Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Apologetic Systems Pt 1 (Part 1)

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.

Leading to a knowledge of the truth. 2nd Timothy 2. 25. That's why in 2nd Timothy 2:24, the verse just before it we read, the Lord's servant must not quarrel. Arguing for the Christian faith can and must be done in a way consistent with Christian piety. The appropriate response to critics of the faith is to reason with them, to refute their objections, to prove your conclusions, to offer argument. But remember that offering an argument does not mean being contentious as a person. You know, and that kind of. That had a kind of a ring to it. It was catchy. I kind of like that. It seemed like what we were saying is we don't need to defend the faith because the faith will take care of itself. Just let it out of its cage, just let it do its own work and everything's going to be just fine. It appeared almost irreverent to disagree with that sentiment. And indeed there is something very right about that sentiment. God doesn't need anything. He certainly doesn't need me. He doesn't need you. He doesn't need our puny efforts. He doesn't need any particular individual to defend His Word. He's the Creator of heaven and earth. He controls all things by his sovereign decree. The Apostle Paul, when he reasoned with the Athenian philosophers in Acts 17, made the point that God is not worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing that he gives to all life and breath in all things. The psalmist says in Psalm 50:12 that if God were ever hungry, he wouldn't need to tell us about it. I love that verse. It has such a cutting cynicism to it. God says, if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you. I don't need you to meet any need of mine. I don't need the works of your hands. God doesn't depend on anything outside Himself. And the Bible tells us that everything outside of him depends on him for its existence and its abilities, its accomplishments and all its blessings. As Paul put it to the Athenian in Him we live and move and have our being. And so it is obvious that God doesn't need our inadequate reasoning. He doesn't need our feeble attempts to defend His Word. And yet that remark that the Word of God doesn't need defense is nevertheless, I think, for all of its piety, mistaken. For that remark suggests that we shouldn't concern ourselves with apologetics, as though God will Himself take care of such matters. I think that's just as mistaken as saying that God doesn't need us to be evangelists. God could use the stones to witness to him, couldn't He? In fact, God could use donkeys to spread his word if he wanted to. At one point in the Bible, he did. So it's true. God doesn't need evangelists. He could use donkeys and stones. But none of us are going to draw the conclusion from that, that evangelism is therefore unimportant. God could provide for my family. He could send food and he could send clothing without help from me. In fact, he could send it right from heaven if he wanted to. And yet he tells me that I'm supposed to go to work tomorrow. I'm supposed to earn this daily bread that I pray to him for. And so when people say we don't really need apologetics, as God doesn't need anything, they're confusing what God Himself needs from us and what God requires of us. Think about that. What God needs from us and what God requires of us. What does God need from us? Class, what's the answer? Nothing. But what does God require of us? He requires us to evangelize. He requires us to go out and work and earn our daily bread. And he requires us to defend His Word. God is not helpless without us, there's no doubt about it. But one of the ordained means by which God brings glory to himself and vindicates his truth is by having his people testify to him and defend His Word. In fact, Christ speaks to the Church through Jude in the third verse of the Book of Jude, telling us to contend with earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. False and heretical teaching was threatening the church and threatening its grasp of the truth of the Gospel. And Jude very well knew that God was in sovereign control. Jude knew that God in time would directly deal with wicked teachers. In fact, that's one of the doctrines in the Book of Jude that everlasting condemnation is coming upon these heretical teachers. And yet Jude still urges his readers themselves to contend with the error of false teaching, not sitting back and expecting that God will simply take care of it himself. Or think of another example. Paul wrote to titus in Titus 1:9, teaching that pastors and elders in the church are required to be especially adept at refuting those who oppose the truth of God. They should be able to convict the gainsayers. However, the Bible tells us that's not simply the task of ordained men. One of the reasons why the church is so weak today is just that, that many believers think that the defense of the faith is their pastor's job. Well, it is. I mean, Titus 1:9 is testimony to it. But it's not only the pastor's job to do that. Peter was addressing all the members of the congregation when in 1st Peter 3:15 he said, Sanctify Christ. Put in your hearts always being ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you. Yet with gentleness and respect. It's God Himself speaking through Peter who calls upon you as believers, each and every one of you, to be prepared to defend the faith in the face of the challenges or questions which come from unbelievers, and to be prepared for any of them from any man who asks you be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you. So the necessity of apologetics is not a divine necessity. God can do his work without us. And by the way, if you shirk your responsibility, he will do his work without you. So it's not at all that God needs you, but rather the necessity of apologetics is a moral necessity. That's what you want to get in your notes for this first paragraph here. The moral necessity of apologetics is that God has chosen to do his work through his people. God has chosen to do his work through his people and puts it as a moral obligation upon us, part of our relationship, living to his glory, that we seek to defend His Word. Apologetics is a special talent of some believers. It's the interested hobby of other believers. But it is the God given responsibility of all believers. Is apologetics necessary? Yes. How so? Morally, because God calls us to do it the same way that he calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, or to obey any other commandment, including evangelism and worship and glorifying Him. One of the things God calls His people to do is to defend His Word. Now let's take a few moments and talk about what apologetics is. Not often you get a clearer understanding of some subject by setting it in contrast to what it isn't. And many times we get misled in our method of apologetics because we haven't understood what apologetics is supposed to do. And so if you have your Bibles, look at First Peter 3:15 again, and I think you can find there in First Peter 3:15 three things that apologetics is not, Peter says, but sanctify in your hearts, Christ as Lord, being ready always to give an answer to every man who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness and fear, gentleness and respect. Now, notice that 1st Peter 3:15 does not say that believers are supposed to take the initiative and start arrogant arguments with unbelievers trying to give them the idea we have all the answers. Boy, that's a strong way of putting it, Dr. Bonson. Why do you say that? Well, because I've been in settings where Christians, especially, like at the state university or something like that, Christians think that they are compromising if they don't just make real jerks of themselves in class. Always stopping the professor, always challenging him, always having this we have the answer kind of attitude, though the intention is good, and I respect the courage of the heart of a person who does that. The fact of the matter is it rarely brings glory to God, rarely accomplishes much at all. First Peter 3 does not tell you to go out and pick fights. You don't have to go looking for it. You don't have to sport or encourage the attitude of I'll prove it to you that you're ready to refute anybody. You just relish the opportunity. What the text does say is that we're to offer a reasoned defense in answer to those who ask for such from us, whether they do so as an opening challenge to the integrity of God or as the natural response to our evangelistic witness. We are living our lives and making clear who we live for, why we do the things we do. If we are evangelizing, people are going to ask us why? Why do you believe that? How can you believe that given modern science or whatever it may be, there'll be plenty of opportunities for apologetics. You don't have to go picking a fight. The text also indicates the spirit in which we offer our apologetic answer. It's with gentleness and respect. Our answers should not be pugnacious, they should not be defensive. We should not answer with a spirit of intellectual one upmanship. The task of apologetics begins with humility, and I want to be very pastoral with you. Please take this to heart. One of the most difficult things that I found, not only in my own life, but as I've tried to teach apologetics to others, is in one sense you've got to equip people to be really sharp intellectually, and that in a way makes them more aggressive, right? But at the same time, you have to teach people not to have that intellectual aggressiveness and competence be turned into a kind of overbearing spirit with which you deal with other people. Have you ever noticed how it's hard for us to get that moderation. It's kind of like when we finally do get the better argument, then we want to really pound people with it. And there are very few people who are going to come to Jesus Christ and admit that they've been wrong when you are so pounding on them that they've got to defend themselves, defend themselves, Defend themselves. You know, if I want to get, if I'm a boxer, praise the Lord, I'm not. If I were a boxer and I wanted to get my opponent out to the middle of the ring, I wouldn't get him into a corner and keep punching him, would I? Okay. In the same way, if you don't want unbelievers just to harden up in their defensiveness against your witness, you got to learn to do it with gentleness and respect. And what often happens, and I'll be the first to confess that this is a problem with all of us, me included, is that we can get involved in a back and forth with someone and lose sight of the fact that we are not defending ourselves, you know, and especially when, as is often the case, unbelievers insult you. I mean, it just, it grates on me when I know, I mean, and I try not to, you know, have this flourish of, you know, parading my degrees or books or something before people, but I know, you know, how much you can grate on when you're talking to somebody who has a sophomore understanding of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which is what I have my PhD in, and he says these things and acts like I'm some kind of a buffoon, you know, and you want to say, you know, all it's going to take is just a couple of remarks and cut this guy, you know, and he'll learn where he stands, you know, and so forth. But now what do I do and what do I accomplish if I do that? Well, if I accomplish anything, I accomplish showing him that I'm a lot smarter than he is now in terms of eternal value. So what? In the first place, I didn't get smarter than him because I'm somehow better, you know, and I have what I have only as a gift from God. Faith is a gift, after all, right? And the Holy Spirit's enlightenment is not something that I earned. And so even if I were to demonstrate that I really do know epistemology better than this, you know, pip, squeak, I would not have done anything for, you know, expressing the kingdom of Jesus Christ and drawing this person into it. Our apologetic answers must be Given with gentleness and respect, we must be willing to lose, apparently lose the argument because we didn't return fire with fire, arrogance with arrogance, insult with insult. The task of apologetics begins with humility. After all, Proverbs 17 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the starting point of all knowledge. The fear of the Lord bowing before God in awe and reverence. We don't know anything if we don't have that attitude. That is, at least in my mind, symbolized by being on your knees before God. In second Timothy 2:24, we read that the Lord's servant must not strive. You can translate that. Must not be quarrelsome, but be gentle toward all apt to teach. Apologetics is not a place for the flexing of our intellectual muscles. All right, so the first thing that apologetics is not. Is. It's not a contentiousness that goes looking for a fight or demonstrates arrogance. Secondly, 1st Peter 3:15 does not say that believers are responsible to persuade anybody who challenges their faith or questions their faith. Let me say that again. God does not hold you accountable to persuade anybody challenges your faith. So what's the significance of this? Well, in the first place, we are not going to be able to evaluate our faithfulness as apologists on the basis of results, are we? We can gain results and lose our faithfulness to God. You aware of that? What if, in the manner that I persuade somebody to become a Christian, I teach them that. That they're the highest authority intellectually and that whatever the Bible teaches has got to appear reasonable to them before they'll accept it? Now, have I created a Christian or a monster if I teach them that the reason you have to be a Christian is because rationally you can see everything that God has presented, and it's acceptable to you as though you're the highest authority? Or what if I get results by bribing people? Now, I'll give you an extreme example. I didn't think this sort of thing happened, but I actually have heard a case of it. I knew an evangelist once in a situation where in dealing with younger people, he offered candy to those young people who would come forward at an altar call, you know, and they knew that there would be some kind of reward for their, you know, expressing their religiosity. And I know that's so crass. You probably are going to believe that I made that up. But it really happened, you know? Now, what if we had an apologist who said, man, I've got so many notches on my handle. I got so many people that have Agreed with me when I got done. And you found out that he's bribing people like, I'll pay you $10 to say, you're a Christian. Now, in a case like that, you'd say, there's no, you know, hands down, we know what to do with that. Forget it. Faithfulness is not measured by success. But you see, we have more subtle ways of committing the same crime against the Almighty. We compromise. We want people to believe, to become Christians. And so, for instance, we'll kind of hide from them the tougher parts of the faith. We don't want to get into predestination after all. That just makes it all the harder. It'd be easier to get them to agree that the Bible is the word of God. Hide predestination from them, and then a few weeks later kind of brings, oh, by the way, you might want to know, God determines the end from the beginning too. And then they go, oh, really, I can't understand that. Where does puppets then? But now, what have you taught the person? If you've hidden this from them and just persuaded them the Bible meets their rational expectations, now you've got this monster Christian on your hands who says, ah, well, that can't be what the Bible means because it doesn't make sense to me. See what I'm getting at? Faithfulness in apologetics is not measured by persuasion. God doesn't call you to persuade people. We can offer, very often offer sound reasons to the unbeliever, but that person does not subjectively believe what we have told them. We can refute poor argumentation, and still the person holds on to their false views. You know the old ditty, I mean, it's attributed to Plato, although I can't find it in his writings. It goes like this. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still, and it is true. Sometimes we can convince the person, as it were. I mean, we can leave them without any good answer, and yet they stubbornly hold on to what they want to believe. That was one of the hardest things for me to incorporate, and I guess I still struggle with it to incorporate into my learning of apologetics. Sometimes we study apologetics with the idea that people are rational systems like computers, and if you just put in the right answers and the right codes and so forth, you're going to get the right results. But they aren't like that. People are irrational, they are emotional, they are sometimes contradictory, they're sometimes stubborn, or if you want to put it in the biblical terms, they're depraved they're sinful, they're rebellious, they've got an axe to grind, they're running from God. And so you can have the right answers which glorify God, which are faithful to God, and still not persuade people. It is not your job to persuade. You can close the mouth of the critic, but only God can open the heart. Your job is to close mouths and then leave it to God to open hearts. It's not in your ability, and therefore it's not your responsibility to regenerate the dead heart of the unbeliever or give sight to his blind eyes. God graciously must do that. Now, let me tell you real quickly what this does not imply. That doesn't imply we should use bad arguments. I mean, since they're not going to believe until God opens their hearts, why do I have to worry about giving good answers? Well, the one that you're defending calls himself the Way, the truth, and the life. And if you're not concerned about truth, if you're not consigned reasoning, you're not really concerned about the character of your Savior himself. That is to say, you offer sound reasons, not only because God can more effectively use them to accomplish his ends, but but also because it gives greater glory to God. The fact that you're not able to persuade people doesn't mean you shouldn't labor hard to make sure your reasoning is sound. In Ephesians 1:18, we read that it's God who enlightens the eyes of one's understanding. God enlightens the eyes. And in 1 Corinthians 2:14, Paul tells us that the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned. Until God, in his sovereign grace, changes the sinner from within, he is not going to see the kingdom of God, and he's not going to submit to the King. That's what Jesus said to Nicodemus, right in John 3:8. The wind blows where it will. The word wind in Greek, by the way, is the same as the word for spirit. The Spirit. The wind blows where it will. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. And so our task is to present a faithful and sound witness. The task of persuasion is the Holy Spirit's. And that's why apologists should not evaluate their success and certainly should not adjust their message on the basis of whether the unbeliever finally agrees with them or not. This is a hard thing to do, because we really do want to see people change. But you mustn't go home after you've had three hours in the coffee shop witnessing to somebody and say, well, since they're still arguing with me, I guess I have the wrong message. Or I need a different approach. Now maybe you do, but the fact that they are being stubborn is not evidence that you need a different approach. It may be just your faithfulness which is being used as a savor of death unto death by God. Uh oh, now we have to talk about reprobation here. I'm afraid many people get into the task of apologetics because what they envision is God's going to make me an efficient person in gaining conversions. And obviously that should be of interest to us. We should not be out there because we want to see people damned, we want to see them saved. But you know if you read your Bible that God uses the witness of the Gospel in a twofold way, doesn't He? He not only opens hearts by the Gospel and saves people, he also hardens people by the Gospel. Paul says that it's a savor of life unto life and death unto death. And as an apologist, you don't know the ways of God. You don't know his sovereign decree. You don't know his mysterious plan. He may be using your witness to harden someone's heart. Yes, that's dreadful. For all eternity this person may be lost, but your job is not to determine who God will set his love upon, whose heart he will open. Your job is to be faithful, to give him the glory, to vindicate the truthfulness of His Word. Okay, so apologetics is not being contentious. 1 and 2. It is not a matter of persuasion. It's a matter of being a faithful witness. To use the statement that I like, it's your job to close mouths. It's God's job to open hearts. Thirdly, I want you to notice that 1st Peter 3:15 doesn't tell us that defending the faith is based on a different ultimate authority than our theology is. It's commonly a mistake made by evangelicals in our day to imagine that the authority of God and His Word must be put at the foundation of theology and preaching. But contra wise, the basis for defending the faith and the authority for defending the faith is something other than God and His Word. We'll be told. Well, you can't, when you're talking to an unbeliever, make your ultimate authority God's Word, because then you're begging the question. You'll be told the very thing you're trying to defend is what you're resting upon when you argue with this person. And so according to this line of thinking, apologetics must be based upon human reason and experience. And then we get people to a certain point where they see that the Bible is the word of God. And from that point on, then they use the Bible for their authority, right? It's kind of look at it this way. You use one approach to show the truth of Scripture. And when you get people to the place where they see that the Bible is God, that Christ is Lord, then you use a different approach. You build up to the authority of Christ in His Word, and then you live subject to the authority of Christ in His Word. So you really have two different things going on here. Two different approaches to your thinking, to your scholarship, two different uses of your mind. One is based on the authority of what human reasoning, our sensation, logic, what have you. And then we get to a place where we say, no, it is not my mind. That's the authority. Christ is the authority. And so in theology, I honor His Word. This is the most pervasive epistemological error in the Christian church today. Now, when I use the word epistemological, in fact, if I ever use a word that you don't understand, would you please put your hand up? Don't think that I've come here just to throw all this stuff at you. If you don't understand what I'm saying, I want you to stop me. Epistemological means pertaining to theory of knowledge. What is the theory by which you know things? How do you know what you know? What's the extent of what you know? What is it to believe something? What is truth? How do we justify our claims? Things like that are called epistemological. And what I'm saying is that the Christian church is epistemologically schizophrenic in our day. What's schizophrenia? The Christian church really has kind of two personalities at work. You'll have teachers who, when they are teaching theology, sound like their theory of knowledge is the word of God is my ultimate standard, you know, come hell or high water, to use the expression God's word no matter what. They love the Martin Luther kind of image, you know, here I stand. Unless I'm persuaded otherwise, you know, I will not recant. The word of God has ultimate authority. And yet these very same people, when they talk to the unbeliever, will not say, oh, well, the Bible is my ultimate authority. Obviously, you and I have got to agree on something. As an ultimate authority, and then we'll see if that leads to the Bible. Well, but if you have an ultimate authority which itself authorizes submission to the Bible, what is the ultimate ultimate authority? Is it the Bible or that which led you to the Bible and convinced you that it was the word of God? It doesn't take a PhD to figure that out, does it? Clearly, the ultimate ultimate authority is that which you use to get to the Bible. So the Christian church is often epistemologically schizophrenic. And the way in which we escape epistemological schizophrenia is by pushing for epistemological self consciousness. Ooh, there's another expression. Let's try this. To gain epistemological self consciousness is to come to realize the implications of your theory of knowledge and to live with them. To come to understand the implications of your theory of knowledge and to live with them. The way in which we escape the schizophrenic approach, having two personalities, one theory of knowledge for apologetics, another theory of knowledge for theology is to realize that in apologetics we want to press the unbeliever to the implications, the consequences of his espoused theory of knowledge. When an unbeliever says, well, I know miracles are impossible, what you want to do is push them to find out how they know miracles are impossible. And once you get the answer to that, push the consequences or the implications of that answer. Want me to illustrate that for a minute? Will it help? Let's say you're talking to somebody and they say, well, I know miracles can't take place. And say, well, tell me why, why can't they? Because everything that happens in this world happens by in a cause effect, mechanical network, everything is everything, everything. Of course, if not everything is in this cause effect network, then miracles would be possible, wouldn't they? Because whatever isn't caught in that network, if not everything is in this cause effect network, then miracles would be possible, wouldn't they? Because whatever isn't caught in that network, that nexus of causes and effects could be the place where the unpredictable takes place, the miraculous takes place. So the person's going to tell you everything is subject to cause and effect. And now what you're going to do now that you know that that's the conviction of the person, is you're going to push them to be self conscious. Think about the implications, you know, you want to raise their awareness now of what they've just said. Do you really want to live with that as your theory of life? I mean, is that the way you're going to look at human life and how we know things. What if everything, absolutely everything, was subject to cause and effect mechanisms? Well, then you're going to say then your belief that miracles are impossible is also a result of this cause effect mechanism, isn't it? That is to say, what you are saying is what you inevitably must say because of the electrochemical events taking place in your brain. Now, at first the person might bite and say, yeah, that's exactly right. So what? Then you got to press? Okay, well, think about that. That then means that what you're saying you have no control over. You're just being something of an automaton. You're just the flesh and blood end result of these electrochemical results, with your tongue and your mouth forming the words saying miracles are impossible. Now somebody says, yeah, well, so, well, then that means that what you're saying is not based on considerations of truth. It's just like weeds growing. Just what happens automatically because of the chemistry of the situation. Which is to say that if your naturalism and determinism were true, you would have no reason to believe that they're true, because you would just be a robot saying this. Hmm, epistemological self consciousness. What I've done here, in a very obviously elliptical way, I've condensed it, what I've done here is shown you. What you do with the unbeliever is you take him where he is and say, let's ask about your worldview. Let's ask about your theory of knowledge. Do you really believe this? Is this in fact what you want to be stuck with? You take him down to the consequences of his convictions. That's why we don't need to have one epistemology for theology and another epistemology for apologetics. The epistemology that I have in theology, the theory of knowledge I use as a theologian, is precisely the theory of knowledge I use as a defender of that theology. Because what I'm going to do is I'm going to argue from the impossibility of the contrary. I'm going to say I can make sense I out of our argument. I can make sense out of your unbelief. I can make sense out of human freedom. I can make sense out of moral absolutes, I can make sense out of science. But you can't. Your theory of knowledge reduces to absurdity. Okay, so first Peter 3 does not tell us that defending the faith has a different ultimate authority than expounding the faith. That apologetics is based on a foundation other than Theology. What is the foundation for apologetics according to 1st Peter 3:15? I'm going to let someone answer. Look at it in your Bibles. What does it say here? What is the precondition of doing apologetics? What must you do if you're going to be ready to give an answer to any man who asks a reason for the hope that is in you? Okay, be consecrated unto the Lord and everything that's diametrically opposite of what the evangelical world usually teaches today. It's not that you're consecrated to the Lord, it's that you have some neutral, agreed upon authority with the unbeliever, and that from that you reason up to the authority of Scripture and then after you prove your point, after you show the authority of Scripture, then you submit to it. But that isn't what Peter says. He says, set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts. You want to do apologetics, honor the lordship of Jesus Christ. He doesn't mean honor the lordship of Jesus Christ at the end of the procedure. He means at the beginning of the procedure. Isn't that the grammar, setting Christ apart as Lord in your hearts? Be ready to give an answer to any man who's in you. That is the precondition, not the end result. I'm afraid that many times what you have is Christians wanting to use their autonomous reasoning. That is as though their reasoning is a law to itself and self sufficient, authoritative on its own. They want to use their autonomous reason like a ladder. You know, you get up to the roof where now you finally have established the authority of Christ and now at this point you turn around and you kick the ladder away. I had to use my autonomous reason to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is the Son of God, and that the Bible is the word of God. But now that I've proven it, I don't want to act like that. How disrespectful that would be, not to honor the lordship of Christ. So now I kicked the ladder away and I'm just out here on the roof, you know, two different epistemologies, one for apologetics, one for theology. And I want to suggest 1st Peter 3:15, right? In the very terms of the challenge and call to do apologetics tells us we are not to do this. Does this mean apologetics does not use reason or reasoning? And by my watch, this looks like a good place to take a five minute recess. So let's break and when we come back we'll take up that question.

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