Something that was said at an apologetics conference

[cih1355]

The following is a quote taken from K. Scott Oliphint's book, The Battle Belongs to the Lord.

"A student reported to me recently that he had returned from a conference entitled 'Defending the Faith.' When I asked him what the most significant thing about it was, I was surprised at his answer. He said the thing that most caught his attention was one speaker's comments that went something like this: 'This year our topic is apologetics, so you really won't need to have your Bibles with you.' The comment was not meant to be humorous or flippant; it was simply a statement of fact."

Do you have any thoughts concerning what that speaker said? My comment is that we need the Bible when learning about apologetics. We need to know what the Bible says about apologetics and we need to give biblical answers to those who make objections to the Christian faith. There is nothing wrong with learning about the evidences from history and nature that would support Christianity, but the Bible is our ultimate authority and as our ultimate authority we need to know what it says about apologetics.

 

[Reformation Monk]

I don't have enough details, but in the case of "classical and evidential" apologetics, the Bible isn't used a lot because these are systems of apologetics that tend to defend the Christian Faith and God's Truth extra-biblically.

Just a suggestion.

 

[Douglas P.]

The same point is made in the introduction to Revelation and Reason:

"Some readers of my study of divine omniscience, The Only Wise God,
expressed surprise at my remark that someone desiring to learn more
about God’s attribute of omniscience would be better advised to read
the works of Christian philosophers than of Christian theologians. Not
only was that remark true, but the same holds for divine eternity."

- William Lane Craig

The point which follows in the book is how unfortunate this line of thinking is. Our knowledge and understanding of God, and the hope that is within us comes from Scripture, not philosophy.

This line of thinking also destroys the doctrine of God, making God dependent upon logic, reason, etc. Obviously if one is Arminian-leaning at all, he will have no problem with classical or analytic apologetics, as it, just like Arminian theology, puts man or a part of creation as the final authority as opposed to God.

 

[ChristianTrader]

The same point is made in the introduction to Revelation and Reason:

"Some readers of my study of divine omniscience, The Only Wise God,
expressed surprise at my remark that someone desiring to learn more
about God’s attribute of omniscience would be better advised to read
the works of Christian philosophers than of Christian theologians. Not
only was that remark true, but the same holds for divine eternity."

- William Lane Craig

The point which follows in the book is how unfortunate this line of thinking is. Our knowledge and understanding of God, and the hope that is within us comes from Scripture, not philosophy.

This line of thinking also destroys the doctrine of God, making God dependent upon logic, reason, etc. Obviously if one is Arminian-leaning at all, he will have no problem with classical or analytic apologetics, as it, just like Arminian theology, puts man or a part of creation as the final authority as opposed to God.

Do you mean that our thinking about God doesn't come from Natural Revelation or that it does but somehow we shouldn't rely on it?

I would claim that if we try to rely on Scripture to the exclusion of Natural Revelation, then we are engaging in some sort of fideism. I do not believe that Scripture requires such.

CT

 

[Joseph Scibbe]

While it probably won't be a conference on exegesis there is no reason to suggest people not bring their Bibles.

 

[Douglas P.]

Do you mean that our thinking about God doesn't come from Natural Revelation or that it does but somehow we shouldn't rely on it?

I would claim that if we try to rely on Scripture to the exclusion of Natural Revelation, then we are engaging in some sort of fideism. I do not believe that Scripture requires such.

CT

CT,

I’m not exactly sure how you came to these conclusions based on what I wrote; perhaps I should have been more precise in my choice of words. Allow me to try and clarify.

WCF 10, in reference to God’s effectual calling, says that our minds are enlightened “to understand the things of God.”

This of course is said not to deny that God reveals himself both through natural and supernatural revelation, instead it presupposes it. But what it does show us is that, because of sin, man cannot rightly understand the things of God, in fact man is spiritually dead, separated from God, suppressing the knowledge (natural revelation) in unrighteousness.

I think, and this is quite empirical and speculative, that some have bifurcated, or put a wedge between natural and supernatural or general and special revelation that simply cannot be found in scripture.

Special/general revelation, (which I would define as having two aspects, first that we know God because we are made in His image and second being creatures made in His image every time we discover any fact in creation we see that it bears the stamp of its creator) was never meant to be alone or apart from supernatural/special revelation, even before the fall. Adam was given knowledge (special revelation) of how to obtain eternal, eschatological life (or as Peter puts it in 1 Peter 3:15 “the hope that is within us”), apart from anything he could have discovered in creation. This was all done prior to his disobedience and the fall.

So I have no problem in saying that we have a natural knowledge of God. The problem, and why William Lane Craig’s comments are so unfortunate, is when one uses the knowledge that he has acquired from nature and force God to accommodate to it. Appealing first to creation in hoping that it will lead to a knowledge of creator.

When Craig says “that someone desiring to learn more about God’s attribute” should look to an aspect of creation, namely philosophy, he is distorting the creator creature distinction by forcing God to be part of creation.

In other words, via natural revelation we observe that A equals A, and that A cannot equal A and not A at the same time. Yet, in scripture, God is one person and God is three persons. If we force God to fit our finite understanding of reason we will inevitably distort the Trinity into something that says God is one in essence three in persons, that the oneness of God is somehow not like the threeness of God.

Another example; scripture says that God decreed all things, and yet scripture says God did not cause sin. Again, this is beyond our finite ability to understand, we simply don’t have a set of laws that allow us to understand this mystery. But someone like Craig, who is a Molinist, will force God to fit our finite understanding. This is most unfortunate as it destroys the very doctrine of God and the basis for salvation itself.

These examples don’t even account for the effect of the fall and sin. When we bring in the effects of the sin and put it into an apologetic context the consequences of this line of thinking are exponentially worse.

When an apologist appeals to the authority of reason, and not the authority of Scripture, he is inevitably persuading the non-believer to worship a god of his own imagination, a god which exists only in the constructs of this creation, a god ultimately that does not exist.

I hope this helps clarify things.