Defending Your Faith, Part 2

Michael P. Riley In the previous issue of Sola, I attempted to outline the problems that arise when believers try to defend Christianity from a perspective of neutrality. Such an evidentialist approach to apologetics, we found, is inadequate both logically and theologically. Logically, the evidentialist’s evidences and arguments are insufficient to prove the truth of Christian theism. Even the common theistic proofs, such as the arguments from creation and design, reveal under closer scrutiny that they are tremendously flawed. Theologically, the idea that one can be neutral about the existence of God is extraordinarily problematic. Neutrality is incompatible with our conception of God; to speak of a god who might exist or who possibly exists is to speak of a god other than that of Christianity because the Christian God exists necessarily. Furthermore, the strategy of finding neutral ground between the believer and the unbeliever also misrepresents the doctrine of total depravity. The unbeliever is not neutral; rather, he hates God and is always attempting to suppress the truth in his unrighteousness. To make any progress in the field of apologetics, therefore, we must abandon the evidential approach.

Contrary to such a hopelessly deficient method of defending the faith stands the presuppositional approach to apologetics, pioneered by Cornelius Van Til, an original faculty member of Westminster Theological Seminary. Van Til recognized that given a fully Christian theology, it is impossible for a Christian to do the apologetic task from the perspective of unbelief. What Van Til argued is at the heart of presuppositionalism: Christianity is a unified system of truth, and it is impossible to defend one aspect of that system without taking for granted the truth of the rest of the system. Thus, one cannot cogently defend the truth of certain parts of Christianity while consistently attempting to be neutral on others. The degree to which we are neutral in our apologetic for the faith is the degree to which we compromise the very faith that we wish to defend. Furthermore, the degree to which we compromise Christianity is the degree to which we forsake the right to use logic and reasoning, for without Christianity, logic has no justification.

Some might find the preceding paragraph troubling because it seems that there is then no defense for the faith that can be presented to an unbelieving and antagonistic world. If one must assume the truth of Christianity in order to prove Christianity, it certainly seems that Christians are left using circular arguments. Surprisingly, Van Til would plead guilty to the charge of circular argumentation; however, Van Til correctly observed that every worldview is ultimately circular. That is, every person has certain presuppositions that lie at the heart of his thinking. These presuppositions are non-negotiable; all evidence is made to conform to the presuppositions. The power of Van Til’s system, however, is that if Christianity is indeed true, every other system of thinking must, by definition, be false. Thus, the Christian “circle” will be correct, and every other circle will be inadequate to explain some aspect of man or the universe about him. It is the task of the apologist to discover these flaws in the unbeliever’s thinking, expose them, and destroy the very foundations of the unbelieving worldview. Presuppositionalism does not seek to build a case for Christianity on the foundations of unbelief; rather, it attempts to undermine the unbeliever’s worldview and demonstrate that Christianity is the only viable worldview that accounts for reason and morality and every other aspect of existence.

Practically, a presuppositional apologetic has two distinct facets. First, the believer attempts to undermine the unbeliever’s worldview, and second, he presents Christianity as the only possible correct view. The destructive aspect of presuppositional apologetics is probably the most compelling. Because Christianity is true and unbelief is false, every unbelieving worldview will eventually collapse on itself.

For example, suppose that you are talking with a hardened atheist. He contends that he only believes what he can test empirically with his senses. The ultimate reference point that lies back of his worldview is limited to sense experience. His position, however, is hopelessly problematic. Suppose that you ask him how he knows that knowledge only comes by means of sense experience. He has one of two options. He could argue that he knows that particular truth on the basis of sense experience, in which case his argument is circular. However, unlike the circularity of Christian theism, the circular reasoning is problematic because he cannot know that all knowledge is gained by sense experience. The only way that he could know this is if he had experiential knowledge of all that can be known, which even the most arrogant of atheists would hardly want to claim. His second option would be to say that he knows that sense experience is ultimate by some other way, in which case he has undermined his chief contention that truth is discovered by sense experience. Either way, his system is left in shambles.

This is just one example of the weaknesses that are bound to occur any time the unbeliever suppresses the truth and attempts to formulate his own worldview. Because any position other than Christianity is false, every worldview is faulty. It is, therefore, the first task of the apologist to undermine the unbeliever’s misplaced confidence.

The second aspect of presuppositional apologetics is directed to the defense of Christianity against the various attacks raised against it. Note, however, that the presuppositionalist does not resort to evidentialist tactics even in the defense of Christianity. He does not assume that the answers of Christianity will ultimately be acceptable to the unbelieving worldview. The believer’s responsibility is not to make Christianity acceptable to the unbeliever (which it cannot be, given the unbeliever’s hatred of God), but to show that Christianity is consistent with itself.

For example, the most popular and probably the most powerful argument against Christianity is the problem of evil. Although it takes a variety of forms depending on the specific concerns of the unbeliever (say, the seemingly pointless suffering of children or the evils of the Nazi Holocaust), the problem of evil asserts the ultimate incompatibility of a God who is perfectly good and omnipotent with the existence of evil. In other words, given the existence of evil, the unbeliever holds that he has conclusive evidence against the possibility that a wholly good, wholly powerful being exists.

There are two directions to head against this sort of attack. The first and most devastating for the unbeliever is to demonstrate that he has no right to make such charges against Christianity, for his worldview does not give the proper foundations for morality in the first place. Although there is not room here to survey the incredible variety of secular philosophies of ethics, none of them provide a consistent basis for declaring an action wrong. Thus, the relativism espoused by our culture undercuts the unbeliever’s own ability to use the problem of evil. He wants to be able to say that the Holocaust is wrong, but given his own worldview, he is unable to account for its wrongness. If the unbeliever is unable to justify making absolute statements about the morality of an action, he certainly is not justified in criticizing God for allowing instances of “evil.”

While undercutting the unbeliever’s right to use morality against God as an appropriate response to the problem of evil, it is not really an answer to the charge that the unbeliever raises. Ultimately, the unbeliever is questioning the self-consistency of the Christian faith; he wants to show that Christianity is not compatible with itself and is therefore self-refuting. The responsibility of the apologist, then, is to provide some answer from within the context of Christian theism that at least hints at a solution. One might be tempted at this point to try to explain the existence of suffering and hardship on the basis of the Fall, and at some level this is correct. Suffering does exist because of evil and the Fall, and even the horrendous suffering of the Holocaust or the suffering of seemingly innocent infants is not incompatible with the justice of God. All men deserve suffering; it is only by grace that we do not suffer the pains of eternal punishment immediately. However, even this answer is insufficient in that the unbeliever can merely question the reasons for the Fall itself. At this point, the biblical answer is found in the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. The answer is beyond us, but this does not undermine our apologetic. Rather it reinforces it. If Christians could explain God and his works exhaustively, God would not be the God of Christianity. Because God is infinite, we should expect a degree of mystery in our understanding of his person and works. Notice that this is perfectly consistent with Christianity.

But does it work as an apologetic? Van Til was asked the very same question about his system, and his reply is as valuable today: “Then, if the Spirit opens their eyes, they will see the truth.”

Michael Riley holds an M.Div. degree from Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently a Ph.D. student in Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Defending Your Faith Part 1

Michael P. Riley Late one night you are awakened by your young son who adamantly claims that there is monster under his bed. Attempting to calm his fears, you inform him that monsters do not exist; he responds with a list of evidences for the existence of the monster under his bed. You, however, are not moved by this evidence. Convinced that monsters do not exist, you believe that there are better explanations for your son’s evidences than a monster. You might believe that he is merely imagining the whole thing, or that the sounds he heard came from the drier in the laundry room below his bedroom.

This is a simple illustration, yet it points out some of the difficulties that believers face in presenting a defense of their faith to an unbelieving world. At this point, you might question the comparison between a boy proving the existence of monsters and a Christian proving the existence of God, yet they share an important similarity: in each case, one is trying to prove the existence of something that the audience’s worldview does not allow for. If we understand this difficulty upfront, it will help us understand the practical difficulties that face the believer who is trying to do apologetics.

For many readers, it might be helpful to begin by defining the word apologetics, because the term itself has been a cause for confusion among modern English-speaking believers. In common usage, when I offer an apology to someone, I admit that I am wrong and request pardon. In contrast, when I offer an apology for Christianity (that is, when I do apologetics), it is not that I am asking forgiveness for my belief in Christianity or that I am ashamed of its teaching; rather, I argue in defense of my faith. The source of this misunderstanding is rooted in the etymology of the term apologetics; in ancient Greek, the word avpologia (apologia) was a technical legal term for the defense that a person would offer when accused of a crime. For example, in Acts 25:16, Festus says, “…it is not the custom of the Romans to hand over any man before the accused meets his accusers face to face and has an opportunity to make his defense [apologia] against the charges.” It is from this legal sense of the term, that of offering a defense, that the modern discipline of apologetics derives its name. Thus, doing apologetics has nothing at all to do with apologizing; an apologist is one who defends Christianity against its detractors and enemies.

Regrettably, some believers think that the work of apologetics is better left to trained specialists. This is not the perspective of the New Testament writers, however. Note particularly the key verse on apologetics, 1 Peter 3.15: “But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense [apologia] to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” The command to be ready to give an answer to those who ask is applicable to all believers. If all of us have a biblical obligation to do apologetics, then we should recognize that we must defend the faith in a biblical and excellent way. But how should we approach the task of defending our faith?

Throughout history, the common method of doing apologetics has been to find some sort of common ground between the believer and the unbeliever, and use this common ground as a basis upon which to build an argument for Christian theism. This approach to apologetics can be loosely referred to by the term evidentialism. What is the neutral ground between Christianity and unbelief, however? Two candidates for this role are prominent in the evidentialist literature on apologetics. The first is reason, and the second is evidence or facts.

When reason is considered to be the neutral ground, apologists have offered logical arguments that demand the existence of God. Most people are at least familiar with these proofs for God. The two most popular theistic proofs are the cosmological and teleological arguments. The cosmological argument can be informally formulated like this:

Major Premise: All that exist must have a cause.

Minor Premise: The universe exists.

Conclusion: Therefore, the universe must have a cause, and that cause is God.

As appealing as this type of argumentation is, it is hopelessly faulty. At least two problems are immediately obvious. The first is that if all things need a cause, why doesn’t God need a cause? If God does not need a cause, the major premise is flawed (that is, not everything needs a cause) and perhaps the universe also does not need a cause. The second problem is that even if the argument does work, it does not come close to proving a biblical notion of God. A pantheon of gods working together might have created the universe. Perhaps a very powerful being, but not the omnipotent God of Christian theism, created the universe. It is a terrible jump in logic to move from the notion of finite creation to an infinite Creator. The teleological argument, which argues for the existence of God on the basis of the design so evident in nature, suffers from similar flaws: if something that exhibits design needs a designer, wouldn’t God, who exhibits even more design, need an even greater designer? If not, it can reasonably be concluded that the universe does not need a designer, either.

If reason fails as common ground between the believer and the unbeliever, perhaps facts and evidence can act as a neutral judge of the truth. After all, we live in a scientific age, and if we can prove the existence of God or the truth of Scripture through an examination of the evidence, we should have a respectable position in the eyes of the word. However, while it is true that the world is full of evidences for the existence of God, these evidences will not be accepted by the unbeliever if he remains consistent with his own principles. If the unbeliever is convinced of naturalism, for example, no amount of evidence for the supernatural will dissuade him. C. S. Lewis summarizes the impossibility of using miracles as historical proofs for Christianity.

For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

There is even a remarkable passage in Scripture that points to the same truth that Lewis identified. In Matthew 28, the disciples gather to witness the parting words of Christ before his ascension. But notice verse 17: “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.” Even when faced with visible evidence of the resurrected Christ, there were some who could not bring themselves to believe what they knew was impossible. The same difficulty faces the apologist who would use fact to bridge the gap between belief and unbelief. Consider the example of the monster under the bed; no amount of evidence presented by your son would convince you that there is indeed a monster under the bed, because your worldview does not allow for such things.

Essentially, we are faced with the option of doing apologetics in one of two ways: either as if Christianity is true (an approach known as presuppositionalism), or as if Christianity might be true (evidentialism). There is a world of difference between these approaches. If Christianity is true, the unbeliever not only knows that there is a god, but he knows God. Romans 1.18–21 is particularly clear that all people everywhere are born with, and are surrounded by, evidence for the existence of God. It is equally clear that unsaved people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1.21). Contrast this position with that of doing apologetics from the perspective that Christianity might be true. From this point of view, unbelievers are honest seekers of the truth. Christianity is just one out of many possibilities. The contrast in methodology here should be obvious. Unbelievers do not simply need more facts or better reasons to believe. The knowledge of God is inescapable; the unbeliever himself is in the image of God. The unbeliever’s own being testifies to the existence of the one true God.

This article has dealt primarily with the weaknesses of evidential apologetics. In the next issue of Sola!, I will attempt to show the value of presuppositional apologetics. Presuppositional apologetics, in contrast to evidentialism, begins with the presupposition that Christianity is in fact true and argues from that perspective. In this way, it is much more faithful to biblical Christianity in the way it attempts to defend the faith.

Michael Riley holds an M.Div. degree from Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently a Ph.D. student in Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Balanced Approach to Balance

Sola! November, 2004