Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Socrates & Christ (Part 3)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

In our first session we were supposed to do a comparison and look at the history of apologetical systems. But you know that I was kind of joking with you because that assumed you came to the first session having already done the homework. In fact, what I gave you in the first session were some introductory comments about the necessity of apologetics and what apologetics amounts to and how we're not to compromise what apologetics is all about. What we will do in this session now is talk about this comparison of apologetical systems and in the process look at our themes for lesson number two, having to do with neutrality, antithesis and revelational epistemology. I'm not sure we're going to get to revelational epistemology, but I'll be cranking. I'm going to spend some time comparing systems and what I'd like you to do is especially make note of how I'm arguing that we have to reject a neutral stance in defending the faith and how we must insist upon the antithesis between the believer's mindset and the unbelievers mindset. For those of you who read the syllabus in preparation, then those first six chapters of the syllabus will be highlighted by what we're doing, Harrison, of various systems. Then we'll look at the syllabus itself and try to boil it down. So you know that you need to do apologetics, you know something about the character of it. Now let's look at the history of apologetics, and I'm going to boil down a lot of years of academic work and study and service to the Lord done by a lot of different people in apologetics and boil down a lot of details in different approaches and different documents that were written in books and so forth. I'm going to try to boil it down into a contrast between two different approaches. Now the danger in doing that is always out of oversimplification, and so you're warned ahead of time. I'm going to purposely be trying to boil things down and so I'm not going to take account of every nuance and every slight difference between people, but it has helped me anyway in my understanding of apologetics and looking at the history of it to see that there's a fundamental contrast between two different ways of doing apologetics. In the article that you read, Socrates or Christ the Reformation of Christian Apologetics, you know that the contrast is going to be between what I call the Socratic approach and the Christian or the Pauline approach to defending the faith. So let's spend some time talking about those two and in light of what we see in that contrast, then we'll look at some of the details in the history of apologetics. I think maybe it'll light up the that history for you. First of all, why am I looking at Socrates at all? What's the big deal with Socrates? What's the literary connection that I use to justify drawing a contrast between Socrates and Paul? Anybody? I told you, we're going to do this Socratically. So. Okay, Larry, you answer for us, then we'll begin with you. Okay. It's at the very beginning of the article. Oh, he said such a meaning. Okay, Greg.

He looked upon the father of that particular. One of the first philosophers to articulate that.

Well, Socrates is one of the early systematizers in philosophy. But something happened to Socrates that also happened to Paul and that makes it an interesting. Okay, Larry?

Yeah, he was very religious inside. It was a divine task for him to go and speak with him to ensure the well being of the soul.

Of the people of Bath. Okay, so he had a religious mission. He thought, how did he end up. What happened to him finally? Martyred. Okay, but before he was martyred, why was he martyred? Okay, he was subverting the youth, but a charge was brought against him. Right, thank you. That's right. In fact, they said that, well, actually he denied the gods of Athens and so that made him an atheist, but he had a trial. That's what I'm getting at. And Plato writes about Socrates defending himself. And what is the title of the Platonic dialogue where Socrates defends himself against these charges of atheism? The Apology. The Apology. That's what we're studying, apologetics. Okay, not a real good beginning here. That was the connection I wanted you all to pick up on. Socrates gives an apologetic. And then who else, years later, ends up in Athens being tried for introducing new deities? Paul. Yes. I mean, it's an obvious, isn't it? Here's Socrates, this great philosopher who gives an apologetic in Athens, and Paul does the same thing. I mean, it's a setup for us who do apologetics. We've got to contrast these two. Then Paul speaks, of course, for the risen Christ. We can say that's the Christian approach. What we see in Paul and Socrates gives us some idea of the way the world does philosophy. So let's spend a little bit of time this first hour. In fact, I want to look at Socrates and Paul and then the history of apologetics. Larry has already told us that Socrates thought he he had a divine mission. You will see in the reading assignment. In the apology, as related through Plato, Socrates recounted how he would preface his critical discussions with men in Athens by asking if they did not care for the perfection of their souls. Socrates said, that's always why I was debating with people, because I wanted the perfection of their souls. And then he explained to the Jews for know that the God commands me to do this, and I believe that no greater good ever came to pass in the city than my service to the God. Okay, it's kind of difficult to know how to translate the Greek he's doing service to. Actually the daimon. We get the word demon in English for it. Of course, he doesn't mean demon in the negative sense, but he means that there's a spirit, there's a God that impels him to do this work in apologetics. Moreover, Socrates felt that there was nothing more divine about Mansoul than what concerned knowledge and thinking. It's this aspect that resembles God. And it is by looking toward that and understanding all that is divine God and wisdom that a man will most fully know himself. I'm trying to give you a little bit different perspective on Socrates than you get at the local university. Most people will not tell you at the university that Socrates had this religious flavor to what he was doing. You know, Socrates comes off looking somewhat like the modern university secular professor. He wasn't. He was a man who was religiously impelled. He felt the daimon, the God, sent him to do his work, and he felt that man had some connection with the divine. And man's connection with the divine particularly was his reasoning. Can we mention anything more divine about the soul than what is concerned with knowledge and thinking or thought? Socrates said, I will have to come back and make this point after I've illustrated it. But just so you'll know where I'm going, I'm going to try to show you that the way in which Socrates argued, the way in which he defended himself, was tied to his view of man and the universe and God and so forth. There were underlying presuppositions that made his defense what it was. And if I can show that to you in Socrates, and hopefully you will learn that the way you argue with somebody is going to be affected by what they think of man, the universe and knowledge and those sorts of things. You have to look at their presuppositions to know why they are arguing the Way they are arguing. Let's go on with Socrates. The first thing we've learned about him is that man's reason or reasoning is the closest thing to the divine. Think of some other things men do. They play football, they eat, they sleep. And Socrates said they do other sorts of things. They do gross things, they go to the bathroom. Now, of all the things men do, which is the most divine? Well, obviously it's man's reasoning that's most divine. So if we have a difference of opinion, if I have to defend myself against some charge, and I want to do it in a godly way, then I'm going to do it in terms of appealing to reason. Now we need to understand what he means by reason. Socrates was quite naturally to lead, excuse me, was quite naturally led to exalt the intellectual, to command a neutral methodology, and to insist on autonomy as his standard. In a sense, this tells you already that he exalts man's reasoning. He exalted man's reason, and then he looked upon man's reason as neutral and autonomous. Man had the right to begin from scratch in his reasoning without any pre commitment, Socrates would say, without any authority over his reasoning. He was just neutral. And he would determine for himself the standards by which anything is to be believed. He would be autonomous. The word autonomy means a law unto yourself. You will be the authority, you lay down the law or the standards that have to be satisfied for anything to be known. And I'm just going through the article here and picking up some pieces here and there. Socrates said that virtue is the knowledge of the good. And since virtue is the knowledge of the good, an unvirtuous act must be one that's done out of ignorance of the good, because no man would knowingly do what is evil. I know, I mean, in the late 20th century we look at that and say, man, how could he have ever said such a thing? But they had bad times in ancient Greece too. Plato was committed to the idea that man's intellect is okay. And so when men do bad things, it's because they are ignorant. Now, you may think it's hard to believe in the late 20th century that no man willingly or knowingly does evil. But isn't that in fact a characteristic of our culture? In fact, that is what lies behind the public school system and its idea that we can have peace on earth if we just teach people, you know, if they just knew better, then they wouldn't do the bad things that they do, you know, and it's sad, but I mean, you See this naivete about human nature and the kind of drug programs we have in the schools and the sex education programs. The idea being if we could just tell people that it's new things, then they do the right thing. And that's just not at all biblical, is it? But you need to know that Socrates believed that man's reasoning is neutral. It's not tainted by sin. When men make mistakes, it's just because they don't know better. Now if you're talking to a Socrates or a modern day Socrates, quite clearly you're going to have to take that into account. The reason they are arguing the way they do is they think man's reasoning is perfectly okay as far as it goes. But we don't believe that. We don't believe that man's reasoning is objective and neutral and untainted by sin, that men just do bad things out of ignorance. And so that's going to affect a lot of what we do in our apologetic. That is very significant because I'm going to end up trying to teach you that when people disagree with the Bible, they are guilty for doing that. It's not like we're having this intellectual parlor game and you haven't got enough clues as to where God is. And so now we're trying to provide the clues and lead you along. People have an axe to grind against God, the Bible says so Socrates, his whole concept of reasoning is different than our concept of reasoning. His view of the human mind and human nature is different than our view of the human mind and human nature. So the difference we're going to have in our approach is not simply going to be a difference over the conclusions we draw. And is going to be a difference over the starting point of our thinking too. Socrates said that man's reason is what keeps control over his irrational drives. One can trust his reasoning to check his appetites and his volition. In fact, you may remember the Platonic dialogue where you have the horseman and the charioteer. You have these wild horses, you know, and that's man's appetites, you know, as well as his volition, his will. And the charioteer is reason, see, holding the horses in check. So this is Socrates view of human nature. Man's reasoning is good, it's not depraved, it's what keeps life in control and so forth. Moreover, Socrates and Plato, who tells us about Socrates, believed that when men come to know something, they are actually remembering a pre existent life. They are remembering things from a life they had outside of the physical world. In the realm of ideas. Now, not many people believe that literally today, however, many people have that same general understanding of what knowledge is. Knowledge is that which takes us beyond the sense world, the day to day world of particular experiences and observations, and brings to us more general abstract ideas. When a scientist does his work well, he tries to bring a number of particulars that he has experienced in the laboratory and organize them into a general law. Isn't that right? That's what makes him a good scientist. He sees patterns between things. Now, do scientists ever see patterns themselves? I have to force you to be a little philosophical here for a minute. We have a pulpit here, so I'm going to use this as an example. I can tell you some things about this particular piece of wood, pieces of wood, and I can tell you something particular about this pulpit. But if I had an experience of this pulpit and a hundred others, would I have ever had an experience of the idea of a pulpit?

Couldn't ever have all of them. So you could only observe what you.

Okay, but let's say I had an experience of every pulpit that ever existed. What I'm asking is, would I have had an experience of the idea of a pulpit? No. Did you see I'm touching this? You know, I could look at this, I guess I could lick it, taste it, but I can't lick an idea or see an idea or touch an idea. Okay, so we have experience in this world of particular observable things. But Socrates said, you don't know anything unless you have the general idea. The general idea. Now, for him, he told the story that basically before you were in this life, your soul ran in a realm of the ideas. And that's what you're learning. It's kind of like you come into this room and you have this physical experience. You touch this thing, you look at it and you go, oh, yeah, I remember pulpit Ness. That's what this is. You go out on the pond, you know, and you see Huey out there, out there and Louie out there. You go, darkness. I remember now, darkness. Now, I mean, he told this story and we can kind of chuckle about that. But what he was actually saying is a very serious point about you don't know anything until you know the universal idea of which the things you observe are particular instances. You don't really know anything until you know the universal type of which all these other things are tokens. All right? What is humanity? Humanity is the generalization of which every one of us, I think, is a particular instance. Just like Huey, Dewey and Louie are Particular instances of ducks. All of us in this room are particular instances of humanity. So we have experience in our day to day lives, observations, physical experiences. But to know things is to generalize and to know the general concept or universal of which everything is an instance. Now there are, when you think about it, you can universalize not only things, you can universalize events and relationships too. And that's what I was getting at. Scientists are only doing what Socrates was talking about when they try to give us laws that tell us when you put this chemical with this chemical, you get this result, Kaboom. And the statement of that is a universalization or generalization of particular experiments or observations the scientists had. So we can have things that are generalized, we can have events generalized, we can have relationships generalized. Socrates said knowledge is that kind of thing. To know anything then is to know the universal law of which that thing is the particular instance. You'll probably wonder why I'm stressing this. Because in the end, Socrates, like every other unbelieving theory of knowledge is going to have real difficulty explaining how a human being who is a particular and only has particular observations and experiences can ever get to the place where he can legitimately generalize and tell us what the laws are, what the categories are that we can know. See, his theory of knowledge in and of itself is going to create problems for him. It's not just that he comes to say a Christian, be anachronistic here. And Socrates applies his theory of knowledge and Christians can't live up to his theory of knowledge. Socrates can't live up to his theory of knowledge. He creates problems for his own theory of knowledge. When he says, you need to know the universal, you need to know the form. Yeah, speaking from a theistic position, then we say that what he was describing.

True knowledge only belongs to God.

Right. If you took it in a Socratic way, we'd have to say the only one who could know anything would be God himself. In the personal, theistic, creative sense that we use it. Of course, he had an idea of God that isn't at all like the Christian view of God. But using our terminology, we'd say, well then, Socrates, only God can know things. And then the way we know things is by thinking God's thoughts after him. And so if Socrates were to use his theory of knowledge arguing with us, what we'd end up doing is showing you'd have to be a Christian in order to make good on your theory of knowledge. And that's the heart of apologetics. I mean, in one sense I can say, okay, everyone, go home and think about what I just said. So if you understand what I just said, you've got it, okay? But we'll press on because it may not be entirely clear to everybody yet. I point out in the article that Socrates described the rational man as an independent thinker who is neutral in his approach to truth. And I quote here from the My dear Crito, we must examine the question whether we ought to do this or not. For I am not only now, but always a man who follows nothing but the reasoning, which on consideration seems to me best then most excellent friend. We must not consider at all what the many will say of us, but what he knows about right and wrong. The one man in truth herself will say, Socrates says, we're not bound to what other men say. We're not bound by tradition. We must follow that reasoning that seems best to us. We are free men, we are neutral. We will be a law to ourselves. Perhaps the best known statement of Plato, Socrates the life not tested by criticism is not worth living. Everything must be critically examined. Now, Socrates in his day was dealing with a school of thought that he believed to be destructive of knowledge. A school of thought that led to skepticism that was known as sophism, from which we get an English word to be sophistic, to use a sophism in a debate. The sophists were the lawyers of that day. These were the guys who could bend any argument to reach the conclusion that they wanted. And they were very simple about this. They'd say, there is no absolute truth. And so the only thing a man can do is master debate to get his way. That's why we call people sophistic, or sophist, when they don't seem to care about the truth, but only about winning arguments. That's the way the sophists were. Now, the sophist said, man is the measure of all things. They made man autonomous. And that led to skepticism that on that basis no one can know anything. There is no objectivity to truth. Everything's subjective. And Socrates didn't like that. But what I want to point out is that Socrates agreed that knowledge is still centered on man's autonomous reasoning. Socrates didn't really take an approach different from the sophistication. He simply placed faith in man's intellect, where the sophist said man's intellect leads to every man having his own opinion. So Socrates has faith in man's autonomous intellect. He sees that as something of a spark of the divine. It's that which puts us in Touch with the realm of the ideas which, if you believe the story, is where we existed before this life. What makes men different from each other? I said a few moments ago, we are all instances of the general idea of humanity. But what makes one human different from another human? Well, what makes you different from me? Well, now, that's not. Socrates answer. What?

Particulars?

Well, we are particulars. What separates us? Not just our experiences. No, we have that in common. Actually, Socrates says, what do we not have? Like. Like, like, like, like some of us.

Are more intellectual than others and that's too.

You're too sophisticated. Come on, be gross with me. Now, what's obvious here? Physical. Physical. That's right. You've got one body, I've got another. Okay, so you are a particular body in this place and time, and I'm a particular body in this place and time, and that separates us. So what we have in common is reasoning, which is the spark of the divine. But what separates us is that we're all in different physical bodies. Man is a particular because he's in a body separated from other bodies. But to know anything is to know the universal, which is not individualized according to bodies, but is in a realm above time and space, beyond our garden variety experience. Now, if you stop and think about it, Socrates has got a problem. He's got a particular man, me, in this physical body. If I'm to know anything, I need to be in contact with that which is not particular, not physical, but universal and abstract and immaterial. How is that possible? What makes it possible for a particular man who is limited and finite? To know the infinite, to know the universal. What? Yeah, actually, you know what Socrates said? He said that philosophy is anticipation of death because when you die, you, your soul is released from the body and is now reintegrated into the universal domain. And philosophy, which teaches us to think these universal ideas, therefore is preparation for death. Yeah, well, if you put an Eastern spin on it, it would be kind of like that. It would be kind of fun, I think, to teach a course at the university in philosophy and advertise it as preparation for death. You know, how many people would, you know, come to this? But why is it preparation for death? Because at death, the soul leaves the body. Socrates said, Plato said, soma sema in Greek. The body is the tomb. The body is a prison house. It's horrible. The soul has been, you know, like a ghost captured in the body for a while. But at death, you finally are free to go back to the realm of universals. Well, we don't have many people who are going to openly have that approach to man and the universe and so forth. But we have lots of people today that have the same problem in their theory of knowledge as Socrates did. They want to say knowledge is universal in nature, but man is particular. In fact, man is part of the randomness of the physical universe. Man might even be just part of the chance evolutionary flux of things. So when people that you are witnessing to have that general approach to this theory of knowledge. I'm not talking about people who've gone to university and studied epistemology, although some of those will say this too, but it's a general notion in our culture, the man's body is just part of the random flux of physical events. And yet they will turn around and say, to know something is to know a formula or a universal. And the question is, how can the particular man, particular brain cells here, know anything that's universal? Ultimately, unbelievers will have a theory of knowledge that reduces the skepticism on their own terms. It's not as though you have to go and yell at them in Christian terms, say, no, no, the Bible says you're wrong, you don't know anything. You can just say, talk to me, tell me what you believe about knowledge and carry that out and show them that given your view of man and the universe, you couldn't know anything, could you? That's the heart of apologetics, shutting the mouth of unbelievers by pointing out, as Paul did, there isn't any debater of this age. All right, back to Socrates. Making man autonomous required Socrates to bring together the rational universal ideas with the irrational, that is particular historical man. It was just part of the chance random universe he had to bring together individual men with universal ideas. You have rationality, irrationality. Am I going too fast? Irrationality is this random universe that doesn't have any reason for what happens. The physical world is just a realm of flux. Who knows what will happen in the physical world. The realm of ideas, however, is controlled by logic, by rationality. So you have the rational realm and you have the irrational realm. Socrates had to bring these together and the only way he could do it is to have man be a combination of both realms. Our mind comes from the realm of universals, our body comes from the realm of flux and irrationality. As an aside, for those of you who want to be a little more advanced in your thinking, the others of you take just a two minute nap here. When you think about it, Socrates had more problems than just bringing together the universal and the rational, with the particular and the irrational. Because according to Socrates, each one of us has an individual soul that exists where before this life? And where does it exist after this life? In the realm of universals. How can you do that, Socrates? How can you have individual souls in the realm of universals? See, he really had trouble in his own view of reality as well. It doesn't make any sense. This whole worldview doesn't make sense. And yet this is on this, take my word for it, this is one of the three or four major major philosophical options in the history of Western thought. I mean, that's how important Plato and Socrates are. And yet they have no way of reconciling these anomalies in their position. Well, okay, we finally get to the. Here's where the rubber hits the road with that background. Given this view of reason, this view of man, this view of the universe, what kind of defense would you expect Socrates to make? He's going to exalt man's reason. He's going to try to take a neutral approach and be a law unto himself. And in the article, I point out that he had, in a sense, five different kinds of appeals that he made to defend himself. And what I find so interesting is that these same five lines of argument are what you see for the most part in the history of Christian apologetics. They share a kind of Socratic approach and therefore a Socratic method of arguing. So let's get these down real quickly. First of all, Socrates tried to validate the oracle statement about himself through factual testing. The oracle had said what? That Socrates was the wisest of men. Socrates thought that he was ignorant, he was foolish, and that's. The oracle said, that's what made him so wise, because he knew his limitations. And Socrates then argued that his being the wisest of men was factually validated. Because when he went out and talked to all these people who were reputed to know anything, they really crumbled under his analytical cross examination. I assure you of something. If you are good at doing analytical cross examination, people will be with you. They will. People don't like to be shown lacking or inadequate in their thinking. And even when they say, oh yeah, I really do want to discuss this, you know, what are your questions? And so forth, they tend to get very unhappy. And what they did with Socrates, and Socrates would take the wisest men in Athens, he goes, well, I don't know anything. Would you help me here? I mean, it's kind of like the Colombo, you know, just one thing here now what did you mean by virtue when you said that? And, well, I'll tell you, anybody who then got into it was in deep trouble. Socrates, he would just say, okay, well then let's follow this out here and follow this out there. And eventually, as one of his victims, the guy would look at it as being a victim, once said, well, Socrates, before I talk to you, I always think that my ideas are so stable and they stand still. But after I get done talking to you, they wander everywhere. So anyway, Socrates showed himself to be the wisest of men through factual testing. Let's put this down as the test or standards for defense. Appeal to the facts. 1. Secondly, in Socrates apology, you notice that he appealed to logical coherence. He said he had been charged with atheism or impiety. And yet he pointed out that the fact is when the state accuses people of being atheists, the state contradicts itself. Many times he used the story of Meletus. He said he rehearsed how Meletus, in the statement of the charges, had accused Socrates of believing in deities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state. And logically, what he said then is, well, Meletus, you've contradicted yourself. If you say I believe in deities other than the ones promoted by the state, then I'm not an atheist, am I? So your own statement of the charges is contradictory. He didn't win any friends by doing that. But Meletus was a fool. I mean, he set out the charges in a way where he contradicted the very thing he was trying to prove. So the second thing we can see Socrates doing was appealing to logical coherence. He said, the facts support my position, and logically I can defend my position. There's an incoherence in what others are saying. Thirdly, he argued that this is interesting. His service in the city had been a great benefit to the city. He said, if you put your welfare, your own personal welfare above all else, then you'll be very grateful for the teaching ministry that I've had here among you. And so he defended himself by appealing to the elevated, noble and beneficial results of his service and outlook. So we'll just call this the appeal to beneficial consequences. Fourthly, Socrates asked the jury to examine his own life as a teacher. He talked about how he had been loyal in his military service. He had always tried to act rightly. He had not been fearful of death, he had given his life in the service of others. He was self sacrificial, he was sincere. On and on and on. And so to quote him, you will not easily find another like me, gentlemen. And if you take my advice, you will spare my life. Humble guy, the Socrates, okay, He appealed to the examination of his own life, the virtue of his own life. And then fifthly, and this is the interesting thing, after his appeal to facts and logic and beneficial effect and personal betterment, Socrates came to use in his apology the appeal to inner guidance. He appealed to inner guidance in answer to why he had not entered political service which would have been consonant with his convictions. Socrates claimed that he had been forbidden to carry his convictions to that consistent outcome by a divine voice which occasionally came to him. And here in the article, I quote Peter Freund and Denise, who say Plato explicitly represents Socrates turning to an inner voice, a voice that is a product neither of social conditioning nor of reason. At crucial moments of decision, he would say, and I quote him, something divine and spiritual comes to me. I have had this from my childhood. It's the sort of voice that comes to me, and when it comes, it always holds me back from what I'm thinking of doing. We would call kind of an inner testimony, a voice, you know, that kind of convicts him inwardly. Okay, so here's Socrates trying to make his defense as a very rational man before a jury in Athens. And he claims that if you look at the facts, if you consider logical coherence, the consequences of my teaching in me examine my life, or if you hear the inner testimony of my heart, then you will not convict me. Now, why have I belabored this point about Socrates? Anybody who's done much reading in Christian apologetics might at this point begin to feel a little uncomfortable, because, you know what I've written down here? I've written down here the five sorts of things that you hear in evangelical apologetics even today. What's my defense? As a Christian, I appeal to the facts. We all know the facts because we all are in contact with reason. We can be neutral. We'll be a law to ourselves. Let's just go look at the facts and, you know, any factual analysis will prove that my Christian faith is reasonable. Or we look at logic and we say, my position is more coherent than yours. And we think that that in itself should show rational men that if they would be rational, they should be Christians. Often Christians will say, look at all the good the Christian church has done. You know, that Christianity is true because it brings about good results. Or we'll have people who will defend the faith by saying, look at Christians themselves, not just the say, the social benefits and other things that come. But just look what good people they are, how noble they are. They love each other. And that's our defense. Now, of course we should love each other and we should be logical, we should be factual and all this. But what I'm going to ask you in a minute is, is that really the basis on which we defend the faith? And finally, the inner testimony is an obvious one. How do you know Christianity is right? I just know it in my heart of hearts. Let me tell you what Jesus did for me, okay? Again, I love people that give Jesus credit for changing their lives. I do as well. But that's not what we call apologetics. Socrates took this approach, and the reason I laid it out for you is that that has been the standard approach of Christians throughout the ages, too. What makes that strange is that the Bible does not present this view of reason, or of man or the universe. It is this view of reason as being neutral and autonomous that led Socrates to argue the way he did. But the Bible doesn't share that view of reason as being neutral and autonomous. At this point, we might expect the Bible has a more distinctive approach to knowledge than what you find in Socrates. Why are Christians always aping the Greek philosophers? That's another way I can put the point I'm trying to make here rhetorically. Why do we go to Socrates who doesn't agree with us at the outset, doesn't agree with us at the end, and say we'll use his method? Not a very good idea. Let's look at what Paul had to say before we do. Look at Paul real quickly in the history of apologetics. I note here in the article, Arminian and Roman Catholic apologetics especially will do this sort of thing because they divide apologetics into two areas. If you take an Arminian or Roman Catholic approach, you're going to say there are certain general truths about God that can be known by reason. For instance, Thomas Aquinas said, everybody can know by reason alone that there is a God. You know that there is a God and that this God is personal. However, there are other truths, more specific truths, more particular truths about God which can be known only by revelation. So if you want to know that God is triune, then you don't know that by reason. You know that by revelation. Arminians do essentially the same thing. They'll say, there's an area where we can show very probably that the Bible is true, that Jesus is a wonder worker, and so forth. But then to know that he is the Very Son of God. You need to interpret all of these things. We can very probably know about Jesus rising from the dead, interpret them by revelation. So inherently, Romanism and Arminianism have a two step apologetic. Reason helps us learn general truths about God and then we must go to Revelation to interpret those general truths. So what happens is you get an appeal to facts and logic, reason, the inner testimony, as it were, to prove the other sorts of things like why do you believe that God is triune? It's very interesting. You watch an Arminian in apologetics and I hope you'll forgive me, I don't mean to be personal about this. I love Arminians as brothers in apologetics. It's like reason must control us as we show that there is a God and that Jesus did rise from the dead and so forth. But then if you want to know things like about blood atonement or the Trinity, well, then we have to appeal to Revelation. And now reason does not control us, but what does? Faith. Faith controls us. Reason goes so far, then faith takes over. Now that should bother us because what you have in your theory of knowledge then is two conflicting methods. I would think if I were an unbeliever and I wanted to push on this point, I would ask my Christian brothers not just to show that there is a God by reason, but to show that the Trinity is proven by reason. I mean, why only go halfway? Why do you only go this far? And then you say, okay, from this point we now take divine revelation. Do you all know what the answer is? Usually evangelical apologists will say, very likely the Bible is the word of God because Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus validated the Bible. You follow that? I'm going to show you historically that Jesus rose from the dead. And because Jesus accepted the Bible, then you should accept the Bible. And now what we have, they think you get this in RC Sproul especially. They think they've made the whole thing based on reason. Let's go back and look at the argument for Christ rising from the dead. Where do we get the raw materials for that argument? From the Bible. That interesting. And they'll say, well, the Bible is a historical book and it's, you know, validated. We know that it was. We have documents, you know, going way back when. And this is a. It's just another piece of history, but it has good documentation. And so we have to accept it on its own testimony. Do we really? The fact that it's early means that what it's saying is true. The interesting thing is Evangelicals, what they do is they put aside what they think are the upper story type things in the Bible, the Trinity, Jesus being identical with his Father, mysteries like that, they lay those things aside or supernatural explanation for the resurrection, on and on, put that aside. And then they think, well, we can just deal with the down to earth details. We'll let the Bible give us some raw materials of history and we'll show that with those raw materials, Jesus rose from the dead. But those raw materials have been provided by people who believe that Jesus is the son of God and so forth and so on. I don't know how much apologetics you've done on college campuses. I've done a great deal in my life and I don't say this proudly, but I used to do it in that evidential way. When I first did apologetics, I thought that was just swell. And so I have a pretty good idea of how people respond to that or don't respond to that. And I'm thankful that God uses even imperfect methods to see people come into the kingdom. So I mean, the issue here is not whether God can use it. The question is, is it really faithful? And the fact is, an unbeliever should say to you, well, why believe that the disciples are giving us an accurate rendition of just these mundane historical events about the soldiers? And on and on and on. Why should we believe what the Bible says about that? Unbeliever doesn't have any reason to do so. We know from experience. I'll take an example. We know from experience that when you tend to honor or venerate or exalt some teacher, that as years go along, the stories that are told and the way the history, the teaching gets recounted gets altered in light of the honorific view you have of that individual. I mean, this is one of these things. If you want to do inductive reasoning. From our experience, we see this all the time. Now, an unbeliever would look at what the apostles said about Jesus and say, well, yeah, I mean, later on they gave his teaching this way and said that he predicted his resurrection and on and on and on. But why should we trust that their memories were accurate and they're not, you know, with a good motive, but nevertheless just kind of building up the story and embroidering it. And the answer is because Jesus gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit, so they remember accurately. I kid you not, this is what the evidentialist of our day, again, R.C. sproul, I don't mean to pick on him. Others as well, they'll say, Jesus gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to his apostles, and that's why we can trust their rendition of his teaching before his resurrection. Does anyone realize how that begs the question? That assumes that Jesus was divine and could give the Holy Spirit to his apostles. So they have the raw material of history to evidentially prove that he rose from the dead and therefore is divine. No, it's just one circle building on another circle or another step. People will say, okay, Jesus rose from the dead, therefore everything he says is true. Is that right? He rose from the dead, therefore everything he says is true. Well, it's really like this. He rose from the dead, therefore he's God, therefore everything he said is true. First step, if you were an unbeliever, do you have to accept that inference pattern? He rose from the dead, therefore he's God. Lazarus rose from the dead. Okay, but then they'll say, oh, but Lazarus was raised from the dead. By the way, the Bible says Jesus was raised from the dead too. But there's a sense in which he also raised himself from the dead. He said, I lay down my life, I take it up again. Did he really say that? Or is that what the apostle said later? See, we're back to that little circle. But is it true that someone who rose from the dead is automatically God? No, but let's take another step. If a person is God, does that mean he always tells the truth? Depends on what version of theology you're using, doesn't it? In the Greek world, the gods didn't always tell the truth. In fact, they were horrible. They amplified humanity, as Francis Schaeffer puts it, very nicely, and they partook of all the defects of human nature. And so again, evangelical apologetics will tell you it's being neutral, just appealing to the facts, and it's begging the question over and over and over again with people. Nevertheless, it is thought that if you can show the general truth, you know, but there is a God. Jesus rose from the dead. What do you do? At that point, the evangelical apologist says, well, then we accept what revelation tells us about those things. We take the particular interpretation of the Bible because Jesus told us to do so. The lower story of reason, and finally an upper story of faith. This is what you have in Roman Catholicism. This is what you have in the Arminian apologetic. Of all the evidentialist who has pushed hard against what I teach, presuppositional apologetics, I think John Warwick Montgomery would be one of the. Probably the leader. Montgomery in his own apologetic, most People who have followed his approach are not aware of this. In his own apologetic, after he thinks he is shown, very probably Jesus rose from the dead, says that it eventually takes a faith experience, a subjective experience, for us then to accept the Bible and to believe that Jesus is who he said he is. That's amazing because he has said this is a rational apologetic. But just like Socrates, you go through these sorts of things and finally, what do you get? The appeal to inner testimony in the name of being rational. Well, before we look at the Pauline approach, I wanted you to be aware of that, that the Socratic approach is what you see throughout the history of apologetics. And since I've kind of gotten into this differently than I thought I would, maybe you'll forgive me if I take five more minutes before we take a recess. I'm going to redraw this particular diagram and put a name with it and then set it in contrast to somebody else. In the history of apologetics, what we've just been looking at can be diagrammed this way. Reason lays a foundation. And then after we've shown that Christianity is reasonable in a general sense, then faith can be placed upon it. To the degree that we can show Christianity is reasonable, we share certain theological and moral truths with all men who will be reasonable. Now, this is what Thomas Aquinas said. Reason, faith completes reason. Our faith is placed upon the foundation of reason. Thomas Aquinas, the alternative to this was taught by Augustine many years before Aquinas, and is more in line with, I think, the approach the Bible would give us, what I would call a presuppositional approach. The alternative is to say faith is the foundation upon which reason operates. This is the approach of Augustine. And what we mean by this is if you don't approach things from the perspective of Christian faith, then reason makes no sense at all. That you cannot makes sense out of man's intellect or his ability to know anything apart from the Christian view. I'm not using Augustine's language, more modern language, but it's the faith, the Christian faith, what we are taught by God's own supernatural revelation, that makes sense out of our use of reason. So here you have somebody that says, reason stands on its own, it's autonomous, and then faith is kind of like added to it to complete it. Over here you have, without faith, you couldn't know anything at all. So Augustine says, I believe in order to understand. I believe so that my reasoning may function. Now, wouldn't it stand to reason, pardon the pun, wouldn't it stand to Reason, therefore, that if you take an Augustinian approach, you're going to argue with the unbeliever differently than if you took a Thomistic approach. The Thomist will go to the unbeliever and say, look, we all share reason in common. Your reason is fine, my reason is fine. Let's see what we can find out on our own, and we'll try to show that there is a God and so forth. And then maybe you can take the final step of faith with me and believe in Jesus. Augustine would say, if you don't see the world in the way that God has revealed himself, if you don't have Christian faith, your reasoning doesn't make any sense at all.

Yes, Larry, in the debate that you had with Dr. Stein, in Cross examination, he asked you that if he could show you that the arguments that you had encountered or that you were putting forth for Christianity were false, would you then recant on Christianity? And there was a little bit of semantic differences. And finally you said something to the effect of rationally speaking, if he could show your arguments to be wrong, you would give up your faith in the Christian worldview. How does that fall in line with what you said here? That sounds to me more like. Like you're ultimately in that case anyway, submitting to reason.

Well, I felt that I could answer that way because what I had been hammering all night in that debate is that your reasoning, your use of logic makes no sense apart from Christian faith. You remember I argued your coming to the debate tonight already shows that you're committed to a worldview other than the one you're trying to argue for. Okay. And so I was trying to show him that reason itself presupposes Christian faith. And so when he wants to appeal to reason, what I'm going to do is I say, yeah, if you could show by reason, you know, there wouldn't. But the reason you will never be able to is because he can't even appeal to a law of logic before he has a worldview that matches Christianity.

That's ultimately what it boils down to. You can say, yeah, but you can show me by reason.

Let me give you another illustration, which is what I thought you were going to bring up in my dialogue with George Smith. He was an atheist who wrote a book, the Case Against God. He's fairly well known for his diatribes against Christianity and religious faith and so forth. And I had a dialogue, polite debate on radio with him. And in his book, the Case Against God, he makes the point that for Christians, faith takes over where reason leaves off. And so by definition, faith is irrational, which I think is a good argument against Thomas Aquinas. And what he wasn't prepared for is that I was an Augustinian. I said, no, faith doesn't take over where reason leaves off. I said, faith and reason work together all the time because without faith there is no reasoning. And it was kind of like what he was stymied for an answer to that. He's so accustomed to this evangelical or Roman Catholic approach that the Augustinian approach just, I think, I hope it challenged him, but he certainly didn't have an answer for it. Now, in a sense, that's what I was trying to say to Stein too. Faith and reason go together at all times. It's not like I use faith sometimes to know things and I use reason sometimes. What I'm saying is there's no dichotomy between them if you don't have them together. Reason won't work within a non Christian worldview. Reason cannot lead to a knowledge of the truth. In the history of apologetics, these are the two diagrams that I'd like you, for the sake of this class, to bear in mind. You have Aquinas, who takes the Socratic approach, I think, and then Augustine, who is closer to the Pauline approach. And I haven't proven that to you yet, but after we take a five minute break, we'll come back and we'll look at what Paul said about defending the faith.

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