Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Conditions For Success II (Part 29)

Destructiveness of our own sin and our own waywardness and self centeredness. We freely confess to you that we are here to worship your name tonight and to hear your word and to be taught from it. Not because we are wiser or smarter or more moral than other men. We are here simply because you have been so good, to call us to yourself. We do pray that you would give us humility as we approach our subject, that we might recognize that our knowledge, our understanding is a gift from you, the gift of faith that comes through the mercy of Jesus Christ and the power of his Spirit. We ask you tonight to help us to learn more of you, to learn about you, to draw closer to you and to better represent you and your glory to those who have yet to meet you. We do pray that you would draw us close together in support of each other in our lives, that you would bind us together as your people, and that you would help us to find strength in your Word and in our fellowship, above all in knowing you. For we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Thus far in our course, which has taken a long time, I've just started to think about this. This has been quite a number of sessions. We'll have to count the tapes one of these days and find out. But I have tried to do three things thus far. First of all, to lay the foundations for doing apologetics, to understand what it is that the apologist is about, what the goals of apologetics are, and to lay the foundation and, as you know from the reading assignments, the lordship of Jes Christ in the realm of knowledge. I have tried to push hard that Jesus Christ is not simply Lord in some narrow spiritual sense, not simply Lord when it comes to our political thinking, our economic thinking. Those of us who are inclined toward a Christian worldview and activism and so forth, are accustomed to hearing that. But now I want to push further and say Christ is Lord over my thinking process too. In the realm of knowledge, he is to be my Lord. That's the foundation for effective Christian apologetics. Secondly, I've tried to teach you something about the methodology of defending the faith, what strategy we use. And I have said that we need to compare the overall worldview of the person with whom we are speaking, to whom we are witnessing. We need to compare that worldview with our own. That means you're going to probably have to help someone to realize what their worldview is sometimes. And you need to learn some effective ways of critiquing, doing an internal criticism of that worldview and showing why the Christian Worldview provides the things that this person's looking for, be they logic or human dignity or moral absolutes or beauty or whatever it may be. We need to do an indirect defense of the faith, then showing the impossibility of the contrary to Christianity. Compare the worldviews. Thirdly, I've tried to do more in detail than I have previously with our church in showing you various lines of attack on different kinds of worldviews, be they atheistic or philosophical or religious or just arbitrary. And so, having finished that last week, we began the final section of our course, Section four. Now, if you will, on the conditions of apologetical success. How are we going to be successful in this big task that we've set out for ourselves? And last week we considered the first aspect of success in apologetics. That's in recognizing the sovereignty of God. It is God who grants understanding. I don't want you to feel the frustration that, admittedly and sorrowfully, I felt often when I was much younger. I'm not that old, I hope, but anyway, when I was much younger and interested in these things, I mean, as early as high school and college, interested in apologetics, it was always a frustration to me that it seemed as though I had the better argument, but the other guy wouldn't cry, uncle, I see you smiling. You felt that too, right? And part of that comes from the fact that we're too ego involved in what we're doing. We're really matching intellect for intellect rather than trying to glorify God and see people submit to Him. But more, I think, than that is that we forget our reformed understanding of man. We forget that men are depraved and they have darkened minds unless God grants them understanding. The most brilliant debate in the world is not going to change someone. I am not a person who says that because God has to change the heart, we need not worry about how well we appeal to the mind. There are people who say, well, since it's all in God's hands, then I don't have to have good arguments. God can just use my bad arguments and convert people if he wants to. Of course, God's not glorified by bad arguments. We don't represent the truth when we give bad arguments. And we shouldn't expect God to have to undo our bad work in order to bring people to Himself. And obviously it is easier, even from a human standpoint, to see someone follow the line of thought and, if their heart is open, come to the truth. If we present some steps that aren't going to be quicksand, for them intellectually. So obviously we do have to use good argumentation. However, all the argumentation of the world is not going to be effective unless God himself breaks the sinner's heart and breaks through with the light of the Gospel, the enlightenment that the Holy Spirit brings. The second condition of apologetical success is we have to see, as Chapter 20 in the syllabus tells you, that belief precedes understanding. This is a really hard lesson to digest, to get down. And it's very similar to what I was just talking about, the frustration. We don't see people changing their minds. We forget, well, if God hasn't granted them understanding, they aren't going to change their minds. We need to understand as well that belief precedes understanding, not understanding preceding belief, or if you will, faith. This is the age old question of the relationship of reason and faith. What relationship does the use of my intellect, my reason, have to faith or trusting God and His Word? And I'm going to suggest that there are only so many different possibilities here and that the Scripture supports one of them quite definitely. One view that has been popularized, especially in the circles of Roman Catholicism, popularized by thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, is that reason lays a foundation for faith. That reason shows the credibility, the believability. Of certain basic aspects of Christianity, that there is a God of some sort, that this God is personal in some way, that we are accountable to this God. And that foundation having been laid, then faith, you see, completes reason. Faith becomes the natural step. If I use my reason correctly, then faith will be placed upon this foundation. Another possibility is that what we believe by faith has absolutely nothing to do with what we believe by reason. Is this a thick enough wall? You understand? Here we have faith and then a concrete divider between it and reason. The two of them never cross, they never interact, they never touch each other. Some things we believe simply by faith. They aren't subject to the investigation of reason or understanding. Other things we believe on the basis of reason are the common use of our intellect, science, what have you, and faith has nothing to do with them. We just keep them in watertight compartments. And then a third view, which is the one that I'm championing tonight, comes from the Augustinian tradition of theology. And it says that faith, or trusting God, is the foundation for any use of man's reasoning. Or, if you will, understanding. That if you don't have faith, that reasoning falls through, has no foundation. So that all of man's intellectual endeavors, be they in biology or mathematics or history or literature, what have you, that all of man's reasoning endeavors, all of man's understanding would be, in theory, impossible if we didn't already know God. Believe in God. So faith precedes understanding. Here faith completes understanding, and here faith and understanding have no relationship whatsoever. What does the Bible say? Well, we've learned, if nothing else, we've learned in our course thus far, that one does not first satisfy his own intellect by putting test upon God. And then when God passed the test as the instructor in the course, we finally say, well, then, God, you do exist, and I acknowledge you and I bow down before you. I don't know how many times I see this go on with my evangelical brothers. It just mystifies me how we are not any better than the idolaters that are convicted by Isaiah for fashioning a God and then having done that, cutting down the tree and carving it and polishing it, and then bowing down and saying, this is my God. After you've made this God, this God is subject to your sovereign disposition. And then you bow down and call that God. We have people who do the same kind of thing in the intellectual realm. What they do is they say, well, if God's going to exist, then he must do the following. He must prove himself to me in the following way. He must meet these standards. We lay down all those sorts of things. And then when God comes through, we say, okay, you pass, as Dr. Mantel used to say, summa cum laude, and I give you your degree. You are God. And at this point, having degreed you as God, I bow down before you as maker of heaven and earth. It just doesn't make any sense, does it, Elric? No, but it seems to me analogous to what Gideon was doing. Except that wasn't reasoning, that was a miracle. How would you? Well, the big difference, it seems to me, Elry, is that in the case of Gideon, he acknowledged God's existence. He just didn't know what God's will was. And so he was asking God, show me by means of this miracle whether I'm to do this or to do that. In the case of the unbeliever, he's saying, I don't even know that there is a God. And so any God that's going to be admitted to my universe is going to have to pass my test. Gideon wasn't saying pass my test. He was saying, confirm that this is the revealed will that you want me to follow. In Proverbs 17, we find the motto of biblical wisdom. The beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. Or if you will, the first and controlling principle of knowledge is reverent submission to the Lord. And I've quoted in the syllabus Matthew Henry and it bears repeating on this verse. He comments, in order to the attaining of all useful knowledge, this is most necessary that we fear God. We are not qualified to profit by the instructions that are given us. Unless our minds be possessed with a holy reverence of God and every thought within us be brought into obedience to him hits the nail right on the head. If we don't first reverence God, then all the instruction given us is useless. I point out that the Book of Hebrews talks about presents the theme of coming to God or approaching near unto God. We see that four different places in the book of Hebrews. We are told in chapter eight that this drawing near to God has been made possible by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. And then in verse 11 of chapter 8 you'll notice that drawing near to God in Hebrews is designated knowing God. Turn to that. Hebrews 8:11. And they shall not teach everyone. This is a quotation from Jeremiah 31. They shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, everyone his brother, saying, know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them. This is one of the benefits of the new covenant, that we shall know the Lord. And then in Hebrews 11:6 you'll notice what the author of Hebrews lays down as the prerequisite for a saving knowledge of God in order to approach God and to know him in this new covenant way. Without faith it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of those who seek him. Of course, Hebrews 11 is the chapter that has to do with the hall of fame of faith by faith. Noah did by faith, Abraham did by faith, by faith, by faith, over and over again, those who would approach unto God, those who would know God, those who would be saved, must approach in faith. Without faith it's impossible to please Him. Think about this by way of contrast. What if someone said, well, I don't really have faith in God, and so forth, but my intellect is such, and my examination of the facts is such that I have concluded that very probably there is a God. And so I'm going to allow that conclusion to be drawn. I mean, as human beings we are offended by that. Can you imagine the offense to the Almighty when a person thinks that way? Obviously, the only way to approach unto God is with the humility of faith of Bowing the knee not only externally, but internally, bowing our hearts before him and trusting him. And so Hebrews says, faith enables us to draw near unto God. And when we talk to unbelievers, we shouldn't assume otherwise. We shouldn't act as though the opposite is the case. If they will not humbly bow before God, they will not approach Him. And So it was St. Augustine who, as I've told you, argued that faith is foundational to all reasoning and understanding when he said in his homilies on the Gospel of John, understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand. Probably one of the best known statements of Augustine. I believe in order to understand understanding, which here I think should be taken in the broadest sense for human intellect and reasoning. My understanding is not the foundation for my confidence in God, my trusting in him, but my trusting in him becomes the foundation that which is in order to my understanding, the use of my reason. Proverbs 1:7, as I've already indicated, tells us the beginning. The first and controlling principle of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. I say in the syllabus, if a man's heart is wrong, his thinking will be correspondingly futile. You're going to turn quite a corner in your witnessing, in your practice of apologetics when you finally get that down. If a man's heart is wrong, his reasoning will be futile. We must keep reasoning with him. But we have to understand that if he doesn't have faith, if his heart's not changed, his reasoning is not going to become profitable. I want you to notice an expression in Matthew 21:32. Turn to Matthew 21:32. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him. But the tax gatherers and harlots did believe him, and you, seeing this, did not feel remorse afterwards so as to believe him. Him. What is it that the harlots and the tax gatherers had that enabled them to believe that the publican, excuse me, the Pharisees and the scribes did not have repentance. They didn't feel remorse. Jesus says it right here. And you, seeing this, did not feel remorse so as to believe him. We have the idea that, well, first we get all the intellectual things down and we believe all the right things. And then we say, oh, I guess I was wrong to not be in the way of righteousness. That was preached by John or by Jesus or by the Bible. We first come to this intellectual understanding, and then our hearts can be changed. Jesus presents the very opposite. He goes, if your heart is not convicted of sin, if you are not drawn to repentance, you will not believe. Repentance is unto faith. And that's why the success of the apologist is not to be measured by intellectual points in some kind of a debate. Apologetical success ultimately depends on the sinner's code, conversion. If you're not working for the conviction of sin and the remorse of the heart and the bowing of the internal knee, as you will to Jesus, then you're doing the wrong thing. As an apologist, we have nothing to gain by just being intellectual combatants. Anytime I defend the faith, even if it's with some arrogant spirit so and so that I'm only going to get five minutes with, and I am hoping, if nothing else, I can at least trip him up for a few minutes to make him be quiet in his attacks upon my Savior and so forth. Even in that kind of encounter, I need to have in my mind that in the end, conversion is what I'm looking for. I'm not trying to get one up on this guy. I'm trying to get his heart convicted before God. And so faith and repentance will bring that fear of the Lord, that reverence for the Lord, which Proverbs says is foundational to knowledge. It doesn't work the other way around. We don't first gain a knowledge and understanding of things that shows us how credible the biblical message is. And then we go and complete that with the step of faith. We finally fear the Lord. We don't fear the Lord. First, knowledge and understanding won't come. What I've been trying to teach you in our course is that presuppositionalism, if it's done properly and hopefully biblically, presents a challenge to the thinking of the unbeliever, which the evidential and piecemeal attempts of other apologetical systems do not. I think that their biggest mistake, their biggest failing, is that they do not call the sinner to abandon his system of thought with its autonomous assumptions, I'm afraid apologists tend to go to the unbeliever and say, well, now just look at everything that you know. Look at all these things that are all right in your thinking process and in your system of belief. And what I'd like you to do is just add one more thing and say, here's the idea that reason has given you all these things, and now I just want to complete your reasoning process. It's kind of like you've gotten to third base Let me bring you all the way home. Add Jesus to the overall picture. But Jesus is not satisfied to be a supplement to autonomous thinking. Jesus wants the abandonment of autonomous thinking. And if that is true, then what am I doing as an apologist, trying to flatter, make use of, or build upon this man's autonomous reasoning and say, now just let faith kind of put the last leg on the table, as it were? Faith doesn't do that. Faith says, I'm nothing in myself. I reverence the Lord, I trust his word on his say so. And so repentant faith is necessary in order for the unbeliever to understand. It's also necessary for him to use his reasoning at all. Do you see how this turns out to be the other side of the coin of the challenge that I've been teaching? I've been suggesting that you must tell people you can't reason at all unless you subscribe to the Christian worldview. And what I'm saying is this person cannot use reasoning at all unless he has reverent faith first. And so the message, the challenge, corresponds to the intent here to get him to abandon his autonomy. I don't know if that comes out as clearly as I'd like, but the point that I'm making is that we not only have an argument which has hopefully its own genius or brilliance to it, we not only have an argument argument here, but we have what the Bible presents as the preconditions of understanding. Anyway, reasoning does not provide the foundation for faith. Faith is the only foundation for reasoning and consequently our apologetical success. As I told you last week, if it depends upon repentant faith, our apologetical success again depends upon the grace of God. What does Ephesians 2:8 tell us? Hopefully many of you could recite it without even looking it up. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God if we are saved by God's grace through faith. And that whole package is a gift from God. And obviously faith's not going to come through my intellectual efforts, is it? Faith's not going to come by my satisfying certain autonomous conditions of truth and understanding. Not only does God grant faith, the Bible says He grants repentance. Just take an example, Acts 5:31. He is the one whom God exists, exalted to his right hand as a prince and a savior, to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Repentance doesn't come by my sitting around and developing bad feelings. You know, you can't send someone back to say, now just think about your sins and try to feel bad about them, and then repentance will come. That doesn't happen, does it? Repentance is a gift from God, and I'm praying for someone's repentance. You know, people that you've prayed that God would grant them repentance, you know that you can't do that. That's no more an intellectual attainment or something that can come through human persuasion than faith. Repentance, the heart that is convicted of sin, is a gift from God. And lessons aren't on this tonight, but I've had many occasions recently to reflect on that, how good God is to smite us with repentance. You get down about your sins, your besetting sins, the way in which you don't glorify God, don't love him with all your heart. You fall short of his glory. And this really bothers you. Well, it should bother you. But you should also say thank you. Thank you, God, for letting that bother me. Because it would be very easy for me just to go about my own life and to think I just have to take care of myself and be happy. There's a correlation between true remorse for sin and joy in the Holy Spirit. I know it's a paradox, but sometimes Christians can be joyful that they're unhappy if we're unhappy about the right things. So that's in terms of our own spiritual growth and insight for you. But think about, where does that come from? It comes from the Lord. It's the blessing of God. It's the blessing of God in our own lives when we repent. It's the blessing of God in the lives of unbelievers. If they're going to repent. Let's Turn to Colossians 3:10. I'll try to finish up with some passages to reinforce Tonight's lesson. Colossians 3:10. Paul here speaks of putting on the new man, or the new self having put on the new man who is being renewed unto a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him. Renewed unto what? Not just renewed unto holiness of life, but renewed unto knowledge, genuine knowledge. This translation says, true knowledge renewed unto a knowledge that is genuine, a knowledge of the Creator. Renewal. Does that knowledge comes through renewal? And then look at 2 Timothy 2:25. You're speaking of the Lord's servant not being quarrelsome, but gentle and able to teach patient when wronged. Verse 25 says, with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition. If perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth. This one verse, I think probably more than any other, brings together all the strands of tonight's teaching in one place. Notice that God must grant people repentance, and repentance is necessary. It leads to a knowledge of the truth. And so, as I told you last week, God gives us success in our apologetical endeavors by his sovereignty. And this week we realize that faith precedes understanding, and faith is the foundation of reasoning rather than the other way around. And that the faith of which the Bible speaks is not just a barren intellectual assent to something, but it is a change of heart, a renewal of man that brings repentance and the fear of the Lord. First Corinthians 2, 4, 5. Obviously, Paul understood these things much better than myself. And I want you to notice the kind of approach approach that Paul took, knowing that repentance and the fear of the Lord precede knowledge. He said, my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom. Here you might put human wisdom. That's the point. My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. We're going to read the fifth verse as well, but notice right here what Paul says. He contrasts relying upon the power of the Holy Spirit to relying upon the power of the persuasiveness of human wisdom. I don't come trying to show that I have mastered the intellect better than you. I come trying to present the message that the Holy Spirit, Spirit empowers and has inspired and will drive home to the heart. And why does Paul contrast the approach that relies on the Spirit's work to an approach that relies on his own human wisdom? He says in verse five, so that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Going to conclude with a downer illustration. Tonight I'm taught in my speaking classes. That's not the way to do things, but I think it's necessary. Tonight I told you that I took an interest in Christian apologetics many years ago. I was already debating in high school. These points sadly spent time in a secular high school, a very large one, But I tried to be a testimony there, and that involved me more than a couple of occasions publicly debating the truth of Scripture, either with teachers or fellow students. And so when I went to college, of course, I was really thirsty to learn as much as I could that would help in these apologetical endeavors that I took an early interest in. And My first exposure to apologetics was not presuppositional. It was more what we today call the evidential approach. In fact, before I'd even gotten to college, I had, without having read St. Thomas Aquinas, figured out the anatomy of evidential apologetics in terms of the philosophical foundation that there is a God, and then evidences about the character of this God, and then finally who Jesus and the Bible are and the Resurrection argument. I had that all kind of scoped out even before I found out people had thought about those things and put their apologetics that way. So when I went to college, I was very interested in that. When I first started working with young people, obviously one of the things I pushed, because it was my application, it was so important in terms of where they were in their lives, was the truth of Christianity, Because Christianity is true and there is evidence for it. I don't think all of that time was wasted with those young people. And many people profited in a youth group that grew, was very successful by God's grace that I was ministering to. But this is the sad part of it. The best, by far the best student in my group, about 50 to 55 students, the one who really picked up on what I was teaching in this evidential approach to apologetics three years later renounced the faith. And when I went back to talk with him, I was my first year in seminary by then, and I came back for a summer and had an opportunity to speak with him. And I remember being stunned, really stunned in a way that I haven't been often. When I left with the impression of the intellectual arrogance of this young person. And then, you know, what I went home and wept over is that I had taught him to be that way. I had taught him to exalt his logic and his research and so forth. Now, I have to tell you, I still think the logic and the research come in the direction of Christianity. It's not for failure to have an argument. What bothers me is I had really trained this person's mind, and I hadn't been concerned enough that his heart would submit to the Lord Jesus Christ and bow to that ultimate authority, rather than first honoring the authority of his mind and then letting Jesus into his world. And I don't say this to you because, you know, mea culpa, it's my fault that he renounced the faith. But whatever influences over those years brought about that final result. The point is, I had not set up in ministering to this young person, sufficient safeguards against that, but had rather encouraged that very line of thinking. I know that's a downer illustration, but please remember tonight's lesson. Faith precedes understanding. Faith is not built on the foundation of autonomous accomplishments of the mind.