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.
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