Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Relationship to Fields Part 1 (Part 3)

This message was delivered by Dr. Greg L. Bonson, Scholar in Residence at the Southern California center for Christian Studies in Irvine, California. All right, we've come to the point where we can now offer a definition of apologetics, which is what our course is all about. Boy, it's sure taking a long time to get there. I've started right away with this, but I wanted to give you some background so you can understand why I define apologetics in the way that I do. And in this I'm actually following the definition that's been offered by Dr. Van Til and changing it only in the slightest way. Apologetics aims to defend the Christian faith against the variety of challenges leveled by unbelievers, thereby vindicating the Christian philosophy of life against all autonomous philosophies of life. I'll say that again. Apologetics aims to defend the Christian faith against the variety of challenges leveled by unbelievers, thereby vindicating the Christian philosophy of life against autonomous. Against all autonomous philosophies. Life. In this definition, hopefully you will notice that we're talking about complete worldviews, or what I described as philosophies of life. We're looking at a whole perspective on what is true and how we know what we know and what is real, how we should live our lives. And we take the Christian way of looking at the world, the Christian way of. Of defining truth and the standards of truth and the methods for knowing truth and the Christian way of living. And we hold that up in contrast to other philosophies of life. We're not ultimately comparing, premise for premise, one point in our system versus one point in another system. Ultimately, it's the entire system, Christianity as a unit, that we're comparing to the various autonomous philosophies of life. Now, what they all have in common is that they're autonomous or claim to be autonomous. There are differences among them, but they are only family squabbles. You have to understand that the unbelieving world has plenty of things that unbelievers argue about philosophically and scientifically and so forth. But when all is said and done, they do have an underlying agreement with one another that the truth is not defined by God speaking authoritatively in His Word. And so we take the various versions of those autonomous philosophies of life, and we vindicate our own by refuting them. Apologetics aims to defend the Christian faith against the variety of challenges leveled by unbelievers, those challenges all being tied into a larger world and life view, thereby vindicating the Christian philosophy of life against autonomous philosophies of life. So in the course of apologetics, we're working to develop a method of promoting the gospel that is coherent with the teaching of Scripture and at the same time anticipates the needs and the objections of the unbeliever. We're looking for a method of gospel promotion. Earlier I had said we have practice, theory and meta apologetics. Well, we want to develop in the theoretical section of this field of study a method for approaching the defense of the faith. The method will be coherent with what the Bible teaches us, and if it's effective, it will anticipate the needs and objections of the unbeliever. Now how are we going to anticipate the needs and objections of the unbeliever unless we know the world and we know the unbeliever better than he knows himself? I think the only way we can effectively anticipate and answer the unbelievers objections is that we need to know him better than he knows himself and know his world better than he knows it. And that's why, although I'm a presuppositionalist, I applaud the efforts of people, for instance in the creation science area, those who are doing research, trying to unnerve the evolutionists in terms of their understanding of origins and so forth. Many of these people do not have a good philosophical or theological foundation. And I think I could certainly, and others could help them to improve their efforts by giving them a better context within which they present their evidence. But we fully believe that there's evidence there. Evolution is a silly theory and that on its own terms it can be made to look rather ridiculous. And so we should study the world. We should not be obscurantist. And if there is a mistake that has been made in the 20th century by presuppositionalists, I believe it is that they have often thought that presuppositional apologetics is a shortcut to winning an argument. So I don't really have to study the higher critics and I don't really have to study the evolutionists, and I don't have to study this and that problem, because when all is said and done, I know that it's autonomy that underlies it. And I'm going to attack the autonomy of the man I'm talking to. Well, I agree that autonomy underlies it all. I agree we should attack the autonomy the man when we're speaking. But if we're going to anticipate and answer effectively his objections, we need to know the world better than he does. And we need to show that we know the world better than he does. So when somebody throws out the casual, you know, objection that, well, we can account for things on the evolutionary hypothesis, I should be prepared to embarrass that point of view and say, oh, well, maybe you haven't thought about this or that problem. I mean, if evolution is true, and there's been gradual development of organic life forms by mutation, let's say over long periods of time, then the change from one particular life form to another has to be accounted for by gradual progressive change, all of which is favorable to the organism in terms of its environment. What we mean by natural selection, nature selects the fittest to survive based on these gradual changes. But that means we have to account for the development of hearts and lungs by gradual development over time. And all of a sudden the theory of evolution looks downright preposterous, doesn't it? As you know, half a heart isn't a help to any organism to live. Half a lung isn't a help to any organism to live. And having a heart without a lung and a lung without a heart is not a help for any organism to live. And yet we're supposed to believe that both lungs and hearts independently gradually develop over the years independently of each other. It's just preposterous on the face of it. It's preposterous. Now I think I can do even better than that. Once I have the attention of the evolutionist showing him the absurdity of his own theory, I can go on to show him that underlying that, the very notion that once there was nothing, then there was something. Once there was something that was not living and then it was living. The non living was not intelligent, then intelligent, then the intelligent was non moral, then moral. All those leaps from one characteristic or quality to its opposite just require us to sacrifice our intellect. You have to believe in fairy tales. And when I publicly talk about evolution in university settings or in hostile audiences, I often say tongue in cheek. I can't be an evolutionist because it just takes too much faith. I just can't believe that something becomes its opposite like that through some kind of natural progression. Now I'm using this just as an illustration that we should not, if we are taking a presuppositional approach, be obscurantist about the facts of the world and the facts of history. We should know history, we should know the world better than the unbeliever. And yet, for all of that, we will not win the debate. We will not really undermine the unbeliever until we go beyond the embarrassment at the factual level, if you want to put it that way, to the underlying absurdity of his worldview, where nothing would make sense if what he says about reality and knowledge and living were true. Apologetics works to develop a method of gospel promotion that is coherent with the teaching of Scripture and which anticipates the needs and the objections of the unbeliever, in which case we have to know him and we have to know the world better than he knows himself and he knows the world. Apologetic theory will lay out principles and strategies for responding to the counter attacks of unbelievers. That's what our course is all about. Now then, to further develop the concept of apologetics, I would like to speak of its relationship to a large variety of other things. Sometimes coming to a clear grasp of what something is is helped by seeing its logical relationship or its contrast to other things that surround it. And so that's what I'm going to be doing primarily in the next hour or so in this part of our course, is relating apologetics to various other things that in the way in which people have related it, I think they've been confused and haven't had a very clear concept of what we are doing. I want to first of all relate apologetics. To evangelism. Is apologetics the same thing as evangelism? Is it completely different from evangelism? Does evangelism precede apologetics? Does apologetics precede evangelism? Those are the kinds of questions that are kind of in the hopper now that we want to ask ourselves. We're going to be studying apologetics now. Obviously, apologetics is interested in people coming to believe the truth. Evangelism is. Is interested in people coming to believe the truth. So what is their relationship? I believe that it would be correct to say that apologetics is part of evangelism. Apologetics is part of evangelism. It is, if you will, the witness that we offer to the truth in a more sophisticated and defensive mode. But it is not an alternative to evangelism, nor is it a rival to evangelism. Apologetics is part of evangelism. And in my humble opinion, the minute you separate evangelism from apologetics, what you're encouraging is pride and an intellectualistic approach to apologetics. The only reason we engage in the defense of the faith is because we want to see people saved. I mean, well, we want obviously God to be glorified in people being saved. But the point is we don't engage in apologetics. Just so we can show we're smarter than other people. We can win arguments or we can belittle our opponents. Our hope, though, it's not entirely in our control, because obviously the spirit of God needs to lead people. But our hope is that God will use our testimony to change hearts and bring people to know the truth about Jesus Christ. And so I believe that apologetics should be seen as a sophisticated development of evangelism. Not all evangelism is apologetic. Stop and think about that. Sometimes I witness to somebody and they don't have any objections at all. I say, wow, I've been waiting to hear how I could be right with God. Help me. Thank you. Now, wouldn't it be silly at that point to stop and say, no, no, no. You need to know that there are possible objections people would have, and I have, and I have answers for them. So before you become a Christian, let me just run you through the apologetics loop here and then see if you still want. No, that would be ridiculous. The spirit of God has so prepared a person's heart that they're so hungry and thirsty that when you offer the gospel that they say, exactly, that's right. Then you just go with that, don't you? But sometimes when you're testifying to people about the grace of God in the gospel, they say, well, I'm not so sure that's true. Or how can I be sure that it's true? Well, but other people say this. At that point, your evangelistic witness becomes apologetic. At that point, you defend the faith. One of the better known apologists of the 20th century, very popular apologist, was Francis Schaeffer. And I'm critical of some things in Schaeffer, and I'm very appreciative of other things in Schaeffer. But sadly, at this point, I have to be critical of Dr. Schaeffer. He had a tendency in some of his publications to present apologetics. He called it pre evangelism. Pre evangelism. He said, you know, the modern man has so departed from the antithetical way of thinking of the Greek philosophers. That too bothers me, but nevertheless has so departed from that that apologetics needs to talk to the modern man and do some preparatory work before he can even understand the gospel or be challenged by the Gospel. At this point, some students will think, now, Dr. Brunson, aren't you just kind of, isn't this an insignificant hair that you're wanting to slice? I mean, come on. So he believed in doing apologetics. He believes in doing evangelism. You believe that the things that are involved in what he called apologetics should be said. You believe the things he talked about, Evangelism should be said. So what's the big deal? It's just a matter of how you cut the cake, right? Well, many times the way in which you organize things is already an indication of some of your convictions and your operating strategy. So, no, I don't think this is an insignificant hair that we're splitting. Evangelism is not something that follows apologetics. As I've just explained, apologetics is run by the engine of evangelism. It seems to me we're out there wanting to present the gospel to everybody. We want them to believe it, and sometimes they oppose that. And apologetics is necessary to keep pushing the evangelism forward. But it isn't as though apologetics comes first and then we evangelize. Because if you say that, then first of all, apologetics need not have an evangelistic motive. If evangelism is subsequent to, or to put it the other way around, if apologetics precedes evangelism, then apologetics may have any number of motivations and strategies that have nothing to do with wanting to see people come to know the Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, I don't think that was ever true in the life of Dr. Schaeffer. I'm not saying that about him. But that theoretical concept allows for the possibility of an academic approach that is rationalistic and autonomous, that says we have certain issues, philosophical issues or maybe cultural issues, that we have to resolve. And then finally we can come to the good news. Hey, well, I got good news that starts at the very beginning. Your academic and cultural problems are answered by the gospel, not by something that precedes the gospel, but by the gospel itself. I hope everybody can see the significance of that difference. To put it another way, when I argue about philosophical matters, when I argue about cultural matters, I want to bring the cross of Christ in to that discussion. I don't want to say I've got certain preparatory matters that we deal with that all men have to come to agreement on the nature of truth and philosophical method and things of that nature. And then after we've settled that, then I've got to bring the cross of Christ in. No, it seems to me it's the cross of Christ that's at the very beginning of our testimony, and that corrects our misconception are intellectual misconceptions about truth and method and philosophy and culture as well. So what's the relationship of apologetics to evangelism? I don't think that it's pre evangelism. I think it's part of evangelism. The pre evangelistic view of apologetics, it seems, is just another way of speaking of preparationism, the notion that there's something prior to the gospel that prepares people for the gospel and is rationalism. When we talk about the history of apologetic, this will make more sense to many of you. But St. Thomas Aquinas said reason lays the platform for faith. Reason is the fundament upon which faith is founded. And somebody like Schaeffer, who doesn't like Aquinas in many ways, sadly lines up with Aquinas on this point because he thinks that reason lays the foundation. Don't you see that it's pre evangelism for faith which is the result of the gospel message or the evangelistic message? Apologetics is not an arrogant exercise in intellectual chess. Apologetics is not intended to establish an area for the man, for man's mind to operate on neutral common ground with covenant breaking sinners. Apologetics is evangelistic in that we want men to repent from their intellectual sins and be right with God. And that's only possible through the cross of Christ. To address another major problem in the 20th century church with respect to apologetics, we need to relate it to ethical living. I've just said that apologetics is not purely intellectual. It's not an exercise in some kind of intellectual chess, but it's a recognition that the person to whom I'm speaking is a covenant breaker. Now, if I'm going to effectively witness to him, I need to be a covenant keeper. If I break covenant with God in order to convince this covenant breaker that we should both keep covenant with God, it makes no sense at all. And that is to say that as I pursue my apologetical task, I must be a demonstration in my own life, in my own conduct of the gospel. Apologetics involves the witness of our lives as well as the witness of of our words. I'd like to believe there was a time when saying this would not have been necessary. It should have been obvious to everybody. But we live in a day and age, sadly, when some of the best academic apologists also have reputations for being wolves. Socially, they simply cannot get along with people. They do not show graciousness, they are arrogant, they are pushy, they are discourteous, they are unloving, uncharitable. Because this is such a strong indictment, I choose not to use any names here. But when I was in college, there was a particular apologist, an evidential apologist, who was well known as being a public debater. And many people said, having been at the public debate, when he had debated with Altizer on the existence of God, he said that this apologist had decimated his opponent. But Althezer won the debate. You say, now how can that be? I'll tell you how it can be. It's because when you have a thousand college students sitting there seeing a Christian acting like a jackass, they don't really care about the nature of the argument all of a sudden. And they said Altizer at least was a decent human being. Now we can all go away and run to our logic books and say, oh, that's ad hominem. Now you're just talking about the man. But it's not the logic book that I want to run you to. Turn to God's book. What does God's book say about this? Matthew 5:16. Even so, let your light shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Which, being interpreted, is even so, let the brilliance of your mind so shine before men that they will be awestruck with your arguments and glorify your Father who is in heaven. You notice there isn't any verse in the Bible that's like that, but many Christians think that that's what we're supposed to do, is demonstrate our intellectual ability and superiority. And if you master presuppositional approach. I don't say this with any pride or arrogance, I don't think at all. If you master this approach, you can do it to anybody. You can slice them and dice them. You know, stick with me long enough, I can show you there's not a person out there who will be able to deal with the arguments. But I also know that if you use those arguments with that spirit, with that kind of display, you'll be entirely ineffective. Jesus said, let your light shine before men that they may see your good works. That's what leads them to glorify your Father who is in heaven. It's a good argument coupled with a good conscience, as Peter put it in First Peter, chapter three. And so when we can't make apologetics completely intellectualistic, I've already indicated that to you, so I won't harp on it much more. But we need to recognize that apologetics is related to ethical living, that our arguments must be in the context of a life that demonstrates truth. We walk in truth and we speak the truth. I'm sure all of you have heard messages and devotions on this point. What Happens when you speak the truth but don't walk it. You can talk it, but you don't walk it. And the world is not convinced. And so it's important for apologetics to be part of ethics. It involves the witness of our lives as well as the witness of our words. Speaking of ethics, we might look at Matthew 22, verse 37. Jesus has been challenged with the probing question which is the greatest of the commandments. And he said unto them, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. If I'm going to have a good conscience before God, if my good works are going to be light, that appeals to the unbelieving world. If I'm going to please God in the way that I live, I must please him in the way that I think, too. My mind is to demonstrate love for God. Because everybody, at some point when they're witnessing and they get involved in apologetics, comes to this crucial place where the challenge, explicitly or subtly and implicitly is given. Will you show love for Greek philosophy, logic, argumentation, evidence, subject science, or you shall love for the Lord? And the idea here is, well, if you have love for the Lord, then you sacrificed your mind and so forth. The Bible says we need to love the Lord our God with our mind. No, I will not prostitute my thinking to this school of philosophy. I will not prostitute my thinking to this scientific point of view. My mind is sold out for Jesus, and I. And I'm not ashamed of that. Probably most of you at some point in your life realized what it was to go into a restaurant and bow your head and pray out loud, knowing that people can hear you pray. In California, we have the problem. Waitresses come up while we're praying and fill our glasses with water and drop off food and so forth. I mean, we have such a secular culture, but in the midst of that kind of disdain for or not even comprehension of what's going on, you hesitate, you know, to do that, and you say, well, but God will hear me if I pray quietly. I say, but I want to glorify God in the midst of this restaurant. Not show off, but glorify God. I'm going to say thank you out loud. In the same way the time comes in your reasoning with unbelievers that you say, I want to glorify God above science, above logic, above philosophy. And I want the person to know that's right. I will not go down that line of thinking because I love God. I love him with all my mind. In Colossians 3:10, Paul tells us something about the relationship of apologetics and our minds, the use of our minds to ethics and renewal. When he says, and put on the new man that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him. When we become Christians, our minds are renewed and renewed unto knowledge. The implication is that those who do not have minds that are renewed by God don't have minds that are able to come to knowledge. So apologetics is related to ethical living. In John 17:21 23, Jesus tells us that the world will be convinced that he came from God by the awesome display of intellect in his followers. Forget that in your notes as well. Awesome display? That isn't what the Bible says. That doesn't sound right. What is it that's going to convince the world? John 17:21 look at it with me. That they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art one art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me, and the glory which thou hast given me, I have given unto them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one that the world may know that thou didst send me and lovest them, even as thou lovest me. I have to be very honest with you. It's not easy to tell you this, but when I give apologetics seminars and conferences and lectures here, there, around the United States, and sometimes in foreign lands, the question that comes up, probably more than any other one, is, Dr. Bonson, in all of your work in apologetics, what's the hardest criticism to defend? It's not the problem of evil. That's a tough one. Not the problem of miracles. Not the problem of the meaningfulness of religious language or the existence of God or the deity of Christ. The toughest thing to answer. In fact, I'm not sure that I've got a good answer. I have something that parries it a bit. But what happens when Christians don't live like Christians? What do you do when your congregation's been through a division and there's been animosity and people just haven't been willing to show the fruit of the Spirit and be peaceful and resolve things in a biblical way? What does Jesus say? Jesus says when the world sees that we're one, then it'll be convinced that I've come from God and that God has shown his love to these people. Isn't this easy to defend I say, you see how unloving God's people are. That's the proof that he loves us. That's the proof that he sent his Son to bring us into a kingdom of love. We backbite and we bicker and we really hate each other and we compete with each other and there's no peace and no desire for it. There's no greater readiness for or ability to achieve reconciliation among Christians. I'm overstating it a bit, but not much. There's not a greater readiness and ability to achieve reconciliation among Christians than I've seen in the unbelieving world. And maybe I've seen particularly bad Christians, particularly good non Christians. Please turn the cassette over at this time. But looking at your faces, I think you all know what I'm talking about. I've worked in an office environment where it was easier to get pagans to put down their hatred of one another and their competition than I've seen in the Christian church or in Christian institutions or. What do you do with that? I think that's the toughest thing to answer. I can give the intellectual answers for why not Hinduism or how come miracles and stuff like that. But when somebody says, yeah, well, if it's true, how come you Christians live the way you do? It's got to be related to ethical living. Apologetics is part of a lifestyle. It's part of evangelism, but it's part of a lifestyle where God has changed our hearts and. And made us submissive to His Word, not just intellectually, but in the whole range of conduct and living and behavior. What's the relationship of apologetics to other departments or other fields of study? And this question comes up particularly in seminary settings. It's like, well, should you have a department of apologetics? And if you have a department of apologetics, how does it relate to the other departments like systematic Theology and Biblical Studies and church History and practical Theology and so forth? What's the relationship of apologetics to the other departments of the curriculum, specifically in a Christian seminary? I believe that in every one of the fields of study, every one of the departments in a seminary curriculum, there is not only a positive statement of the truth of Christianity or what the Old Testament or the New Testament or church history may teach us, but there has to also be a defense of what the Bible is saying. At that point, it's really impossible to so abstract biblical study or systematic theology from the world in which we live and the culture that says you can't believe those things, that you cannot do biblical studies Systematic studies, church historical studies. Without showing the vindication of the Christian worldview along the line, the defense of the faith cannot be left entirely to a department of apologetics. Everybody's got to do apologetics. Now, you would have anticipated I'd say this because earlier today I think I convinced you that everybody's got to do apologetics, right? Well, if everybody's got to do apologetics, then New Testament professors have to do apologetics too, right? Theologians have to do apologetics. Church historians have to do apologetics. People who teach practical theology, often it isn't very practical, but nevertheless they say that they teach practical theology. It isn't practical to not have a defense of your faith. Every department needs to engage in the defense of the faith and not leave it to quote, unquote, the experts, the apologetics department, the specific truths of Christianity and the specific lifestyle of the Christian must be defended as they are stated and presented by any professor, any teacher, any pastor, any Christian. Not one of these truths of Christianity, not one of the aspects of Christian ethics has been left unattacked in our day and age. And therefore those who are experts in these various fields will best be prepared to undertake the defense of the faith when it comes to this or that issue. And so I fully expect that my colleagues who emphasize Old Testament teaching should be in a better position to deal with the documentary hypothesis than I am. So there's nothing wrong with that. Now I know how to deal with the documentary hypothesis. But the point is they teach Old Testament that comes to bear specifically in that field and they ought to do apologetics. They shouldn't say, oh, well, in the apologetics department you'll learn how to do this. No, they've got to do apologetics right then and there. Well, then, is there a place for apologetics as a separate department? I'm going to go the other direction now and tell you I think it's deplorable when you have a theological curriculum and there's no separate course in apologetics. I just said everybody's got to do apologetics. But on the board earlier this morning, first thing I put down was there's the practice of apologetics, the theory of apologetics and meta apologetics. Right? There's a place for somebody to pull together the practice of apologetics in Old Testament, New Testament church history, systematics, ethics, whatever it may be, into a specific theory of apologetics that will be one more self conscious and therefore more effective in the defense of the faith. Apologetics, I think, can be seen as part of systematic theology if you're not going to have a separate department. I would make it part of the systematic theology department. Nevertheless, I think there's something to be said for apologetics having its own department so that it can reinforce the efforts of everybody else in the specific fields by showing them what is the underlying philosophy that is informing the attack of this higher critic or this person who rejects miracles or says the Christian lifestyle was not acceptable in the 20th century. The apologist is able to offer, I think, particular expertise in the philosophical assumptions that are at work in the world today, in the academic world today, and from which all the specific objections derive. Well, what is the relationship of apologetics to systematic theology then? I've already said I think a separate department is appropriate. But now some people say that apologetics and systematic theology are two different things, and I want to address that. If we take systematic theology to be driving God's word home to the heart of men by telling them what the whole Bible says to us about some particular subject, we just take that as our definition, driving God's word home to the heart of men by telling them what the whole Bible says about a particular subject or question. In that sense, apologetics is part of systematic theology. It's part of driving the word of God home to the hearts of men by taking everything that the Christian worldview is what the whole Bible has to say as a way of answering questions about what is true. How do I know what I know? Who am I? What's my destiny? And so forth. Apologetics in that sense does not have a different authority for what it says and does than the systematic theologian. It deals with the faith as a whole. So does systematic theology. It's concerned to drive home the word of God. So does the systematic theologian. In that way, apologetics cannot be thought of as preparatory to systematics. It is an outgrowth of systematic theology. You don't realize this, but what I've just said has run me afoul of one of the best known apologists of the 20th century, B.B. warfield. And I have great regard for B.B. warfield. I've learned volumes of theology from him. Praise God for him. But I just don't think Dr. Warfield had it right when he talked about systematics and apologetics. According to Warfield, and then many following him, John Warwick Montgomery is a leading illustration in our generation. According to Warfield, apologetics lays the foundation upon which systematic theology can work. He says, first we must demonstrate the credibility of faith in the Bible, and then we submit to the faith that the Bible calls us to. So Apologetics shows that it is credible, it's believable to submit to the Bible. And then once we see that we should submit to the Bible, we turn around and we say, then whatever the Bible says is what I have to believe. And that's what the systematic theologian develops. Whatever the Bible says. Do you find any tension or conflict in this? Does this seem like it's, you know, coherent? Not to me. Because, you see, Warfield doesn't say every doctrine of the Christian faith must pass the test of credibility before the bar of human reason, does it? Warfield couldn't possibly say that and be a Reformed theologian. He knows much better than that. Reformed theology recognizes the mystery of God's character, recognizes that God has stooped to speak to us in the Scriptures, and recognizes that much of what God says can be accepted not on the basis of our expectation and anticipation, but only on the basis of his declaration. And so God says it. I believe it. Is there anybody that you know? And does it even seem possible that anybody would come to believe the doctrine of the Trinity because reason helped work that out for them? Warfield, by the way, when I studied the doctrine of predestination, and, you know, he has marvelous, you know, things to say about that. In biblical proof, Warfield tells us it's not up to us to be able to figure out how God predestines the responsible decisions of men when it comes to the mysteries of the faith. Warfield and others would teach what God says is the final standard, not what reason would tell us. That isn't to say we think it's unreasonable, but we believe that reason must be in submission to the teaching of God's Word, but not when it comes to establishing the credibility of Scripture. At that point, it's reason that Warfield said needs to be appealed to. He says, we don't want to beg the question. We don't want to assume what we're supposed to be proving. Reason by itself must show the credibility of the Bible, the reliability of the manuscripts, the law, likelihood of Christ's resurrection, things of that nature. And once the credibility of the Bible is established, then we say, oh, we throw away reason, not throw it away, but it doesn't any longer have the function and position as our ultimate authority. And we make the Word of God our ultimate authority. Good systematic theology makes the Bible the ultimate authority. What is Wardville known for in terms of the influence in theology in the last century? The inerrancy of Scripture. Right. He says, let the critics be hung. If God says it, it is True. We don't say that part of it's true or just the religious part is true. He believed in the plenary inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. And so as a theologian, he had it right. As an apologist, I think he had it wrong. He had the idea that reason precedes and lays a foundation, and then systematic theology takes over after that. But in that case, apologetics and theology would not have the same underlying authority. Now, at what point did Jesus say, it's all right for you not to respect my lordship? He said, the one area in which it's perfectly acceptable is when you're defending my lordship, I really don't mind if you appeal to another Lord to prove that I'm the Lord. So once we translate this into what it really is, the underlying character, it seems preposterous on the face of it. Jesus doesn't defer to any other Lord, does he? On the day of Judgment? What will judge people? Jesus says, the very word I've spoken, it will judge you. I'm not going to need the support of other lords and so forth. You will answer to me and to what I have to say. And so we don't go to other lords, be they, you know, the lordship of an empirical theory of knowledge or the lordship of Aristotelian logic, or the lordship of, you know, some philosopher's point of view or some scientist research and then say, jesus, lo and behold, you are the Lord. Now I'll let you tell me anything, even if it conflicts with what the scientists and the philosophers say. Who is the father of the faithful? According to the Bible? Abraham. Romans, chapter 4. And how did Abraham believe God? We know the outcome. By believing God, he was justified. But how did he believe God? Paul says in hope. He believed against hope according to the word of God. He had hope in God. God says, you're going to have a child. Now, do you think Abraham went running to all the gynecologists of his day saying, do you think my wife maybe isn't barren? You think there may be some hope for me in my old age and my barren wife are going to have a baby? No. It was against all hope, all human hope, wasn't it? Nothing in his experience would suggest that he was going to be a father. But he believed according to the word of God. If God promised it, then there's plenty of hope. He didn't believe according to human hope. He believed against hope according to what God had promised, according to the word of God. And so I really must respectfully disagree with the eminent Dr. Warfield. At this point, it doesn't appear appropriate to me at all that apologetics precedes systematic theology and lays the foundation for it. Warfield at one point says that our belief in the inspiration of scripture is the crowning pinnacle of what we believe. Not the first thing we start with. No, it's the first thing we start with, because if you don't begin with the word of God and the outlook that is taught there, you won't be able to prove anything at all. You'll destroy all human rationality and ethics as well. And so I like what Dr. Van Til said when he suggested once that apologetics is a discipline that walks up and down the outer defenses of the fort, allowing the inner occupants to build and to enjoy the building, even though they must too, on an intermittent basis, engage in defending the faith. But the apologist is like on the outer periphery. He's saying, here's what the world's saying. Watch out now and there. Be careful of this Freudian psychology. Watch out for this behaviorism. Be careful of this empiricism that says you can't know what you don't touch and say. He walks the outer perimeter so that all Christians inside can do their building and so forth. But they too are going to encounter the world, and having listened to the apologist, they'll be more effective, hopefully, in doing that. Systematic theology and apologetics have the same basic authority, and apologetics in that sense is a form of systematic theology. Now, what's the relationship of apologetics to philosophy? I've already been critical of the esteemed Francis Schaeffer and now the esteemed B.B. warfield. And I suppose if I'm in hot water, I might as well go all the way and get in trouble with the Doyou Verdians as well. What is the relationship of apologetics to philosophy? I think in our day and age, outside of the Reformed world, the answer that philosophy is one department and apologetics is another would be readily accepted. It's in the Reformed world that I find that surprising that anybody would say that. And yet that dichotomy between philosophy and apologetics is precisely what we find in the writings of Hermann Doyouvard. Doyvardian philosophy is professedly a form of Reformed thinking and theorizing, and it attempts to accept the need for Christianity in all philosophizing. Doyvardians will say that in our study of any of the modal spheres of life and human experience, we cannot be neutral. We need to approach things as Christians would approach things. And many of us, when we first heard these sorts of things without knowing more about it. And maybe many of you, as you hear this for the first time, you say, what could be wrong with that? Well, having said just that much, there's nothing wrong with it. But unfortunately, Dovair had much more to say about it. We mustn't be neutral. We must take a Christian approach to every area of life. But then Dooya Vird went on to teach in his career, and ferociously that that doesn't mean we take the Bible into all areas of life. You know, so then you kind of scratch your head and you say, now wait a minute. How am I supposed to be a Christian in every area of life when I do biology, when I do math, when I do history, sociology, whatever. How is it I'm supposed to be a Christian, but then I'm not supposed to take my Bible into all these areas of life? In fact, the attempt to do that. Doyouver labeled Biblicism? I'm not recommending that you do this unless you really have a lot of extra time. But if you were to read Doyevaert's contribution to the fesh riff for Dr. Van Till, Jerusalem and Athens, you will see that he outright accuses Van Till of Biblicism. Because Van Till wants to take the Bible into philosophy. Van Till wants to be an apologist whose philosophy is informed by exegesis. He says that's Biblicism. Now, to be sure, Dr. Doyouvaard and some of his followers have given helpful many times, an incisive analysis of other philosophers. Doyouvert has pointed out for us that anyone who abandons the true God will end up absolutizing some aspect of the created order. Rather than following the Creator, they will follow the creature or the created order in some way or another. And so you have those who absolutize logic and those who absolutized sense experience or history or whatever it may be. And I think that's a helpful insight. Dolly Verde has insisted that no scholar needs to stand between scripture and the reader. He's very, very reformed, very reformational on that point. We don't believe that we need a Roman Catholic magisterium to filter down to us what the word of God really means, that we can go directly to the Bible and be in touch with God there. We don't need the systematic theologians at the university or the priest at the Roman Catholic Cathedral to tell us. Dolliverd has emphasized that all autonomy in scholarship must be rejected. And the autonomy that is proclaimed is only a pretended and hypocritical autonomy. That's all to the good. I would also say that each of those truths that I've just talked about you could find in the Bible as well. You don't really need Herman doyouvaerd to know those things. He's illustrated them nicely. But I don't think that really should count as somehow the unique contribution of doyevaird and why we might be interested in studying him. After all, you can find those truths being promoted by any number of other Christian and Reformed thinkers, as well as what is unique to dojevird's philosophy is what we should talk about here for a few moments. And this unique contribution, I think, is not a contribution in any positive sense at all. According to Doyevaert, there is a difference between our naive and our theoretical ways of thinking. The way in which we use our minds is sometimes in a mode that is naive. Not thinking about distinctions, and particularly not trying to line up distinctions with logic and setting the different modal spheres against each other, not drawing careful distinctions, just enjoying, say, the flower in the field, without thinking much about the nature of the flower, where it came from, and so forth. And then sometimes we are theoretical in our approach to thinking. In that mode of thinking we do draw sharp distinctions and we try to organize things logically. And so you have a pre. Theoretical or naive way of thinking, and then you have a theoretical way of thinking. Now, where is the theoretical way of thinking found for the most part in our culture? Well, at the university, right, that's where people try to draw distinctions and. And develop theories about flowers growing in fields and history and economics and so forth and so on. In the pre. Theoretical. In the naive mode of thought, according to Doyvard, we do penetrate, and I'm using his language, I'm not really sure sometimes what this means. We do penetrate to the world and to the self, who we are as personalities to God. But we do so thinking of them as undifferentiated wholes. I just think of myself, think of God, think of the world in kind of a mass, a massive, undifferentiated way. Sometimes we walk through the forest and we just enjoy the wholeness of the experience without trying to stop with scholarly scrutiny to. To draw distinctions. We just know that this is God's world and we're enjoying his presence as we walk through the forest. Now, the central theme of Scripture, according to Doje Verde, is one that is not grasped in theoretical thought. Understanding the central theme of Scripture is something much more like walking through the forest and just enjoying the wholeness of the experience than it is stopping and being logical and discreet and thinking things through in a theoretical way. That is to say, the central theme of Scripture is only grasped by the heart in naive experience. We read the Bible and we have, I don't want to say an anti intellectual, but a non intellectual, non scholarly, non theoretical grasp of the truth that is found there about redemption, well, creation, fall and redemption. And say Dr. Ronson, what's so bad with that? What's so bad is insisting that that is a pre theoretical grasp rather than something that informs my mind as a scholar, as one who wants to draw distinctions, be logical, even develop theories about it. To suggest that the only way you can grasp the ground motive of Scripture, the thrust of Scripture is to approach it with a naive heart. But don't try to be a scholar about that is really to separate, I think, life into two different domains, religious and non religious. Now the reason why that would be an overstatement and two to a certain degree unfair to Doyou Baird is that he says now when your heart is in the naive grip of the creation motif, the fall motif, the redemption motif of Scripture, you in the grip of this should now go and do your sociology, psychology, astronomy, whatever it is you're studying. So you should be a Christian in the grip, the naive grip of scriptural motifs. But you don't take the Bible in the academic, scholarly, logical way. You don't take the teaching of the Bible into your theoretical studies. So it's kind of like you have two things going. And I think one hand takes away what the other hand is offered, but the one hand offers. We can't be neutral, we can't be autonomous. We have to study everything as Christians. But that does not mean that we study everything with the teaching of God's Word directing us. It means that we go in there as people that have been gripped by the motif of Scripture, the themes of creation, fall and redemption. And then we study like everybody else does, astronomy, sociology, mathematics, history, whatever it may be. And so the Bible turns out to be forbidden in other academic pursuits. Now there's one more part of this that is hard to swallow and that's that Doyouvert says, well now something has got to stand outside the modal spheres and organize them, understand them, regiment them, define them. I mean, how do we know what the modal spheres of experience are? A modal sphere is a way, a mode of experiencing the world. So we have a mathematical experience of the World and biological, historical, and so forth. Now, what is it that helps us theoretically to understand the spheres and their relationship to one another? That's what philosophy does. And so the queen of the sciences for doyouvard is philosophy. Philosophy has a kind of imperial authority over all other areas of life. That pleases some of my friends who have studied philosophy. That's flattering and all the problem is, as a Christian who loves the Lord his God with all of his heart, soul, strength and mind, I'm offended that philosophy has taken the place of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ, according to Paul, in Colossians 2, 3, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited not in philosophy, but in Christ. And Paul goes on to say in verse eight of that chapter, be careful that you not be robbed by vain philosophy. So you have all the treasures. He says, be careful you're not robbed of those treasures. And Paul says, what is it that robs you of the treasures that are in Christ? Philosophy. Vain philosophy, that is according to the traditions of men, the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ. Now, how could Paul, if he was a good doiuverdian, talk that way? How could Paul talk about a philosophy that is according to Christ? That's biblicistic, isn't it? All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are lorded over by. In fact, they are deposited in the Lord Jesus Christ. And our philosophy must be according to Christ, not according to human tradition or worldly presuppositions at all. Okay, so the doyouvardian way of relating apologetics to philosophy I find find extremely objectionable, even though early on I said there were certain themes that, in abstract anyway, sound quite good and would agree with the kind of teaching that I would offer. What's wrong with Doyevird's philosophy? Well, first of all, what on earth could it mean that there is a naive theoretical distinction in our thinking? I've given you illustrations to try to make it sound credible. But you know, when you go back and look at that, that distinction is not very credible at all. And that's because we never, ever have a totally undifferentiated experience. We can talk about going through the forest and just enjoying the experience of God and his glory in the forest. And that looks convincing or persuasive on the surface. But, you know, when I walk through the forest, though I may not be. This message is continued on the next tape.