would mean that spiritual events and all experiences would be subject to the limits and parameters of rational examination.[1] 

To this we add that God is the source of reason by which humans engage in the predication necessary to arrive at true knowledge.

The Christian understanding of revelation is that God has revealed the facts of reality to humanity through what we call natural and special means. God has revealed Himself in the human person by way of the imago dei. We are all created in the image of God and therefore the sense of the divine remains etched upon the human conscience.  God has also revealed facts about reality and Himself in the created order. We see God’s fingerprint everywhere we look. The revelation of God is indeed inescapable. God has revealed Himself in the characteristics and qualities of the human person, not the least of which is the human experience of predication. Every time we engage in the process of reasoning, we put on display the God who is there. God has also provided human beings with a divine and miraculous revelation of Himself in Christ and in Scripture. This revelation reveals truths about God that may be hidden from natural revelation. The act of God’s self-disclosure is an act of profound grace.

As stated above, revelation is the giving of facts and information. It is essential divine communication. God wanted man to possess certain facts about Himself and the created order. God ensured that man would come into possession of these facts by revealing them to him directly and indirectly and by making that revelation unambiguous. From the very beginning man possessed the intellectual capacity to reason correctly about what God had revealed. Revelation was as much a part of reason then as science is today.

From the beginning man was created with the ability to reason correctly about the revelation of God around and within him. Man thought about creation correctly because he understood himself to be a creature contemplating that which was created by a Creator. Man recognized his dependence on God for all knowledge and understanding of his world. The process of human reason itself was entirely dependent on and revelatory of the triune God.

The attempt then to separate faith and reason, revelation and reason, is a vain and hopeless project. If we can prove that men can reason rightly about their world apart from God, we end up showing that revelation is not necessary. And if we show that revelation is unnecessary, we destroy revelation. On the other hand, if we prove that reason has nothing to say about revelation, no role to play in interpreting God’s revelation, we destroy reason. If God’s revelation is beyond reason, then it is unintelligible. A revelation that is unintelligible is a revelation that does not communicate meaningful facts about anything that can be understood. The dialectical movement then that seeks to separate revelation from reason, that seeks to disintegrate the relationship between faith and reason ends up not only destroying Christianity, it destroys knowledge.

The special revelation of God to man came not only by way of intellectual information. It came both as word and as deed. In theophany and in miracle, we have facts of revelation rather than words. But these facts needed to be explained by God himself. Sinful man cannot and will not explain them truly. Sinful man would be sure to misinterpret them. He would regard them as mere accidental occurrences. Men sometimes believe the resurrection of Christ as an historical fact, and then fit this fact into a pragmatic conception of history. According to a pragmatic philosophy of history anything may happen and nothing will have any particular and universal meaning. On the other hand word revelation without fact revelation would hover in the air and not reach reality. Special revelation needed actually to dip into this sinful world with redemptive power. Hence special revelation could not come to man in the form of a book dropped from heaven. Revelation had to be historically mediated.^[2]

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[1] "Carm," , http:/​/​carm.org/​.

^[2] Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1979).

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^[1] Ibid. Col 1:9–10.

^[2] Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, The Pamphlets, Tracts, and Offprints of Cornelius Van Til, Electronic ed. (Labels Army Company: New York, 1997).