Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods III Part 1 (Part 12)

Lord, we thank you that you have given us your precious truth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We thank you that you, by your Holy Spirit, have enlightened our minds that we might understand the Scriptures. You've changed our hearts that we might be willing to submit to them and believe them. We pray that you might give us courage in defending them and wisdom in doing so. We pray that you would help us through this lesson to know more what you and the Scriptures have told us about how to defend our faith. And we pray that you would give us persuasiveness and success in doing that, that your name would be glorified and that men and women might come to know you even as we do, and have grateful hearts as we do for the love that you've shown us. In Jesus name, Amen. Two weeks ago, when I began the Sunday school lessons on apologetics, it turned out that some of you did not have the syllabus. And my faithful secretary has now got us syllabi which are up here in this box. And so those of you who raised your hands and asked for them, I'm going to let you come get a syllabus right now before we put them out, generally for anybody else who wants to pick up copies. So if you need one. Yes, come right now. See what a good sermon we had? Look at all these people coming down here. That's great. Okay, what I'm going to do is put the remainder. I think there are some remainder on the literature table, so anyone else who would like to get one will be able to do so. But now you have the lessons for the next few weeks in our class. Today I'm going to be talking about chapters 14 and 15. My recommendation to those of you who have not had the syllabus is that you begin reading at chapter 13. Okay, so that's the beginning of a section. Read chapter 13, 14 and 15 to kind of catch up. And then next week I'll be hopefully launching into chapter 16. But for today, chapters 14 and 15, talking about the actual procedure or method by which we defend the faith. In chapter 14, I've entitled this A Twofold Apologetical Procedure. And I'm going to ask you at the end of the lesson to explain why. It's a twofold procedure, so pay attention. Now, Paul says in First Corinthians 1, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer or the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? It was precisely on that apologetical question and challenge. I think that Paul staked his apologetic. He knew that the word of the cross, for all of the abuse the world would heap upon it, he knew that the word of the cross made. Made foolish the wisdom of the wise. In fact, Isaiah had prophesied before that God would make foolish the wisdom of this world. And Paul sees that fulfilled in the word of the cross that God has sent a message which, for all of its apparent foolishness, to the world, that someone died on a cross and that has eternal significance, and that this person who was treated like a criminal is really the Lord of glory. All of that which seems so foolish, at least on the surface on initial presentation, is nevertheless the wisdom of God which undoes the wisdom of this world. As I say in the second paragraph, what the world calls foolish is in reality wisdom. Conversely, what the world deems wise is actually foolish. The unbeliever has turned things upside down, has applied the wrong standards. And what we want to do in apologetics is to demonstrate that we want to demonstrate the foolishness of unbelief and the wisdom of saving faith. Perhaps wisdom and foolishness are better terms for us to use in terms of what our goals are in apologetics than truth and error. Now, truth and error are fine, and we find them in the Bible, and I'll probably use those expressions as well. But let me tell you why. There may be an advantage to speaking of foolishness rather than error, or wisdom rather than truth. The common mentality in our culture, most of Western culture, but certainly in our American culture today, is that truth is a matter of being able to see or to hear, to touch certain things that we call evidence that prove the truth of what we believe. To defend. The truth of Christianity therefore sounds in our culture to most people that are unexperienced, as though we are saying we're going to give you some kind of outward evidence which will in and of itself show that what we're saying is true. The truth of Christianity stands over against the alleged truth, what we consider the error of the non Christian's viewpoint. And truth and error are simply decided by opening our eyes and looking at the evidence. But what I have been trying to instill in you in this apologetic seminar is that people don't simply open their eyes and look at the evidence. Then we decide truth and error in that simplistic way that as a matter of fact, what separates the believer from the unbeliever is not just the information that goes into the evaluation of evidence. What separates us is the way in which we Approach, evidence, the way in which we approach life, the way in which we think, the way the standards that we have. And in that sense, then we're talking about when we are. I'll get this right. When we're showing the unbeliever the error of his ways, we're doing more than just saying, you haven't looked at the evidence that we have. We're saying, you're not looking at any part of life correctly. You're not thinking correctly. Your methods, your procedures, your standards are wrong, and that's why your life is so messed up as well. So we want to show, I think, more generally, the foolishness of unbelief. The way the unbeliever trips himself up, the way he contradicts himself, the way he is arbitrary and inconsistent, the way in which his life doesn't match up to what he says in his philosophy. That's more than just in the simplistic way, showing the error, his view and the truth of ours. We want to show that his life and his thinking, his approach to things, is foolish. According to Romans 1:20, in the face of God's revelation of his truth all around us. The unbeliever is. Paul says, without an apologetic. Your translation will say without an excuse, but the Greek actually uses the alpha privative with the same word for apologetic. Without an apologetic, literally, he has no defense, he has no excuse. He has no reason he can offer for the position that he has taken. As I say, when the overall philosophy of life, when the overall worldview of the unbeliever is compared to the philosophy of life or worldview of the Christian, the unbeliever has no place to stand. And that's why Paul said, where is the wise? Can you find a place to stand for the man that's worldly wise? Where's the disputer of this age? God makes foolish the wisdom of this world. The genuinely wise unbeliever cannot be found, that being true, and you know, your task is to take any unbeliever you're dealing with and demonstrate that they aren't so wise in their own eyes and conceits, that in fact they have no place to stand philosophically or intellectually. Rejection of the Christian faith cannot be justified, and the intellectual position of the unbeliever cannot be genuinely defended in the world of thought. This verse is very helpful again in seeing what we're doing. Second Corinthians 10, 4, 5. We read there that the spiritual weapons of the Christian are mighty before God unto the casting down of every High imagination, exalted against the knowledge of God. Everything that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God can be cast down the unbeliever. According to Proverbs, one hates knowledge. In 1 Timothy 6, we're told that he professes a knowledge that's falsely so called. Now, from just those little hints, you should gather this then, that you want to show that the interbeliever doesn't know what he thinks he knows. He doesn't know what he thinks he knows. I'm not saying that what he thinks he knows is not true. Stop and think about that for a minute. There's, there's a difference between truth and knowledge. The unbeliever has many truths, but he doesn't know them. Now why is that? Well, what's the difference between knowledge and truth, Doug? Truth. Okay, There are truths which are not believed. And so people who don't believe the truth obviously don't know the truth. But there's also the fact that people sometimes know the truth, or, excuse me, believe the truth, but they have no adequate justification for what they believe. It so happens that what they believe is true. I use this illustration facetiously. If I believe right now there are 23 million ants in Ethiopia, it may be true. I mean, it might just be one of the wonders like the lottery, you know. Well, that number just happens to be the right number of ants in Ethiopia. But I have no reason for saying that. I don't even know if I'm in the right, you know, level of intensity. Maybe it's 23,000 ants or 23 ants, I don't know. I'm just totally throwing that out as an illustration. But if you happen to be the resident expert on Ethiopian ants and you're keeping, you know, all the tally on this, and you came up to me later and said, that's amazing that your number was exactly right, I'd say, oh, I knew it all the time. You'd say, no, you didn't know it, it was true and maybe you believed it, but it was a guess. Knowledge calls for more than just truth. It calls for justification that the claim that is true, the proposition that is true, we have proof for we have a reason for believing it. Now what I'm saying is the unbeliever has many truths, but on his philosophy of life, he doesn't know any of them because he can't justify any of them. We want to show that unbelievers have knowledge falsely so called that they really hate knowledge because the only way in which they could justify Any truth, any belief that they have would require them to use the Christian philosophy of life. The whole concept of justification and the precondition of justifying a belief are tied up with the Christian outlook on life. Now, that's what we're going to be talking about. That's a little nutshell summary, but that's what I'm going to try to be showing you over the last few. Over the next few weeks. Okay? I've already read to you from Dr. Van Til a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to skip that part of this chapter and move on. In Proverbs 26, 4 and 5, we're instructed how to answer the foolish unbeliever. I said, you want to show the foolishness of unbelief, not just the error. And I said, you want to show this by pointing out they can't know anything. They may have many truths, but they can't know any of them on their philosophy of life. Now how are we going to do that? Proverbs 26 says, Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him. Then it turns around and says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like, excuse me, lest he be wise in his own conceit. The twofold apologetic procedure mentioned in that long quote from Van Till above, I think is summarized in Proverbs. In the first place, the unbeliever should not be answered in terms of his own misguided presuppositions. We don't answer the unbeliever, assuming that his approach to life, his approach to knowledge is correct. The apologist must defend his faith by working within his own presuppositions. There must be an answer given to the fool that shows that we aren't caught up in his foolishness. Because if you answer the fool according to his folly, you'll be like him, kind of like crawling into the boat that he's in, that's sinking. You're going to sink with him. Answer him according to his philosophy, and you're going to have the same problems he does. If he surrenders to the assumptions, if the believer surrenders to the assumptions of the unbeliever, the unbeliever will never effectively set forth a reason for the hope that is in him. You'll lose the battle from the outset. But then, as I say, in the second place, the apologist must answer the fool according to his folly, that is, according to his own professed presuppositions, according to what he says about life. And one of the Things you're going to want to find out from me is what are the sorts of things that go into a philosophy of life? What sorts of questions are answered by everybody, whether wittingly or unwittingly, in their approach to life? An obvious one is, is this world all there is? Is matter all there is? This world is the way we know things only through our senses. Questions like those, is this world random? Is it a matter of chaos? Is it a chance universe where anything can happen? Or is there some kind of controlling principle metaphysically, that is, in terms of the nature of reality itself that governs the way things happen? Those are just a few of the elementary philosophical questions that everybody has an answer for, whether they've thought about it or not. And what you want to say to the unbeliever is if I answer you according to your worldview, according to your approach to life, notice what happens. And I'm going to give you the in between steps. But the final step is going to be you notice you can't know anything at all. Given your approach to the world, you couldn't justify any truth on your approach to the world. Proverbs says, answer him according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit, lest he think he has something going for him. Say, okay, let me answer the way your philosophy would answer. Let's see where your philosophy takes you. So that that humbles him. He doesn't have the conceit of thinking, well, I'm all right as far as I go. I may not have all the truth, but you know, I'm doing okay for what I do know. And your point is, on your philosophy of life, you don't know nothing. Does that sound offensive enough? Challenging enough? Unbelievers are going to have a real hard time with that. Now, it's real important that you not say that and just leave it as kind of like a calling of names. Someone say, well, you don't know nothing. And so we don't even have to go on. I mean, I'm right, you're wrong. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is we want to talk this out. And I'd like to show that on your philosophy, you couldn't know anything. And your philosophy, to use Dr. Van Till's illustration, you, you do a lot of counting, but you can't account for counting in a chance universe. Why are numbers regular at all? In a material universe, why is there anything that's immaterial, such as a number or a law? Or something like love. And you don't need to be trained in an institution or a school in order to do this. All of you can do this regardless of your educational attainments. Okay, now it's time for the quiz. What is the two fold procedure that we use in defending the faith? Then what two things are to be done as we defend the faith? Jay, It's remarkable how we're so much like my high school kids. Yeah. What do I mean by saying the procedure is twofold? What two things are we going to do? First thing is probably get to the.

Underlying necessity of realizing the genetic philosophy which we're saying that all paths are perfect.

Sounded good, though. We do have to do that.

Yeah.

It was Meg's answer. What? I said there's two things you have to do when you're defending faith. What are those two things? Steve?

Answer the fool according to this folly and do not answer the fool according to this folly.

Okay, could you expand a little bit on that? What does it mean to answer the fool according to his folly? What do you want to do?

Show him the end of his preacher suppositions and show that in fact they are faulty, that they end up with no real basis for knowledge.

Okay, you want to take his philosophy, his foolishness, and show that it ends up with no place to stand. You can't know anything on that basis. I will now give a summary phrase to this. You'll remember it from now on. You're going to do an internal critique of his philosophy of life. An internal critique. It's kind of like you're going to walk into his house and you're going to start looking around and showing all the problems there. You're going to do an internal critique of his philosophy, of his professed philosophy, what he says with his mouth. He says, this is what I believe. You say, oh, well, if you believe that, then this, then this, and then this. Let me kind of enter into this thought pattern with you and show you what happens when we do that. So you want to do an internal critique. What's the second thing you want to do? Apologetics. That's the one fold apologetical procedure. What makes it twofold? Gail. Exactly right. You do an internal critique of his philosophy to show that he couldn't know anything on that basis. Then you turn around and you don't answer the fool according to his folly. Lest you be like unto him, you say, but not everyone shares that problem. The Christian outlook on life can justify ethical absolutes, can justify a scientific procedure, can justify math and logic and human dignity, things such as that. So you want to show him where his is going to fail, where his philosophy of life must fail him and turn on show. But the Christian outlook in life doesn't share that defect. You don't answer him according to his folly, lest you be like unto him. And those are the two things we must do in apologetics. And what I want to train you to do, as much as I can in the weeks that God gives us together, is to do that effectively teach you some of the basic questions that you can learn to talk about with just about anybody, whether it's your milkman or the college professor that lives next door. You'll be able to discuss what's wrong with their philosophy of life and why your philosophy of life doesn't share that defect. Okay, any questions on today's lesson? Tim, Between knowledge and faith. Yeah. In other words.

Your fellow compositionalist starts to rant your points one by one. I can imagine eventually intellectual understanding and even belief in Christianity ecosystem.

Oh, okay, okay, I understand. I thought you were asking the more technical question about what's the difference between belief and knowledge? Or what distinguishes faith as a form of knowledge from knowledge in the more scientific sense. But now addressing what you really want to know, there is really no way for the apologist to know for certain that the individual who is saying, oh, I see this, and I am agreeing with this, is doing so only as you described it, in an abstract, intellectualistic, physical fashion. The system appeals to me. And I see there's no way around that. You can't know that just from the replies that we've been talking about. But I suppose you would know that by asking him, do you see then that this system of truth is what you have been in rebellion against and that you are not acceptable to God just by intellectually saying that the Bible must be right and I must be wrong. I mean, you start asking some personal questions about whether you know he is trusting Christ, forgive him for his intellectual error and his opposition to the truth. And again, we can't ever read a person's heart completely, but I think by the fruit of his answers, you get some idea of whether it is something that comes, you know, from the heart and he's humbled before his sin and is trusting the Savior, or whether he's just playing a game of intellectual chess with you. Mark.

There's some Christians that believe in the sovereign trinity of God and also believe in fundamentals of logic, but they can't make a justification between the two. They can't Say the next. Can we say that they know logic or justify logic in the same way that we say that the atheist or non Christian cannot justify logic?

It sometimes happens that we have things that we're not aware of having. And when it comes to the key questions, especially metaphysical questions, that would give a precondition for logic, I'm going to have a lesson on this. But to be real brief about that, one of the things that is necessary for logic to be logical as we know it is that there can be things that exist that aren't material. In particular, there can be things which we consider law like or universal and are not something you can touch. Okay, so now from just that one elementary starting point, you can see that the Christian has what is necessary in his outlook on life for logic, whereas the materialist, the naturalist, the evolutionist does not. Now you're asking, does the Christian who holds the trinitarian biblical theology know this justification? And there's a difference between having a justification and being able to give a justification. It sometimes happens. A person goes into court and they have a defense, but they're not able to give their defense. That's why they hire a lawyer who is able to do that, to think it through and present it correctly and so forth. However, all of the building blocks of the defense, all of the substance of the defense comes out when the lawyer asks the person he's defending, you know, the information that he needs to pump into this. Can you have an apple at home and not know that you have an apple at home? Sure. Can you have tuberculosis and not know you have tuberculosis? Yeah. So it turns out in a lot of ways we can see we can have something and not know that we have it. So to answer your question, yes, a believer can have the defense necessary and not realize that, not have thought it through, and maybe not even be all that articulate in giving it. That's why we have Sunday school classes to help learn to articulate that.

Would it be more clear than to say that they're non commissioned, that they don't have a justification? They don't know one. Because then they could just say, well, I have one, but I just don't have a responsibility.

Well, and many do cop out in that way. You see, the fact that you can have something without being able to give it is true enough. But to turn it around and say the fact that I can't give it doesn't show that I don't have it. That's only the beginning of an answer. You know, if you say, well, if Someone can give this justification. Let's hear it. What does Paul say? Where is the disputer of this age? You know, and when I've talked to unbelievers and I've done a lot of this, a lot of witnessing, defending the faith, sometimes publicly and so forth, I keep wondering where is, where's the guy going to stand up that's got the answers? They always go through this. Well, you know, but somebody, you know, could tell you, I mean, I'm just not able to do it or, you know, even the, even the professionals will say, well, if you read David Hume or something, it's always, you know, go to this next guy. I'm saying, yeah, but that guy either doesn't show up or if they refer to somebody who's in print, we've already got an answer to that guy. And so the fact that they can't give the answer is not in itself conclusive that they don't have an answer. But if they're not able to come up with more than just that formality, then eventually we have to conclude you don't have the answer at all. Yes, Oh, absolutely. His history of. Yeah, people don't like to hear that, but that's the sort of thing Dr. Bonson says a lot. If you can't put it into words, I'm not sure you really do know it. Although people struggle to put things into words and there may be some people who can do it better than others. I mean, I buy all of that, but if there's no way at all that you can say it, I doubt that you really know it. David, to summarize the two fold methods.

One is the critical task, right? We criticizing on leaving this are construct or you positively construct crucial use a question reversed in normal order when free topic it seems to stay answerful.

Yeah, you're right. It has the positive before the negative. I don't think the order of mention in proverbs is significant. If I did, I mean, people would really struggle with proverbs because there's a lot of stuff that seems out of natural order or commonsensical order. I think those are two proverbs that are joined together, both of which have to be done, but I don't think the order in which they're mentioned is significant. Consequently, it's up to us in terms of the prudential according to the circumstance and what seems wise and most successful whether you present the positive case or the negative case first. In my own experience, it's a generalization, but that doesn't mean it's true for everybody or every evangelistic circumstance. In my own experience, it has almost always seemed easier to show the unbeliever that he has no place to stand and then invite him to see that I'm standing somewhere. That's unassailable. But you could do it the other way around. Are there any questions on today's message? I do want to get you out of here on time.