does-god-believe-in-atheists-march-april-2006

APOLOGETIC POSITIONS COMPARED ❘ INTELLIGENT DESIGN ❘ NATURAL LAW

MODERN REFORMATION Does God believe in atheists?

VOLUME

15, NUMBER 2, MARCH/APRIL 2006, $6.00

MODERN REFORMATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS march/april

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Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Managing Editor Eric Landry Assistant Editor Brenda Jung Department Editors Diana Frazier, Reviews William Edgar, Preaching from the Choir Starr Meade, Family Matters Staff | Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ben Conarroe, Proofreader Contributing Scholars David Anderson Charles P. Arand S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Richard Gaffin W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John D. Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm C. E. Hill Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Mickey L. Mattox Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes John Piper J. A. O. Preus Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul Rachel Stahle A. Craig Troxel David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation Š 2006 All rights reserved.

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Does God Believe in Atheists?

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Without Excuse As long as keeping the law is the standard by which both Jews and Gentiles are judged, both groups are without excuse before the God who has revealed himself clearly in creation and in Scripture. The author argues that in Romans, the Apostle Paul is more concerned about the content than the quantity of what a Christian believes.

by Michael Horton Plus: Proving God’s Existence: Beside the Point? by William Edgar

11 Chart: Apologetic Positions 12 Natural Law and Christians in the Public Square How can believers and unbelievers begin to discuss controversial subjects in the public square? The author explains why natural law provides a significant amount of common ground and a framework for both believers and unbelievers to use when considering law and public policy.

by David VanDrunen Plus: What is Intelligent Design?

by William A. Dembski

18 Legal Evidence for the Truth of the Faith What role does factual evidence play in defending the truth? The author vindicates the Christian faith by employing common judicial processes, reminding us that the endeavor of apologetics includes use of legal techniques.

by John Warwick Montgomery Plus: Basic Apologetic Questions

29 Apologetics Roundtable

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Romans Road page 2 | Letters page 3 Preaching from the Choir page 35 | Reviews page 36 | Family Matters page 44

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ROMANS ROAD i n

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Our Road Through Romans

Telling the Old, Old Story

January/February: Romans 1:1-17, The Romans Revolution Introduction and overview of a year spent exploring the transforming message of the Book of Romans.

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March/April: Romans 1-2, Does God Believe in Atheists?

What role does general revelation play in our witness to nonChristians? How can we use natural law to establish a place in the public square with people of other faiths? Included in this issue is a handy apologetics chart detailing the differences between different schools of thought and answers to basic apologetics questions.

May/June: Romans 2-4, What Does it Mean to be Good?

Look around you: sin is redefined as weakness and grace is merely self-help power. No one wants to believe that all of us are under God’s righteous judgment. But along with the consequences of our sin is the promise of good news: the turning away of God’s wrath and a righteousness not of our own making.

July/August: Romans 5-8, The Peace that Starts the War God’s divine pronouncement that we are righteous in Christ is not the end of the story. It is the prelude to a much larger narrative of victory and defeat in our ongoing battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. How do we live the Christian life in the midst of a war zone?

September/October: Romans 9-11, Has God Failed? Can God be trusted? His work in history—specifically in the nation of Israel—becomes an object lesson for how we relate to God and grapple with the mysteries of his divine will.

November/December: Romans 12-16, In View of God’s Mercies Truth must make a difference in our real lives. How does knowing and believing the message of Romans actually play itself out in our daily interactions with our family, neighbors, and church?

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espite political and evangelical pollsters assuring us that Judeo-Christian moral values and traditional faith practices are still important for the vast majority of the American people, Reformation Christians are well-aware of the religiously pluralistic society in which we live. Although less than ten percent of Americans identify themselves as atheists or agnostics on most polls, the ninety-plus percent of Americans who do believe in God often imagine him, her, or it according to their own imaginations. It was into exactly this kind of situation that the post-Pentecost church was born. Their neighbors asked them the same kind of questions our neighbors ask us today: Don’t all paths lead to God? How can Jesus be the only way? How can I know the Bible is true?

These were the sorts of questions to which the Apostle Peter exhorted the suffering church, aliens in this world, to be ready to give an answer (1 Pet. 3:15).

The answers would certainly not ease their suffering, for Jesus could not be reduced to a great moral philosopher, a fine example of humanity, or a mere manifestation of a divine presence in the world. But by proclaiming the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3)—that one faith, one baptism, and one Lord (Eph. 4:5)—the earliest Christians made as much a political statement as a spiritual one, highlighting their own existence as pilgrims and aliens in a world who’s rightful king was returning to cast out the wicked oppressors of his people.

So, neither the questions nor the societies that ask them have changed much since the first century. And why should they? We are all living in the great gap between this “present evil age” and the “age to come.” We confidently return, then, to Scripture to give us a guide to understanding our own culture and the answers which it may be unwilling to hear. Beginning with Reformed theologian and editor-in-chief Michael Horton’s article, this issue of Modern Reformation takes an in-depth look at the first movement in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Dr. Horton’s piece, highlighting Paul’s stunning statement that unbelievers actually suppress the truth, is joined by two articles instructing Christians on their dual duty while pilgrims in this world: The first, by Orthodox Presbyterian theologian David VanDrunen, presents a positive case for engaging non-Christians in the public square by utilizing the insights of natural law. The second, by Lutheran apologist John Warwick Montgomery, gives Christians an important lesson in using the rules of evidence when making a case for Christ to unbelievers. Each of these important articles is joined by sidebars that help flesh out the consequences of the feature articles’ main points. Is it worth proving God’s existence in a nation of theists? Yes, says Reformed apologist William Edgar. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski provides an overview of the argument for Intelligent Design now raging in the public school system. A group of Reformed, Presbyterian, and Lutheran pastors answer basic theological questions. W. Robert Godfrey, R.C. Sproul, and Rod Rosenbladt explain and defend different apologetic approaches in a roundtable discussion. Finally, a helpful chart comparing three dominant schools of apologetics is also included to help you defend and promote the faith.

Our prayer is that this issue would enable you to engage your non-Christian friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family with the truth of God in Christ. If you have lived your life in a ghetto of private belief and practice, we hope that this issue will encourage and ennoble you to tell the old, old story of redemption to those who long for a Redeemer-King.

Eric Landry Managing Editor

LETTERS your

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teve Zrimec’s letter (Jan/Feb ’06) in response to Bryan Chapell’s article “The PromiseDriven Family” (Nov/Dec ’05) was thought provoking to say the least, especially his recognition of his own parenting abilities as inherited from well-meaning parents, people who nevertheless never saw the need or value in cracking open the Bible.

Maybe the basics of Western Culture (law keeping or following models anyway) aren’t completely lost after all.

However Chapell’s summary statement that, “we tend to become our parents, for good or ill,” fails to address the importance of salvation or eternity.

Well-adjusted parents and children are sinners too in need of the sacrificial blood of Christ who reminded us, “apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing.”

(John 15:5).

Linda Dove Stirling, Ontario

I do not think that labeling Doug Moo’s treatment of Romans 7 as “wrong-headed” does justice to this scholar’s elegant, if unconventional, reading of the chapter (“Recommended Commentaries on Romans”). Dr. Moo’s reading is not a triumphalistic assertion that believers no longer struggle with sin; rather, it is a careful analysis of the structure of the logical argument that Paul may have been building in Romans 5-7. Regardless of the reviewer’s strong feelings toward the conventional reading, it was unfair to characterize Dr. Moo’s work in this way. See Stott’s IVP commentary (1994, pp.200-201) for a respectful, if ultimately unconvinced, summary of Dr. Moo’s interpretation.

Paige Britton Quarryville, PA

I am a long time subscriber to Modern Reformation. I am responding to your request for input about the new format for the magazine.

Overall, it is wonderful. However, I really miss the “Between the Times” column. It is true that much of that information may be gleaned from other sources, but MR’s perspective is always helpful.

Please reconsider the decision to delete “Between the Times” from your published issues. Putting such information on the web site only is not sufficient. Busy folks like me will rarely take the time to check online material in addition to the hard copies that we receive.

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tor did a "verse by verse" study of Romans 8 on Wednesday nights, except that he skipped 8:29-30. I sat there listening to those sermons for weeks in anticipation to finally hear somebody teach on those very verses... and he skipped them. I asked the pastor why he skipped those two verses, and he said that he forgot. I told him that that was the very thing that made me mad at the church for skipping those kinds of verses.

Anyhow, thank you very much for the program. I have turned some other friends on to your program and I'm pumped up about the ride through the Romans Revolution.

Chris Allen Via Email

Ted Gentry The February 12, 2006 broadcast of the White Horse Inn was remarkable. I could really relate to what you guys were talking about when you mentioned how Augustine and Luther had similar realizations when they had been introduced to the Book of Romans. I, too, had a similar experience when I started listening to R. C. Sproul’s teaching on Predestination and John MacArthur on Election. Once I started to understand what the Book of Romans was telling me, the whole Bible began to make more sense to me. When I came to understand how God sovereignly was involved in all of what Romans was telling me, I was astounded and amazed at what I was learning. I discovered "amazing grace," and now that song makes more sense to me, too. Then I became very angry at the church. I had grown up in the church (Methodist, Baptist, Southern Baptist, and Christian Church) and I had never heard the content of Romans 8, 9, 10. I was very angry that the church has skipped over these doctrines for all these years and I was just now being introduced to them. Just this past summer my pas-

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.741.1045 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

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D O E S G O D B E L I E V E I N AT H E I S T S ?

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MICHAEL HORTON

ou finally have that opportunity to explain the gospel to that co-worker who has been asking a few questions of late. She tells you that one of the things that keeps her from taking religion seriously is that each one claims absolute, final truth. Obviously, they can’t all be right, since they contradict each other at key points. Can a Japanese Buddhist really be held accountable for accepting Christianity if Buddhism has been his only frame of reference? How then can we continue to say that Jesus is the only way? How can we say that God cannot be truly known, at least in a saving way, unless one has been exposed to the Christian Scriptures somehow? Religion all seems hopelessly naive and impossible. More than that, it seems to fuel the religious strife that drives intolerance

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around the world. As a result, your co-worker has simply adopted the cultural dogma of tolerance that assumes a pragmatic view of religion. Buddhism “works” for one person, Islam for another, and Christianity for still others.

The belief that religion is therapy more than truth seems pervasive, in evangelicalism as everywhere else.

Besides accepting religious pluralism, many Christians themselves have come to wonder how one needs to know and believe in the Scriptures in order to be “saved.” This can be a form of Protestant works-righteousness. First, it assumes that faith is merely knowledge and assent to true propositions (the position that the reformers challenged), and it treats this “faith” as if it were actually a work.

Instead of wondering how much I have to do to be saved,

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we now ask how much we have to believe to be saved.

However, salvation is not the result of our willing or running but of God’s mercy (Rom. 9:16). While faith surely involves knowledge and assent to certain truths, it is, properly speaking, a resting in the God who announces free forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. And while faith is a human response, it is given freely as a gift, without which we would harden our hearts against God’s promise. Once we recognize that we are saved by the quality of Christ and his righteousness rather than by our own faith and its inherent qualities, we look outside of ourselves and receive the gift that is delivered to us in the gospel.

Of course, to exercise saving faith, there must be an object—that is, someone to be trusted, a message to be heard and embraced. Such communication obviously involves knowledge and assent, but instead of requiring them, the gospel actually creates them. Isn’t this familiar to us in our everyday relationships? After all, we do not ordinarily begin a friendship or romance by interviewing the person in an effort to learn enough to justify our trust.

Rather, we start out with trust, expecting that confidence to be confirmed along the way as we get to know the person better. This is what the medieval theologians meant by “faith seeking understanding.” In the modern era, since

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the Enlightenment, this order was reversed to “understanding seeking faith,” telling us that we shouldn’t believe anything without sufficient evidence. Begin with radical skepticism and doubt, and eventually you will arrive at absolute certainty about things that cannot be doubted.

However, this has never actually worked in the history of science any more than in relationships.

The more God communicates his saving will toward us in Christ, the more confident we become in his trustworthiness. The gospel creates and grows our faith. This gospel has content. In fact, so rich in content is this promise that it can be understood by a child and yet stagger the mind of the greatest theologians. The point is that we are saved by Christ who comes to us in the form of the gospel, not by the degree of our theological acumen or assent to propositions. We are neither saved by knowledge and assent nor without knowledge and assent; we are saved by Christ, who gives us saving knowledge of himself and in doing so creates trust in our hearts so that we embrace what is promised In the balance of this article, I would like to respond briefly to the two aforementioned examples. First, there is the challenge posed by your co-worker concerning religious pluralism and the claim that Jesus is the only way.

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is the execution of a marvelous architect, and this communicates real knowlChrist and his righteousness rather than by our own faith edge of God to everyone, and its inherent qualities, we look outside of ourselves and “even [of] his eternal power and Godhead.” It is true that Paul does not mention the receive the gift that is delivered to the us in the gospel. divine attributes that are explicitly manifested in the Paul’s teaching in Romans is very democratic in an gospel. The Alps reflect the praises of God’s majesty but do important sense: everyone (Jew and Gentile) is equally not proclaim God’s mercy to sinners. They are “without condemned and all who are in Christ (Jew and Gentile) excuse” precisely because of what they do with this reveare equally redeemed. To establish the second point (Rom. lation that they have been given: “although they knew 3:21–11:36), the apostle defends the first (1:18–3:20).

God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, Beginning with the Gentiles, Paul explains how God’s but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts judgment works. Even Gentiles have the moral law were darkened” (v. 21). indelibly written on their conscience (2:15). Not only do One of the erroneous assumptions not only of our cothey know the second table (duties to neighbors); they worker but of many theologians today is that the basic probknow the first table as well (duties to God). Therefore, lem that human beings have with God is a lack of informaGod’s wrath is not an arbitrary exercise of power against tion. If people only knew how much God loves them; if those who don’t know any better. “For the wrath of God they only realized how great God was and worthy of woris revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and ship, they would embrace him. This is the assumption unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in behind what is called the “moral influence theory” of the unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is atonement: namely, that the cross saves chiefly by showing manifest to them, for God has shown it to them” us how much God loves us and this moving picture is all we (1:18–19). need to be brought to repentance. But, as Anselm counBut how has God shown it to them if they do not have tered in his eleventh-century critique of this position, “You the scriptures? Paul answers that the whole creation is a have not yet considered how great your sin is.” revelatory witness to God’s existence and attributes: “For In this passage, Paul is saying that the problem is a lot since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are deeper than a lack of information. It is what we do with clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, any piece of information that challenges our autonomy. even his eternal power and Godhead… ” (v. 20). As our Here, says Paul, you have a classic example of people havold theologians used to say, “God is not known as he is in ing sufficient information to compel them to acknowledge himself (that is, in his incomprehensible majesty), but by God’s existence and power, yet instead of responding with his works.” We cannot see God’s hidden essence, but his gratitude and delight, they “became futile in their thoughts “invisible attributes are clearly seen” through the visible and their foolish hearts were darkened.” They willfully creation: causes are known by their effects. Even skeptics distort the evidence, intentionally misrepresenting God as sometimes express wonder at the elegance and intricacy of Satan did in the garden, transforming light into darkness, the universe. Paul says that through this revelation they truth into falsehood. In other words, it is not an intellecactually know that there is a God and that this God has tual problem at its root but an ethical one. “Professing to certain characteristics. So when people say that they do be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the not believe in God because they cannot see him, they incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible might as well refuse to believe in atoms and electrons. Yes, man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping someone might reply, but with a powerful enough microthings” (v. 23). In other words, it’s not that they started scope one can see atomic and subatomic particles—not so from a position of ignorance, but that they became silly in a with God, however. Yet Paul has already announced in his morally culpable sense. They willfully “exchanged the opening sentence that Jesus Christ “was born of the seed truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the of David according to the flesh and was declared to be the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, Amen” (v. 25). So “the wrath of God is revealed from by the resurrection from the dead” (1:3–4). Just as we heaven” not against the ignorant, but “against all ungodlitrust the witnesses who see atoms and electrons, we trust ness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in those who saw God incarnate. unrighteousness” (v. 18).

Even apart from this special revelation of the gospel, Unrighteousness, not ignorance; suppression of the there is a genuine revelation of God in nature. Who can truth, not insufficient data, is the real human problem. deny the wisdom behind the obvious design and order Thus, the apostle can correlate their intellectual rebellion inherent in the cosmos, without which science could not against God with their ethical rebellion against even the even begin its investigations? It is obvious that all of this ordinances he inscribed in nature itself for sexual relations

Once we recognize that we are saved by the quality of

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(vv. 26–27). Not content with denying the explicit revelation of God in nature, they will remove any trace of God in their thoughts. This is how far unbelief will go to eradicate the knowledge of God: not even reason, common sense, or the obvious characteristics of human anatomy will be recognized to the extent that it reveals God as the source. But lest the rest of us feel left out of the indictment, Paul adds to the list of the effects from refusing “to retain God in their knowledge” (v. 28) the following that strike pretty close to home: … being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; fully of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are gossips, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteousness judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. (vv. 29–32) At this point, Gentile hearers might have thought that this was just another Jewish screed against those who reject Judeo-Christian values. Not so fast, Paul says: “Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things” (2:1). Paul’s description of the Gentiles covers the Jews as well, since they have done precisely the same things (v. 2). In the latter case the situation is even more vicious, because they have a fuller revelation of God in the law and also in the gospel. Thus, they not only despise the revelation of God’s invisible attributes displayed in nature but they also “despise the riches of his goodness, forebearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance” (v. 4). Just as impenitent Gentiles harden their hearts against the revelation of God in nature, impenitent Jews turn a deaf ear to God’s special revelation. “But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart,” Paul writes, “you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who ‘will render to each one according to his deeds’” (vv. 5–6).

Verse 5 parallels 1:18. Whereas the Jews thought that “the wrath of God revealed from heaven” was something for others (the Gentile nations), Paul says here that the same wrath is being stored up for Jews as well. Why? Because they have the law? No, but because they no more keep the law that is inscribed on tablets than the Gentiles keep that same law written on the conscience. Their claim to be keepers of the law—with its superior, fuller, more amplified description of God’s holy will actually entails a greater condemnation.

Those are not approved who tout godliness, righteousness, virtues, and values, and separate themselves as

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morally superior for having them. “[F]or not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified” (v. 13). Some think that Paul’s point is that Jews are being hypocritical—in other words, their main problem is that they do not obey the law, the assumption being that if they did, they would be justified.

However, while hypocrisy is certainly evidence of the problem, Paul’s point is to bring to a screeching halt any confidence in anyone’s own law-keeping. Only the doers of the law will be justified, and this means that nobody can be justified—at least by keeping the law. Paul is driving this deep human plight home in order to drive Gentile and Jew alike to this conclusion: Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. (3:19–22) How does all of this relate then to our two big questions? With respect to our co-worker’s assumptions, Paul’s argument brings the entire human race before God’s judgment, under his wrath. The Buddhist—or nominal Christian—is not in a position of neutrality, awaiting sufficient information to respond appropriately to God. Even apart from the gospel, God has revealed himself in nature and this revelation is distorted, disfigured, twisted, misrepresented, and finally rejected. That is what we do with all revelation of God, regardless of how much or how little, whether it is a revelation of God’s glory or of God’s grace.

Unbelieving Gentiles will not be condemned on the basis of “what they have done with Jesus,” as we often hear in evangelical circles, but on the basis of the law written on their conscience. Unbelieving Jews will be condemned on the basis of that same law written on tablets of stone.

Everyone stands guilty at God’s tribunal, “because what may be known of God is manifest” in God’s works, “for God has shown it to them” (1:19).

Many Christians today say that on judgment day God will only hold people accountable for what they have heard. This is supposed to be good news, but according to Paul it is only bad news. A cheery view of human nature holds out hope that we can by nature respond positively to God in our own way, from within our own religious “faith tradition,” and with our own resources. However, Paul is saying that God does not grade on a curve and that the human plight is deeper than we ever imagined. As he will later write, “There is none righteous, no not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God” (3:10–11). There is no hint here of the “anonymous (continued on page 28) M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

PROVING GOD’S EXISTENCE: BESIDE THE POINT?

by William Edgar

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ost textbooks on the philosophy of religion have a section on the existence of God. (For an example, see Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 3rd ed., edited by Louis P. Pojman, Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1998.) Usually, some kind of introductory statement is made about how thinkers have debated whether God’s existence can be demonstrated by human reason or not.

Then, a classification is proposed for the different types of arguments. Two main groups are signaled: the a posteriori (from the experience of the world) and the a priori (from necessity). Thomas Aquinas’ so-called cosmological argument is an example of the former. Aquinas (1225–1274) presented several variants of his basic argument in his Summa Theologica (1.Q2.A3). One of the variants—the so-called five ways—states that if you begin with a world in which things are caused, then you must move through the next steps: Nothing can be the cause of itself, nor can there be an infinite regress of causes.

Finally, you arrive at the conclusion that there must be an uncaused first cause, which is what God is. Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called ontological argument is an example of the latter, the a priori type. Anselm (1033–1109) argued in his Proslogium for the absurdity of denying God’s existence. Supposing that God is “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived,” then he cannot simply exist in our mind; he must exist in reality.

Many variants and extensions of these proofs can be found throughout the history of ideas (and, of course, many different refutations of them as well). On the a posteriori side, William Paley (1743–1805) argued that just as the clock is a purpose-driven machine and makes no sense without a clockmaker, so the universe must be the result of intelligent design. The brilliant Richard Swinburne (b. 1934) tries to put together many inductive arguments for the existence of God, and concludes that together they make a powerful case for theism.

Today, there is a cottage industry of intelligent design apologetics, often interacting with science. On the a priori side, Alvin Plantinga (b. 1932) presents a modal version of Anselm’s argument, that is, using the “modes of possibility,” he asserts that there is a possible world in

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which there is “maximal greatness.” His point is not to prove God, but only to show that there is nothing irrational about faith. Plantinga, a Reformed Christian, is arguably America’s premier philosopher.

These scholars are often godly persons, who were, and are, responding to their generation as best they can.

They are anxious to use language and reasoning that appeals to their context. But we must ask: how biblical, and how edifying are these arguments? The answer is not simple. Two extremes may be avoided.

The first extreme is to squeeze the biblical data into the mold of the classical proofs. Discussions of God’s existence are on the whole foreign to biblical language and emphases. The Bible nowhere worries about God’s mere existence, at least not in the terms of the preceding arguments. When it explains the reality of God it is not concerned to define essence or existence in a philosophical manner. Nor does it lend support to either the a posteriori folks or the a priori ones. You might ask, don’t certain texts at least speak of his existence? Certainly. For example, the Hebrew word for “sound wisdom” in Proverbs 8:14 can mean “essence.” Romans 1:20 and Colossians 2:9 refer to deity. Galatians 4:8, speaking negatively, states that idols are “not by nature gods.” Or, again, both the NIV and the ESV boldly translate Hebrews 11:6 to say, “whoever would draw near to God must first believe that he exists [estin] and that he rewards those who seek him.”

It is also important to avoid the danger of importing a philosophical view of being, essence, existence, and the like, into the biblical text. The Bible is more concerned to assure its readers of God’s reliability than of his mere existence. For example, the great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, from which the last quote comes, is a call to perseverance. The author pleads for holding fast without wavering, principally because God, who promised salvation, is faithful (10:23). God is a living God, and though it is fearful to fall into his hands, we don’t shrink back but trust in him (11:31, 39). The many examples of believers who are cited in order to encourage us are each commended because they had understood something

about the steadfast faithfulness of God. They believed his plan, though they had not received the full provision that we have (11:40). Among them are Abel who still speaks, and Enoch who pleased God, both by their faith (11:4–5). The author then explains how we, too, may please God and draw near to him (v. 6).

God’s faithfulness is not unrelated to God’s existence.

But the stress is far more on the relation of his nature and actions to his power than on his existence. God’s purposes are the adequate basis for faith. His purposes are indeed grounded in who he is. “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself” (6:13). God’s greatness is surely the adequate basis for his reliability.

But the final proof of God’s promises is Christ, the high priest. In 2:10, we are told that Christ, the founder of salvation (the pioneer) was made to suffer, fittingly, by the one “for whom and by whom all things exist.” The author is expressing the same thought as 11:6. God is the undergirding meaning of the created universe. It is his prerogative to provide salvation in the remarkable way he does, through the sacrifice of his Son. It is this God who rewards seekers. Notice how far this is from terms like “unmoved mover,” or “first cause,” which give little assurance to his people.

The same point can be demonstrated from those unusual words in Exodus 3:14, “I am who I am.”

Philosophers and theologians alike have discussed these enigmatic words, trying to find in them a statement of aseity (à se—deriving from none other than himself). No doubt, they do express something of the independent, self-referential reality of God. In an attempt to downplay any metaphysical implications numerous commentators have missed the obvious. As Richard Muller points out, the reformers, zealous as they were to do good exegesis, still found proof for the aseity of God in Exodus 3:14.

Yet a careful look at the context shows there is much more going on here than an appeal to being-as-such, or existence-as-such. We are at Horeb, in the wilderness.

Moses, the shepherd, has just seen the angel of the Lord appear in a burning bush, a plant on fire but not consumed. The Lord then commissions him to go down to Egypt and lead the people of Israel out of slavery and into the promised land. Here, in verse 14, God is answering one of Moses’ objections to leading Israel out of Egypt. At first, doubting his own qualifications (“Who am I?”), God reassures him that “I will be with you,” and confirms it with a sign (3:11–12). Now, Moses puts forth a second objection: Israel will ask me who is sending me, “What is his name?” He is worried about the reception of his message (3:13). So, the Lord tells him, “I am who I am” (3:14a). The Hebrew in this text (ehyeh asher ehyeh) takes the first person imperfective of “to be” (hayah) and joins it to the relative pronoun “that” with

the verb repeated. A lot is going on here. Of course, one cannot miss the emphasis on God’s “I am-ness.” Moses is also being prepared to see the link between that and the name of God. More than mere existence, God’s character and faithfulness guarantee the survival of the bush (Israel) through the fire (the trials of slavery and of exodus).

Note carefully that the Lord has revealed an identity to Moses in 14a. He reminds him that he is the same as before. Then (in 14b) he gives his name, which is etymologically connected to the verb “to be”: “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” Then, in verse 15, he elaborates by telling Moses to proclaim to Israel that Yhwh has sent him. He assertively adds that this is “the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” As in the Book of Hebrews, the stress here is on God’s character and faithfulness, more than on some abstract notion of existence.

When Jesus uses the “I am” language over and over, he is consciously referring to the name of God, and especially to the continuity between his faithfulness and liberating power, going all the way back to eternity: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). His immediate audience understood the point, since they tried to execute him for blasphemy (8:59).

Jesus was arguing for his divinity, and especially for the authority of his message in contrast to the duplicity of his critics. Above all, he would prove to be the true burning bush, the true remnant of Israel who would be raised from the dead through the fiery trials of suffering and crucifixion. This is far removed from mere existence, or first cause.

The second extreme to be avoided is to render all of the biblical language merely relational, and thus to downplay the metaphysical reality of which the Bible speaks. Here, we must stress that God’s purposes are related to his being. God can be a life-giving presence because he is Spirit (John 4:24; cf. Deut. 32:10–11; Ezek. 39:29). God can be faithful to his promises because he is light (1 John 1:5; cf. James 1:17; Mal. 3:6). God can so love the world because he is love (1 John 4:8; cf. John 3:16; Eph. 1:4–5).

To be sure, it does not work the other way around. God does not have to govern, have to promise, or have to redeem, because his being somehow requires it. The gospel is good news precisely because God is under no obligation to save, but does so anyway. At the same time, the gospel exhibits his attributes, and even shows new depths to them. It tells us, for instance, how much love God has to give. It also tells us he must remain just, though he is the justifier of the ungodly (Rom. 3:26).

Although it is true that the God of the Bible is not the god of the philosophers, a higher being, an unmoved mover, or something “that which nothing greater can be conceived,” that does not mean one cannot philosophize about God. Surely, God’s purposes relate to his being.

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God is indeed a being. And he certainly exists. But his being and existence should not be defined by philosophers operating outside of the pale of revelation.

Statements about a first cause or a being than which no greater can be conceived are intended to appeal to unbelievers. The idea was never to give a full description of God but to begin with baby steps. But are they the right ones? Thomas Aquinas tried hard to reconcile the insights of philosophy with the biblical data. He rightly defended a God whose essence is his existence.

But soon, the philosophical language takes on a life of its own. He defines existence as “the most perfect of all things.” The reason, using Aristotle’s categories, is that existence makes other things actual. Accordingly, God is a being in which all created perfections abide.

“Hence He is spoken of as universally perfect, because he lacks not any excellence which may be found in any genus” (ST 1.Q4.A1–A2). God ends up being the best, the most perfect, and more, but is he really unique? We can only know God by comparison: he is not temporal, he is not corporeal, and so forth.

Further, he states that we can never know God in his essence.

The Bible affirms just the opposite. First, it insists on beginning with a Creator whose being is utterly different from the being of creation. Second, it argues that because of this he can be known by his creatures.

While, of course, we can never know God exhaustively, yet we may know him truly, in his essence. Even unbelievers know God, though they try to suppress the knowledge of him (Rom. 1:18–21). Paul reminds his Roman readers that they ought never say, “Who will ascend to heaven?” (to bring Christ down) or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (to bring Christ up from the dead), because he is as near to us as the word of faith (Rom. 10:6–11). The essence of God is that he is both free and powerful. In freedom, not obligation, and using his great power, he chose to make the world. He has structured it so that everyone made as God’s image can know him, in his essence. Similarly, he decided to redeem the world, through his dying, risen Son. He structured redemption so that his people may know their God, in his essence as Savior.

Cornelius Van Til helpfully explains that one reason why Thomist theology cannot assert our full knowledge of God is a defective understanding of revelation.

Because the Romanist allows that reality must answer to various autonomous laws of being and thought, he can never fully accept revelation. And, particularly, he can never fully appreciate the human mind as “inherently revelational of God.” In this view, man is partly independent of God, and thus he will always fall short of accepting God’s own categories about himself.

Ironically, the result is that God himself ends up

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dependent on the created order of things. To put it provocatively: Thomists only have one large category of being into which all things must fit. The Bible speaks of two categories of being, Creator and creature.

Van Til consequently states that before we can speak at all about the existence of God, we must find out who he is: “We must first ask what kind of a God Christianity believes in before we can really ask with intelligence whether such a God exists. The what precedes the that; the connotation precedes the denotation; at least the latter cannot be discussed intelligently without at once considering the former.” Van Til is not a fideist who asks us to leap into the dark. Rather, he is saying that if Christianity is true, we cannot prove it by assuming our human categories for truth are adequate. If God exists, we cannot prove it by assuming our human category of existence is right.

That is where the classical proofs fall short. We cannot begin from the creation as the philosophers define it, and then assume that everything else operates in the same way. Rather, we must submit at every point to revelation, which will tell us all about being and existence from God’s point of view.

When we do that, we are in line to be challenged, disturbed, surprised, comforted, and reassured, all at the same time. God is a consuming fire (Ps. 79:5; Heb. 10:27). God is the beginning and the end (Isa. 41:4; Heb. 13:8; Rev. 1:8). His ways are above our ways (Job 38:4; Isa. 40:25). He is merciful and forgiving (Ps. 103:3–4; Matt. 9:2). He is a Person (Ps. 115:4–8). He is three Persons (2 Cor. 13:14). He is the Creator (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1–3; Rev. 4:11). He is Immanuel, God with us (Isa. 7:14; Luke 1:31, 34). Only this being exists.

Can we prove God’s existence? Of course we can.

But only on God’s own terms. Other approaches are beside the point!

William Edgar is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, PA) and an accomplished musician.

Dr. Edgar’s quotation from Richard A. Muller is taken from Muller’s Post-reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003, pp.

233–236). (Dr. Edgar thanks colleague K. Scott Oliphint for this reference.) Dr. Edgar’s first quotation from Cornelius Van Til is taken from Van Til’s Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1974), p. 160; his second citation of Van Til is taken from Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: P & R Publishing, 1976), p. 9.

A SUMMARY OF APOLOGETIC POSITIONS Classical Apologetics

Evidentialism

Presuppositionalism

Starting Point

Reduction: Reason, especially the classical theistic proofs

Induction: Empirical data, especially the Resurrection

Presupposition: Negatively, the inconsistency of alternatives; positively, the Scriptures as necessary for even the unbeliever’s rationality

Main Emphasis

Sound reason will lead to the truth

Sound investigation will lead to the truth

Acceptance of the authority of Scripture will lead to the truth

The Chief Goal of Apologetics

Goal is to establish the reasonableness of theism

Goal is to establish the reasonableness of Christianity

Goal is to establish the sovereignty of God over human autonomy

The Chief Philosophical Influences

Rationalism: Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas

Empiricism: Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Butler, Scottish “common sense realism” (Thomas Reid), B.B. Warfield and “Old Princeton”

Idealism: Hegel, Bradley, and British “absolute Idealist” thought, Kuyper, Van Til

Arguments Drawn From

Philosophy

History/Science

Scripture

Typical Criticisms

by Rival Schools

Too deductivistically rationalistic (says the “inductivist” evidentialist); too naive about the sinfulness of the fallen mind and heart, sacrificing God’s sovereignty by trying to preserve Enlightenment autonomy (says the presuppositionalist); too committed to classical foundationalism (says the “Reformed epistemologist”).

Too optimistic about the powers of the senses, since observation is never neutral and the presuppositions which select, organize, and judge relevant data are never suspended so that one could appeal to a “zero point” of unbiased reflection; can only provide probabilistic arguments, while faith requires certainty.

Too pessimistic about the efficacy of common grace in providing shared convictions about rationality, sense-experience, and the innate sense of God; confusing apologetics (a pre-evangelistic activity of clearing away objections) with evangelism (sharing the Gospel), presuppositionalism tends to deny the value of arguments and is founded on circular reasoning.

Points of Agreement Among all Three Schools

• Arguments are useful, but are not themselves salvific • There is common ground of some sort between believers and unbelievers, but not neutral ground • Sin has so darkened the mind and heart that we all, by nature, suppress the truth • There is a place for reason, evidences, and Scripture in apologetics • Only by the proclamation of Christ in the Gospel does one actually come to faith M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 11

D O E S G O D B E L I E V E I N AT H E I S T S ?

NATURAL LAW AND CHRISTIANS IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

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ow should Christians make arguments about moral and political issues in the public square? How can believers persuade unbelievers about matters of abortion, homosexual marriage, cloning, or war?

Christians in democratic societies, along with their fellow citizens, enjoy remarkable opportunities to participate in the political process, but many find this a frustrating experience. Freedom to participate in the political process entails the responsibility to discuss, debate, and compromise with those who hold sometimes very different views on all sorts of moral and social issues. When Christians disagree with other Christians about theological matters, they typically, and rightly, turn to Scripture in order to per-

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suade each other. But when Christians face a moral impasse in the public square, what is the proper way to proceed in order to attain some measure of agreement among the different parties? In this article, I point to the idea of natural law as an answer to this question.

Why Natural Law? his answer may surprise many readers, so before discussing a couple of specific controversial issues, abortion and cloning, a few general remarks about natural law are in order. Natural law is the moral revelation that God gives in creation itself. Romans 1:18–32 speaks of things that may be known of God from creation, including a great

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deal of moral knowledge. Romans 2:14–15 speaks of the protect people against those who would kill, rob, or law of God being written on people’s hearts, such that defraud them. even those without access to the law revealed in Scripture The fact that most unbelievers, though refusing to are held accountable to God through their consciences. worship the true God, still to some significant extent Many prominent Christian theologians have identified acknowledge and live by the truth of his law as it is known natural law as the standard for civil law and government, by nature is something for which Christians can be very including not only medieval theologians such as Thomas grateful. Because of this, societies generally retain some Aquinas but also reformers such as John Calvin. Thus, degree of order and justice. And it provides Christians acknowledging the importance of natural law is neither with the opportunity to engage unbelievers in genuine unbiblical nor foreign to historic Christian theology. moral dialogue on issues of public policy. But how exactThe topic of natural law, however, is very large, and I ly does one make arguments from natural law and thus can only touch on a few of the relevant issues. In what folput it to use in the public square? lows, I will be making a few assumptions that there is no space here to try to prove. Perhaps most importantly, I Arguing from Natural Law n answering this question, we should not ask more of assume that we live in a religiously pluralistic world and natural law than it can provide. Natural law certainly that we will continue to do so until Christ returns. God does not reveal to the conscience a detailed public policy. has not established a theocracy in the world today, nor We would do better to begin by affirming that natural law does he will that Christians try to set up a theocracy by teaches the basics of God’s moral law, and hence provides their own efforts. Rather, Christians must live in a relia framework for thinking giously pluralistic world and about law and public policy, work within these constraints, One of the best ways for Christians from which framework people as difficult as that may be. in the exercise of wisdom When we as Christians to make natural law arguments develop particular laws come into contact with unbeis to begin with these general truths should and policies in response to parlievers, we eagerly proclaim Scripture’s message of salvation that most people would not dispute ticular situations.

Christians and nonto them, with hopes that they and then attempt to show, by use Christians alike through histowill submit to that message and of wisdom and appeals to ry have offered a variety of sobelieve in Christ. But even if they do not, we must still deal common sense, how more particular called “natural law” arguwith them respectfully as felor controversial actions would or ments, some better than othChristians should generallow citizens with whom we would not be consistent with these ers. ly be skeptical of arguments share a common life in the general moral truths. that rest upon simple appeal to public square. Is it possible to what is or feels “natural.” have genuine moral interacThough it may be true, for example, that the natural affection with them on matters of political or social concern, tion that most parents have for their children is evidence even if they will not accept the authority of Scripture’s of the law of God still written on all people’s hearts, the teaching? Since we are called to live at peace with all peopresence of sin in the world has produced many sinful ple as far as possible (Rom. 12:18), this is undoubtedly an desires in all people that, at least at times, feel just as “natimportant question. ural.” Natural law cannot be defined in terms of what Here is one area in which natural law becomes a helpmost people feel is natural most of the time. For ful resource. When appealing to natural law, believers Christians, it would seem most helpful to begin not with need not feel that they are compromising their Christian the feelings of sinful human beings, but with that which convictions, for natural law is authoritative and true; it is Scripture teaches is revealed in the natural law. A passage part of God’s own revelation, after all. Neither need such as Romans 1:29–32 shows clearly that sins such as Christians fear that they are appealing to a standard that is disobedience to parents, murder, adultery, theft, and lying unknown or foreign to unbelievers; God has inscribed the are violations of natural law that all people, at some level, natural law on the heart of every person (Rom. 2:14–15), know. Christians may be confident that appealing to peoand all people know the basic requirements of God’s law, ple’s natural knowledge of these things is valid and legitieven if they suppress that knowledge (Rom. 1:19, 21, 32). mate, even when unbelievers deny these truths and when Most every unbeliever, in fact, accepts the truth of at least believers themselves do not know exactly how to turn some aspects of the natural law. True, they do not accept such appeals into good arguments. it for what it really is, the revelation of the living and triIf unbelievers deny outright that acts such as murder une God. But most people, when pressed, would admit and theft are wrong, there is very little Christians can do that acts such as murder, stealing, and lying are immoral, except note the utter impossibility of civil life under such and they themselves generally avoid such actions. Most assumptions. As noted above, however, most people do people would also claim that law and government exist to

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then begin moving the clock backwards on his young life.

As we envision his life in is immoral, then, a compelling argument can be made, reverse, an appropriate question to ask is at what point based upon observation of the natural process something radical happens to this child to change his status of fetal development, that life should be protected from one of personhood, deserving full legal protecfrom conception on. tion of his life, to one of nonpersonhood, unprotected not deny this. It seems to me that one of the best ways for from the one who would snuff out his life. What we Christians to make natural law arguments is to begin with observe as the clock runs backwards is that the developthese general truths that most people would not dispute ment of this child is continuous, without a drastic, radical and then attempt to show, by use of wisdom and appeals event to distinguish clearly one stage of life from another. to common sense, how more particular or controversial Birth itself is surely not such an event, for there is no peractions would or would not be consistent with these genceptible change in the child from just before his birth to eral moral truths. In other words, by arguing that particjust after it. Neither is the transition between one ular actions are wrong because they tend to promote trimester and another such an event. Neither is there any killing or stealing (which most people admit are bad sudden, identifiable point at which “viability” outside the things), or by arguing that particular actions are right womb may be defined (and this is all the more true as because they tend to promote life or the protection of medical technology progresses). The only event that may property (which most people admit are good things), one be fairly identified as constituting a drastic, radical change may construct natural law arguments that have a certain from one sort of thing to another is conception, when a chance for effectiveness. I do not believe that there is any full set of 46 chromosomes and genetic uniqueness are foolproof way of making persuasive natural law arguestablished where neither existed before. Pointing to any ments, but if we do attempt to make such arguments in a other time as the moment at which a fetus changes status careful and civil way, by God’s grace we may make some in regard to his right to life is arbitrary. Based upon the progress toward moving society in a more just direction. social consensus that infanticide is immoral, then, a compelling argument can be made, based upon observation of Natural Law and Abortion the natural process of fetal development, that life should e may now consider how natural law can be helpful be protected from conception on. to Christians by considering two concrete, controWhat about the objection that there ought to be a versial issues, abortion and human cloning. Abortion has right of privacy for a woman’s body and reproductive decibeen one of the most hotly debated topics in public policy sions? A couple of considerations might be noted briefly. for several decades now, and the disputes show little sign First, based upon the argument above, there is not one of waning. For many Christians, it seems clear that aborbody (the woman’s) to be respected here, but two, and tion is immoral and should be illegal, based on biblical pasthere is no compelling argument that the life of one can be sages that demonstrate God’s creation and care of children sacrificed to the convenience of the other. Second, as in the womb (e.g., Ps. 139:13–16) and that indicate that important as individual and family privacy is in general, it unborn children deserve legal protection (Exod. does not justify infanticide or child abuse done in secret.

21:22–25). Yet the so-called pro-choice camp responds by The argument above suggests that there is no morally sigclaiming that abortion ought to be legal in order to protect nificant difference between a child born and unborn, and women’s reproductive and privacy rights. Does natural hence also that there is no morally significant difference law provide any helpful considerations for this debate? between private infanticide and private abortion.

As observed above, nearly everyone, at some level, believes that life is valuable and therefore that lethal vioNatural Law and Cloning lence against others should be prohibited by law. Most second concrete issue to consider is human cloning. people would also agree that this applies, perhaps especialWhile this issue has not grabbed public attention and ly, to those who are weak and unable to defend themstirred emotions to the extent that abortion has, it is an selves. Based upon such convictions, people today overissue that promises to become increasingly relevant and whelmingly condemn infanticide as a terrible crime. heated in the years to come. Most Christians probably feel Beginning from this widespread acknowledgement of natan instinctive revulsion to the idea of a cloned human ural law truth, we could attempt to show how these propbeing, but why? Scripture does not address the issue in er moral sentiments are inconsistent with a pro-choice any direct way. Once again, natural law considerations abortion position. may help us to work through this issue and articulate To do so, we might imagine a newborn infant and moral concerns in the public square that others may

Based upon the social consensus that infanticide

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understand and appreciate.

As in our consideration of abortion, we might approach this issue by beginning from certain natural law truths that nearly all people, to some extent, acknowledge.

Despite the assault on the nature of the family that arises from certain quarters of contemporary culture, most people still recognize the unique, natural, morally rich relationship that exists between parents and children. They acknowledge that parents have certain responsibilities to provide for and train their children, and that children have certain responsibilities to submit to their parents’ authority. Most people also acknowledge the important, though clearly different, natural relationship between siblings.

They acknowledge that siblings have moral obligations to love and respect each other, without a relationship of authority existing between them.

Beginning with these shared convictions, we might ask what sort of condition a person produced by cloning would find herself in. She would certainly have no normal identity as a daughter and sister. What relationship would she have with the woman from whom she was cloned? In a certain very real sense, she is her mother.

Yet, in a strictly genetic sense, she is her identical twin, and therefore her sister. Is the cloned person to treat as a mother a person who is her sister genetically? Or is she to treat as a sister one who decided to bring her into existence by replicating herself? The scenario seems hopelessly confusing. The natural bonds of mother-daughter and sistersibling (not to mention the troubling removal of any father from the picture), which most people today still recognize as vital for establishing a person’s identity and stability in life, are twisted beyond ordinary recognition. One of the revolting aspects of incest is the possibility that a person could become simultaneously the parent and grandparent (or, father and uncle, etc.) of a child, with all of the tragedy and confusion that such a scenario creates for the parties involved, especially for the child. Human cloning produces a scenario even more bizarre.

This is, of course, only one natural law argument among many that might be made in regard to cloning. But it gives some indication, I hope, that natural law arguments may provide some significant grounds for questioning, in the public square, the propriety of cloning a human being.

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participation in the public square. It is a way of showing to others and reminding ourselves that our social views are not simply private, Christian opinions, but ought to be relevant and applicable for all people. Appealing to natural law is, in short, a means for moving forward in social matters in a way that both treats all people with civility and respect and also seeks to advance truth and justice. ■

David VanDrunen is associate professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California). He is the author of Law and Custom: The Thought of Thomas Aquinas and the Future of the Common Law (Lang, 2003).

Speaking Of…

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rue law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and

everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its

Conclusion n this essay, I have suggested that as Christians go into the public square and take up their responsibility of interacting with unbelievers for the sake of civil peace and cultural progress, natural law provides an important and helpful resource. Christians certainly should not be overconfident in their appeals to natural law. Even when we make good natural law arguments, unbelievers will often reject them (as they reject arguments from Scripture).

Nevertheless, appealing to natural law allows us to interact with the world at large without acting as if being a Christian and submitting to Scripture is a prerequisite for

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enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment.

– Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) De re publica (On the Republic), 51 B.C.

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WHAT IS INTELLIGENT DESIGN?

by William A. Dembski

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ntelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? To see what’s at stake, consider Mount Rushmore. The evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design is direct—eyewitnesses saw the sculptor Gutzon Borglum spend the better part of his life designing and building this structure. But what if there were no direct evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design?

What if humans went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now?

In that case, what about this rock formation would provide convincing circumstantial evidence that it was due to a designing intelligence and not merely to wind and erosion? Designed objects like Mount Rushmore exhibit characteristic features or patterns that point to an intelligence. Such features or patterns constitute signs of intelligence. Proponents of intelligent design, known as design theorists, purport to study such signs formally, rigorously, and scientifically. Intelligent design may therefore be defined as the science that studies signs of intelligence.

Intelligent design is controversial because it purports to find signs of intelligence in nature, and specifically in biological systems. According to the evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, Darwin’s greatest achievement was to show how the organized complexity of organisms could be attained apart from a designing intelligence.

Intelligent design therefore directly challenges Darwinism and other naturalistic approaches to the origin and evolution of life.

The idea that an intrinsic intelligence or teleology inheres in and is expressed through nature has a long history and is embraced by many religious traditions.

The main difficulty with this idea since Darwin’s day, however, has been to discover a conceptually powerful formulation of design that can fruitfully advance science.

What has kept design outside the scientific mainstream since the rise of Darwinism has been the lack of precise methods for distinguishing intelligently caused objects from unintelligently caused ones.

For design to be a fruitful scientific concept, scientists have to be sure that they can reliably determine whether something is designed. Johannes Kepler, for instance, thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by purely material factors (like

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meteor impacts). This fear of falsely attributing something to design, only to have it overturned later, has hindered design from entering the scientific mainstream.

But design theorists argue that they now have formulated precise methods for discriminating designed from undesigned objects. These methods, they contend, enable them to avoid Kepler’s mistake and reliably locate design in biological systems.

As a theory of biological origins and development, intelligent design’s central claim is that only intelligent causes adequately explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable. To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well-defined methods that, based on observable features of the world, can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from undirected natural causes.

Many special sciences have already developed such methods for drawing this distinction—notably forensic science, cryptography, archeology, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Essential to all these methods is the ability to eliminate chance and necessity.

In determining whether biological organisms exhibit specified complexity, design theorists focus on identifiable systems (e.g., individual enzymes, metabolic pathways, and molecular machines). These systems are not only specified by their independent functional requirements but also exhibit a high degree of complexity.

In Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe connects specified complexity to biological design through his concept of irreducible complexity. Behe defines a system as irreducibly complex if it consists of several interrelated parts for which removing even one part renders the system’s basic function unrecoverable. For Behe, irreducible complexity is a sure indicator of design. One irreducibly complex biochemical system that Behe considers is the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is an acidpowered rotary motor with a whiplike tail that spins at twenty-thousand revolutions per minute and whose rotating motion enables a bacterium to navigate through its watery environment.

Behe shows that the intricate machinery in this molecular motor—including a rotor, a stator, O-rings, bushings, and a drive shaft—requires the coordinated interaction of approximately forty complex proteins and that the absence of any one of these proteins would result in the complete loss of motor function. Behe argues that the Darwinian mechanism faces grave obstacles in trying to account for such irreducibly complex systems. In my No Free Lunch, I show how Behe’s notion of irreducible complexity consti-

tutes a particular instance of specified complexity.

Once an essential constituent of an organism exhibits specified complexity, any design attributable to that constituent carries over to the organism as a whole. To attribute design to an organism one need not demonstrate that every aspect of the organism was designed.

Organisms, like all material objects, are products of history and thus subject to the buffeting of purely material factors. Automobiles, for instance, get old and exhibit the effects of corrosion, hail, and frictional forces. But that doesn’t make them any less designed. Likewise design theorists argue that organisms, though exhibiting the effects of history (and that includes Darwinian factors such as genetic mutations and natural selection), also include an ineliminable core that is designed.

Intelligent design’s main tie to religion is through the design argument. Perhaps the best-known design argument has been made by William Paley. Paley published his argument in 1802 in a book titled Natural Theology. The subtitle of that book is revealing: Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature.

Paley’s project was to examine features of the natural world (what he called “appearances of nature”) and from there draw conclusions about the existence and attributes of a designing intelligence responsible for those features (whom Paley identified with the God of Christianity).

According to Paley, if one finds a watch in a field (and thus lacks all knowledge of how the watch arose), the adaptation of the watch’s parts to telling time ensures that it is the product of an intelligence. So too, according to Paley, the marvelous adaptations of means to ends in organisms (like the intricacy of the human eye with its capacity for vision) ensure that organisms are the product of an intelligence. The theory of intelligent design updates Paley’s watchmaker argument in light of contemporary information theory and molecular biology, purporting to bring this argument squarely within science.

In arguing for the design of natural systems, intelligent design is more modest than the design arguments of natural theology. For natural theologians like Paley, the validity of the design argument did not depend on the fruitfulness of design-theoretic ideas for science but on the metaphysical and theological mileage one could get out of design. A natural theologian might point to nature and say, “Clearly, the designer of this ecosystem prized variety over neatness.” A design theorist attempting to do actual design-theoretic research on that ecosystem might reply, “Although that’s an intriguing theological possibility, as a design theorist I need to keep focused on the informational pathways capable of producing that variety.”

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant claimed that the most the design argument can establish is “an architect of the world who is constrained by the adaptability of the material in which he works, not a creator of the world to whose idea everything is subject.” Far from

rejecting the design argument, Kant objected to overextending it. For Kant, the design argument legitimately establishes an architect (that is, an intelligent cause whose contrivances are constrained by the materials that make up the world), but it can never establish a creator who originates the very materials that the architect then fashions.

Intelligent design is entirely consonant with this observation by Kant. Creation is always about the source of being of the world. Intelligent design, as the science that studies signs of intelligence, is about arrangements of preexisting materials that point to a designing intelligence. Creation and intelligent design are therefore quite different. One can have creation without intelligent design and intelligent design without creation. For instance, one can have a doctrine of creation in which God creates the world in such a way that nothing about the world points to design. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote a book titled The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Even if Dawkins is right about the universe revealing no evidence of design, it would not logically follow that it was not created. It is logically possible that God created a world that provides no evidence of design. On the other hand, it is logically possible that the world is full of signs of intelligence but was not created.

This was the ancient Stoic view, in which the world was eternal and uncreated, and yet a rational principle pervaded the world and produced marks of intelligence in it.

The implications of intelligent design for religious belief are profound. The rise of modern science led to a vigorous attack on all religions that treat purpose, intelligence, and wisdom as fundamental and irreducible features of reality. The high point of this attack came with Darwin’s theory of evolution. The central claim of Darwin’s theory is that an unguided material process (random variation and natural selection) could account for the emergence of all biological complexity and order.

In other words, Darwin appeared to show that the design in biology (and, by implication, in nature generally) was dispensable. By showing that design is indispensable to the scientific understanding of the natural world, intelligent design is reinvigorating the design argument and at the same time overturning the widespread misconception that the only tenable form of religious belief is one that treats purpose, intelligence, and wisdom as byproducts of unintelligent material processes.

William A. Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Science and Theology at Southern Seminary (Louisville, Kentucky) where he heads its Center for Theology and Science.

This article was adapted from “Intelligent Design” in the Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Lindsey Jones (Macmillan, forthcoming) and is used with the author’s permission.

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D O E S G O D B E L I E V E I N AT H E I S T S ?

Legal Evidence for the Truth of the Faith

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he apostle exhorts Christians to “be ready always that is of consequence to the determination of the to give an answer to everyone who asks you a action more probable or less probable than it would reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). be without the evidence.” Christians are therefore The word translated “answer” here is the Greek apologia, precisely on the right track when they defend their “defense,” and from it comes the name of the theologiposition in terms of the weight of factual evidence for cal discipline concerned with defending Christian truthChrist’s deity. A disputed question of religious truth claims: apologetics. must not be prejudged in a presuppositional manner: Through church history, apologists for the faith have no one can expect that judicial notice will be taken often relied on philosophical styles of reasoning to bolster for or against Christian truth, since “a judicially their efforts; thus Augustine depended heavily on Plato, noticed fact must be one not subject to reasonable and Aquinas borrowed extensively from Aristotle. With dispute.” The outcome of the case will depend, the decline of these classical philosophies and particularly rather, on evidential probability. And probability has since the rise of modern rationalism in the eighteenth cento do with the weight of evidence for the particular tury (Kant, Lessing, Hume), non-Christians have generalclaim at issue, without reference to general or collatly presumed that no meaningful defense of Christian faith eral considerations. Thus just as “evidence of a peris possible—that religion is, in the final analysis, only a son’s character or a trait of his character is not admisquestion of personal feeling— sible for the purpose of provand Christians themselves (the ing that he acted in conformso-called presuppositionalists, ity therewith on a particular Christians are therefore precisely existentialists, and pietists) have occasion,” so the nonon the right track when they often unwittingly aided and Christian will be prevented abetted such a presumption by from arguing against Christ’s defend their position in terms declaring that Christianity starts resurrection on the ground of the weight of factual evidence that regular events in generfrom its own presuppositional for Christ’s deity. faith experience and cannot al make a particular miracle either be proved or disproved by too “improbable” to considfactual evidence. er.

The law refuses to Worth emphasizing is the obscure concrete evidence of legal flavor of the Greek word apologia: the apostle conthe particular by the introduction of collateral genersciously employed a technical term of ancient Greek law, alities, for it recognizes that “there are too many difhaving reference to the answer given by a defendant ferences to insure that what holds true in one case before a tribunal. One should not therefore be surprised will apply in the other.” to discover that the Law of Evidence offers innumerable valuable insights for the defense of historic Christian faith.

2. “The common law system of proof,” writes Our expectations in this regard are particularly heightened McCormick in his standard treatise on evidence, “is when we consider that the evidential machinery of the exacting in its insistence upon the most reliable law has been developed, as the 1975 Federal Rules of sources of information. This policy is apparent in the Evidence state, “to the end that the truth may be ascerOpinion rule, the Hearsay rule, and the tained.” All societies, whether civilized or primitive, Documentary Originals rule. One of the earliest and require legal techniques for getting at the truth when dismost pervasive manifestations of this attitude is the putes arise, and these techniques are refined through rule requiring that “a witness who testifies to a fact experience until they reach a level of sophistication satiswhich can be perceived by the senses must have had fying to litigants who otherwise would breach the peace to an opportunity to observe, and must have actually settle their conflicts. Small wonder that philosopher observed the fact.” In strict conformity to these Stephen Toulmin argues that philosophical inquiry itself requirements, the Christian properly focuses attencould be considerably improved if it would look to legal tion on the New Testament documents relating to reasoning as a model. the life of Christ as the best evidence concerning him, Early Christianity based its case for divine truth on the since these can be shown to be primary sources— deity of Jesus Christ, and its claim to his deity on his reseither written by those, such as Matthew and John urrection from the dead (1 Cor. 15). The Law of Evidence who had immediate, firsthand, eyewitness contact well sustains this argumentation as will be seen from the with Jesus, or by others (Mark, Luke, Paul) who application of several specific evidential rules. were intimately acquainted with the original apostolic circle. Moreover, as Simon Greenleaf of 1. Decisions on questions of fact must be made by the Harvard, author of the nineteenth-century classic on trier of fact on the basis of the weight of relevant evievidence stressed, any common-law court would dence, defined by the Federal Rules as “evidence havfavor the New Testament writings with a presumping any tendency to make the existence of any fact tion of authenticity as ancient documents regular on M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 19

supporting a case “by showing the alternative to be in disprove the testimonial value of these apostolic books, striking contrast to the declared specific objective of not upon the Christian to build up support for documents the enterprise.” If the object of examining the primarysource documentary evialready having prima facie legal authenticity. dence for Christian claims is to determine what in fact their face and preserved through the centuries in a happened, one cannot arrive at an “explanation” of the place of natural custody. The burden of proof thus resurrection which contradicts what these documents rests upon the unbeliever to disprove the testimonihave to say about the historical circumstances and about al value of these apostolic books, not upon the the personalities and motivations of the people involved in Christian to build up support for documents already them. having prima facie legal authenticity.

And here, in contrast with Greco-Roman jurisprudence, we see that the Law of Evidence is not a self-serv3. Where direct evidence is not available, the law ing technique developed by common-law jurists in subtle allows circumstantial evidence, and also proof by res support of Christian theology! The fundamental canons of ipsa loquitur. The latter is often resorted to in neglievidence which we have employed in defense of biblical gence cases where no one directly observed the act in faith are found with remarkable consistency in all legal question but where, by process of elimination, only systems—from primitive to civilized, from ancient to modthe defendant was in a position to have done it. ern. Max Gluckman wrote of the Lozi people of northern Likewise, no one was present at the moment of Rhodesia: “The Lozi distinguish between different kinds of Christ’s resurrection, but the events surrounding it evidence as hearsay, circumstantial, and direct, and attach were testified to by careful eyewitnesses (Jesus was different degrees of cogency to these and different degrees in fact put to death by crucifixion; Jesus afterwards of credibility to various witnesses.” The ancient Persian made numerous, physical post-resurrection appearDigest of a Thousand Points of Law begins with a detailed ances over a forty-day period). chapter on the Law of Evidence, insisting, as does the common law, on “independent and convincing proof” to supRes ipsa loquitur in a typical negligence case: port allegations, and setting forth detailed criteria for dis1. Accident does not normally occur in the absence of tinguishing reliable from unreliable testimony (declaranegligence. tions against interest as opposed to self-serving declara2. Instrumentality causing injury was under the defentions, etc.). In Roman law, dant’s exclusive control.

3. Plaintiff did not himself contribute to the injury.

When the witnesses for the parties gave conflicting Therefore, defendant negligent: “the event speaks for testimony on any point, it was the duty of the judge, itself.” not to count the number on each side, but to consider which of them were entitled to the greatest credRes ipsa loquitur as applied to Christ’s resurrection: it, according to the well-known rule, “Testimonia pon1. Dead bodies do not leave tombs in the absence of deranda sunt, non numeranda.” It rarely happens that some agency effecting the removal. the evidence is so nicely balanced as not to prepon2. The tomb was under God’s exclusive control, for it derate on one side or the other. But questions of fact had been sealed, and Jesus, the sole occupant of it, may be supported and opposed by every degree of was dead. evidence, and sometimes by that degree of evidence 3. The Romans and the Jewish religious leaders did not of which the proper effect is to leave the mind in a contribute to the removal of the body (they had been state of doubt, or in an equipoise between two conresponsible for sealing and guarding the tomb to preclusions. Where such a case occurred, the Roman vent anyone from stealing the body), and the discilaw provided that the benefit of the doubt should be ples would not have stolen it, then prevaricated, and given to the defendant rather than to the plantiff. finally died for what they knew to be untrue.

Where unsatisfactory or bizarre evidential standards Therefore, only God was in a position to empty the tomb, have been developed in a society, these have generally which he did, as Jesus himself had predicted, by raising been due to religious influences of an unfortunate kind. him from the dead: “the event speaks for itself.”

Thus among the Muslims one finds not only severe defiThis reasoning process has close affinities with the ciencies in substantive law (e.g., the inferior legal position method of reductio ad absurdum, which Professor Daube has of women) but also sad procedural standards: shown to have been common in Greek and Roman law: One of the most serious limitations upon the practi-

The burden of proof thus rests upon the unbeliever to

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cal efficiency of the Shari’a courts lay in the rigid system of procedure and evidence, applicable both in civil and criminal cases, by which they were bound.

The burden of proof was strict, and the party who bore it, usually the plaintiff, was obliged to produce two male, adult, Muslim witnesses, whose moral integrity and religious probity were unimpeachable, to testify orally to their direct knowledge of the truth of his claim. If the plaintiff or prosecution failed to discharge this burden of proof the defendant or accused was offered the oath of denial. Properly sworn on the Qur’an, such an oath secured judgment in his favour; if he failed to take it, judgment would be given for the plaintiff or prosecution, provided, in some circumstances, this side in turn took the oath. Such a system of procedure and evidence may have reflected the religious idealism of the scholars: but it was largely because of the often impractical burden of proof that was imposed upon a plaintiff, and the corresponding ease with which unscrupulous defendants might avoid a civil or criminal liability which reason declared to exist, that the Shari’a courts proved an unsatisfactory organ for the administration of certain spheres of the law.

It is almost universally agreed that to solve disputes over truth questions in society, factual evidence—not mere sincerity—must carry the day. In the words of the preChristian Roman dramatist Plautus, Pluris est oculatus testis unus, quam auriti decerm: Qui audiunt, audita dicunt, qui vident, plane sciunt.

One eyewitness is worth more than ten purveyors of hearsay; Those who only hear about things say what they’ve heard, but those who see, know the score.

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including Law & Gospel (from which the present article has been taken in modified form), available from the Canadian Institute for Law, Theology and Public Policy (www.ciltpp.com).

In the preceding article, Dr. Montgomery cites the following sources or cases: J. W. Montgomery, Christianity for the Toughminded (1973); J. W. Montgomery, Faith Founded on Fact (1978); Fed. R Evid. 102; on the new Rules in general, see ALI-ABA Federal Rules of Evidence Resource Materials, with October 1975 Supplement (1975); S. E. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (1958); J. W. Montgomery, The Law Above the Law 84–90 (1975); Fed. R. Evid. 401; Prof. Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence (1898); Fed. R. Evid. 201; Caroline Products Co. v. McLaughlin, 365 Ill. 62; V. C. Ball, “The Moment of Truth: Probability Theory and Standards of Proof,” in Essays on Procedure and Evidence 84–107 (T. G. Roady and R. N. Covington ed., 1961); Fed R. Evid. 404; H. P. Chandler and S. D. Hirschl, “Evidence,” 11 American Law and Procedure 21 (1910, rev. ed. 1955); Prof. Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists, now reprinted in J. W. Montgomery, The Law Above the Law 91–140, 149–63 (1975); F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (5th ed. 1960); J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (1977); M. Shain, Res Ipsa Loquitur, Presumptions and Burden of Proof (1945); D. Daube, Roman Law: Linguistic, Social and Philosophical Aspects 180 (1969); J. W. Montgomery, History, Law and Christianity (2002); M. Gluckman, The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia 82 (1955); The Laws of the Ancient Persians pt. 1, 12, 26–27 (S. J. Bulsara ed., 1937); Lord Mackenzie, Studies in Roman Law, with Comparative Views of the Laws of France, England and Scotland 382 (7th ed., J. Kirkpatrick 1911); H. F. Jolowicz, Roman Foundations of Modern Law 102 (1957); N. J. Coulson, “Islamic Law,” in An Introduction to Legal Systems 67–68 (J. D. M. Derrett ed., 1968). N. J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law 124–27 (1964); Plautus, Truculentus Act ii, sc. 6, 11, 8–9 (our translation); C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (W. Hooper ed., 1970).

Christian faith, alone among the religious claims of history, is able to stand in the dock and be vindicated evidentially. For only Christianity rests its case on the divine life, sacrificial death, and miraculous resurrection of the Incarnate God—events witnessed to by those who had direct contact with them and who in consequence “knew the score” (Acts 1:1–3; 2 Pet. 1:16–18). May serious Christian believers—those concerned to bring the secularists of our day to the Cross of Christ—therefore employ the solid canons of evidence by which this truth can be effectively shown. May we never lose an opportunity to serve as advocate for the One who has himself promised to plead our cause before his heavenly Father. ■

Dr. John Warwick Montgomery presently serves as distinguished professor of apologetics and law at Trinity College and Theological Seminary (Newburgh, Indiana), and provost for its U.K. and European operations. He is the author of over fifty books, M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 21

Basic Apologetic Questions with William Cwirla, Michael Brown, Jason Stellman, and A. Craig Troxel How can I know that God exists?

Cwirla—We know things in a variety of ways. We know things empirically, the way we know a scientific fact.

For instance, we know that water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen because we can analyze water and literally take it apart. Since God can’t be measured or tested scientifically, we can’t know of God’s existence that way.

I’ve never been terribly impressed by the various “proofs” for the existence of God. All of them seem to lead to so much logical or philosophical arm wrestling, the God of logical necessities. I think these arguments are much more meaningful to believers than they are to skeptics.

We also know things inductively and retroductively, the way we know facts of history or the way a jury is convinced of a crime “beyond a reasonable doubt” by the evidence. The Apostle Paul writes that the pagans, who do not have the revealed Word, can still know something about God. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:19–20). The Divine Suspect left his fingerprints.

Here, science has unwittingly done a decent job dusting for divine fingerprints. The finely-tuned order of the universe in a delicate balance of universal physical constants, the apparent rarity of Earth as a life-sustaining planet, the wonderful complexity of biological systems, and the intricacies of the genetic code all make a strong case for the existence of God. Like any circumstantial evidence case, there are always alternative explanations, so one can never be absolutely certain in knowing God this way, only reasonably certain.

This sort of natural knowledge of God is also quite limited. We can know of his eternal power and deity, namely that God transcends time and space and that he is omnipotent and omniscient and whatever other “omni” you can think of, but we can’t know anything about his character or person. That must ultimately be revealed to us.

To know Jesus Christ is to know God. He is the fullness of the Deity dwelling among us bodily. This kind of knowing is different from knowing facts about God or 2 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

studying God the way one studies biology or chemistry.

This is knowing in the biblical use of that word, as in entering into a relationship with someone. “This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

The Incarnation is the grand revelation of God who’s been at work in, with, and under the created order from the beginning. He shows his face in the face of the Son of the Virgin, the Man of the Cross. If you want to know God, you need to learn from Jesus, the Son of God, the Word made flesh. You can be as certain of the existence of God as you are certain of the existence of the historic figure named Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God, and offered a variety of signs, culminating in his own predicted death and resurrection.

Brown—We know that God exists because he has revealed himself to us. He has done this in two ways: through creation (which we call his general revelation) and Scripture (which we call his special revelation).

Many people try to avoid the latter, but no one can escape the former. General revelation is something that all people experience. It is, as Article 2 of The Belgic Confession puts it, “before our eyes as a most beautiful book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many letters leading us to perceive clearly the invisible things of God.” Like a book that tells a story, nature communicates a message—one that is understood by all people irrespective of their location, language, or education. This is precisely what David says in Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps. 19:1–4a).

Every day, nature reveals to the world the existence of its Creator. The rising of the sun and the shining of the stars say unequivocally to mankind: You are a creature living in the Creator’s universe. This, as Paul says in Romans 1:19–20, leaves people without excuse: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Man cannot accuse God of not revealing himself. No one will ever be able to say, You didn’t give me enough evidence, God; I didn’t know that you existed! The fact is that every person knows God exists. Every human being knows something about God’s eternal power and deity by what is clearly perceived in nature. Moreover, as Paul points out in Romans 2:14–15, God has planted in the soul of every human being a basic awareness of God and his law. Calvin called this the sensus divinitatis— an elementary, intuitive perception of God’s existence.

Consequently, before a Christian even opens her mouth to give an argument for the existence of God, the unbeliever already knows that God exists. The unbeliever’s problem is not that he doesn’t know this, but that he hates and suppresses what he already knows to be true. This, according to Paul, is the indictment that God gives to the entire human race when he says: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). Thus, “How can I know God exists?” is the wrong question.

The question that the unbeliever needs to ask is, “How can I be saved from the wrath of God?” Stellman—This is such a profound question, but what makes it especially interesting is the fact that the Bible (which is the primary source of our knowledge about God) never actually argues for his existence. Instead, it presupposes it with the opening words of its first book, Genesis: “In the beginning, God… ” To those who doubt his existence, Psalm 14 just responds, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” But when you think about it, it shouldn’t be that surprising that the existence of God is considered to be as central and basic as the Bible implies. After all, we all hold beliefs for which we have no proof and for which we never think to argue (such as the belief that truthfulness is better than lying, or that it is wrong to torture children for fun). Now I’m not saying that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, it certainly can, but our belief in him is only strengthened by such evidence, it is not founded on it.

Though Scripture, as I said, doesn’t furnish us with arguments for God’s existence, it does appeal to his handiwork as a demonstration of his power and wisdom. Speaking of pagan idolaters, Paul insisted that they “knew God” and had witnessed “his eternal power and divine nature” by observing the wonders of creation. Yet because of the darkness of their hearts men refuse to glorify him, and choose rather to serve creatures instead of the Creator. Man’s “atheism,” therefore, is a farce. His “intellectual doubt” is often a moral refusal to admit what his eyes and heart plainly testify— that there is a God to whom he is accountable.

When you look at it this way, I guess you could turn the issue on its head and argue that God doesn’t believe in atheists.

Troxel—Many people in the West respond to the reality of religious pluralism by affirming that all religions are really the same. But one problem with such a viewpoint is that it seeks to domesticate religions by stripping them of all that is unique about them. Certain beliefs must be sacrificed in order to amalgamate religions into parallel or analogous ways to God. The distinctive elements of the various religions are puréed into one flavor—and by an “outsider”—who is an expert and, of course, has our best interest in mind. As Steve Turner puts it tongue-incheek, “We believe that religions are basically the same. …They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”

The religion that is least conducive to such reductionism is Christianity, because the person who is least tamable is Christ. You cannot begin to treat Christ as merely a prophet or wise teacher (like Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, or Buddha). Yet in order to assert that the Christian faith is just another brand or label of one allpurpose universal religion, you must essentially gut the Christian faith of all its content, much in the same way that a modern taxidermist removes all of a fish so that hardly anything remains when it is mounted on the wall.

For example, in order to make his point, John Hicks argued in God Has Many Names that Jesus never designated himself as Messiah, never thought of himself as divine, and that the incarnation is a mythical idea applied to Jesus. Jesus gets reduced to being our “saving point of contact” with God. This is a huge distortion of Jesus’ declaration to be “the way, the truth and the life” and that people should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Emphasizing this truth, and the truth of his substitutionary death, resurrection from the dead, and future return is not a static or freeze-dried view of truth. It is the truth that set us free.

In his answer, Dr. Troxel has quoted from Steve Turner, Up To Date (Lion, 1982), p. 138. Dr. Troxel’s citation of John Hicks is taken from John Hick’s God Has Many Names (Westminster, 1982), pp. 73–75.

How can I know that the Bible is true?

Cwirla—This is much like the first question. There is sufficient evidence from the field of archaeology to show that the Bible is historically quite accurate. Even skeptical archaeologists have learned to take the biblical narrative at face value. Of course, this doesn’t prove the Bible to be “true,” only accurate in historic details. But that’s a good place to begin.

The New Testament documents are reliable, firstsource historic documents written by eyewitnesses to a unique event history—the incarnation of the Son of God M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 23

culminating in his death and resurrection. The manuscript evidence gives us a reliable text, far more reliable than any other text from antiquity.

The Gospels are a form of historical narrative. Luke mentions the fact that he did historical research prior to writing his account (Luke 1:1–4). The claim of all these writers is that Jesus died on a cross and rose bodily from the dead three days later. Paul mentions that Jesus was seen risen from the dead by more than five hundred eyewitnesses (1 Cor. 15:6) in addition to the apostles, many of whom went to their death insisting they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. These eyewitnesses had everything to lose and nothing to gain for claiming Jesus was risen. In fact, the religious and political authorities had a vested interest in the contrary, so their testimony was given in view of hostile cross-examination.

This same dead and risen Jesus predicted his own death and resurrection three times before it happened.

As baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” Jesus did it. For that reason, we need to take seriously what Jesus says. He says that the Old Testament Scriptures speak of him and teach the way of eternal life (John 5:39). He says that the Scriptures teach his death and resurrection and of repentance and forgiveness in his name (Luke 24:45–47). He promised that his apostles would receive the Holy Spirit who would bring to mind all that he had taught and would guide them into all truth (John 14:26; 16;13). The Apostle Paul writes that the Old Testament Scriptures are the very “breath of God” (2 Tim. 3:16), and Peter similarly writes that the prophets spoke not on their own initiative but as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21).

The lynchpin for the veracity of the Scriptures is the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not only the central teaching, it is also the foundation to the truth claims of the Scriptures. If Christ is not raised, then everything that is written in the Bible is suspect. But Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate who died and rose from the dead, points us to the Scriptures which he claims reliably speak concerning himself.

Stellman—The Westminster Confession of Faith I.4 states that the authority of Scripture does not depend on the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God. In both the Old and New Testaments the Bible declares itself to be the very Word of God: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether” (Ps. 19:7–9); “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).

But accepting Scripture’s self-testimony is not simply random, circular reasoning; it’s not something we do in 2 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

spite of manifold evidence to the contrary (like believing that the Book of Mormon is true because we get a “burning in our bosom” when we read it). Rather, the Bible’s own internal evidence—such as “the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof” (WCF I.5)—bears witness to its truthfulness and authority.

But as with the existence of God, believing the Bible’s message is not something we can do without the work of the Holy Spirit within us. We are not passive, neutral observers who weigh the evidence in some objective, disinterested way. Rather, we are, by nature, inclined to evil and hostile to divine things. That’s why all the rational arguments in the world will not convince us to bow before our Creator and submit to his message. Only the power of the Spirit working through the Word can accomplish that.

How can God exist when there is so much evil and pain in the world?

Cwirla—The problem of suffering (theodicy) is really a matter of the clay critiquing the work of the potter. The question lays a moral problem at God’s feet and then questions the existence of God. “Evil” implies “good” and our ability to discern the difference. Without an external objective standard of good and evil, we would have no ability to speak of evil in the world. Therefore, to call the existence of God into question on account of the presence of evil in the world presupposes a higher standard of the good against which to judge what is and isn’t evil.

The question presupposes that God should run the universe according to our set of rules. If we were God, we wouldn’t permit the presence of evil in the world.

This is an anthropocentric view of the universe, as though everything that causes us suffering is necessarily evil.

The question fails to take into account the presence of sin and its cosmic effects. The fall of Adam not only plunged humanity into sin, it also disrupted the inherent harmony of the created order (Rom. 8:18–25). Pain and suffering exists because the inherent harmony of creation has been messed up by sin. Even when human beings don’t have a direct hand in the cause of suffering, say an earthquake or a hurricane, it is nevertheless due to the disruption of creation’s order by sin.

So what is God to do? One thing he doesn’t do, at least on a regular basis, is intervene. He doesn’t block bullets from finding their targets; he doesn’t turn hurri-

canes away from cities; he doesn’t necessarily keep a meteor from plummeting through the roof of your house. Instead, he restores order to the cosmos by reconciling all things to himself in the death of his Son Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:18–19) and bringing all things together under a new Head of creation (Eph. 1:10). In Christ, the God who suffers, “evil” and pain are ultimately employed for good, trumped by the all-reconciling death of Jesus.

We run into trouble with the question of evil and suffering when we attempt to address it apart from the cross of Jesus Christ. Then the discussion becomes a philosophical abstraction, pitting God’s mercy and love against his omniscience and power. The cross of Jesus silences these speculations. Here the Innocent One suffers on behalf of guilty humanity; here God himself bears the ultimate injustice and evil in his own crucifixion which he makes the reconciliation of all things.

Jesus Christ, the second Adam and the new Head of creation, sets the disordered universe back into order by his own dying and rising, gathering all things into his death (John 12:32).

In Christ, there is no problem of evil and suffering, for “in all things God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). The existence of God is not negated by the presence of evil. Rather, the presence of evil demonstrates the cosmic reality of sin, ultimately reconciled once and for all in the death of Jesus Christ.

Brown—First, we must understand that God did not create the world evil. The Bible reveals to us that God made all things good. He created humans in true righteousness and holiness. He crowned them with glory and honor and gave them dominion over the works of his hands. Violence, sorrow, and death were not part of man’s original experience; he only knew the blessing of life in God’s good earth. It was not until Adam sinned against God and broke the covenant into which he was placed that the horror of evil, pain, and death came to be a regular part of existence in this world. As a result of the fall, God could have judged the world immediately and plunged all of mankind into the eternal punishment we rightly deserve. It is only because of his great grace that he chose to redeem a people out of this fallen and dark world. That is why this age of suffering continues: God is gathering in his elect until the Last Day. We have the confidence that God is in fact doing this because he sent Christ his Son “who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4a).

Second, we must understand that while this present evil age continues, God oversees all things by his providence, that is, his constant interaction and intervention with the world he has made. He not only preserves his creatures, but is directing everything to its appointed end, “work[ing] all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11b). He even uses the evil acts of men for

his own purpose and glory. Yet, he does so while remaining free from and the just judge of evil. It is this understanding of providence that led Joseph to declare to his brothers who sinned against him: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20a).

What this shows us is that God is both good and sovereign. We are comforted to know that he is always in control and that, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “whatever evil he sends upon me in this vale of tears he will turn to my good; for he is able to do, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father” (Q. 26).

Finally, we must understand that the story is not over.

Just as this world was once free from evil and pain in the beginning, so shall it be again when the King returns.

Paradise lost will be paradise restored, only infinitely greater. This universe will be resurrected to fit the glory of the age to come—an age in which God has promised to dwell with his people and forever keep them from pain, suffering, and evil. As we read in the final chapters of the Bible: “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3b–4).

Stellman—One philosopher claimed that there are many arguments against God’s existence, but this is the only good one! There are a couple ways to approach this question. But before I start apologizing on God’s behalf and defending his actions, we must remember who it is we’re talking about here: the all wise, all powerful, good, and loving God. We need to be reminded of this because our sinful temptation is to think that God has gotten himself stuck in a corner and we need to reason him out of it. But this is the height of arrogance. “Let God be true,” Paul insisted, “and every man a liar.” God doesn’t need us to get him off the hook! This is crucial to remember: There’s no hook on which God can get stuck from which we must rescue him. If there is a hook, it is we who are stuck on it, not God. C. S. Lewis used to object to God’s existence for this same reason (all the evil in the world). But then he realized something that many today have never wrestled with: How do I know things are evil or bad? His conclusion was that, in order to be able to recognize evil, he must have some standard of “good” against which he measures everything else. To use his illustration, one cannot recognize a crooked line unless he first has some concept of a straight one. But if there is no God, the very objection to evil loses its force, for if the universe is nothing but the result of random chance, then evil could never be recognized as such.

So that leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that there is a God, and this God allows (and in some way ordains) that evil things occur. What do we do with M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 25

this? I think it is at this point that eschatology becomes very practical. The story into which we have been written is not just a tale about a Shepherd whose sheep got lost and remained that way. Rather, the Christian story is about a God who went to such great lengths to redeem his fallen ones that he sent his own Son to live, die, and rise again for them. Though we are still living in a period of delay, the promise remains that this same Lord Jesus will descend from heaven and put all things right.

To Adam it seemed as if Paradise was lost. To us, Paradise feels postponed (though we presently experience it in part). But from God’s perspective and according to his testimony, Paradise has been regained, and the day will come when a new heaven and new earth will descend, and the former things—such as evil and pain— will be remembered no more.

So my point is this: the problem of evil cannot be abstracted from the rest of the story God is telling and considered on its own. All good drama needs a point of crisis, for without this the ending doesn’t appear nearly as glorious.

I think all paths lead to God. Cwirla—When people say things like that, I always like to ask, “On what basis do you think that? What evidence can you put forward that this statement is true?”

It is true that all religious paths, save one, lead to the same place, but that place isn’t God. All religions, save one, hold that you must work your way to God, whether by your creeds, your conduct, or your worship.

This is essentially the religion of the Law, something that all religions, save one, have in common.

The statement presupposes that we are on a search for God, much like a hiking trip through the mountains, and whether we take the high road or the low, we will all ultimately wind up in the same place. Buddhism essentially works this way, and even a surprising number of Christians have been caught up into believing this notion that all paths lead to God as long as you sincerely follow your chosen path.

The path is not ours to define but God’s. Jesus pointed out that the way to destruction is broad, and no one has trouble finding that road, while the way to life is exceedingly narrow, and those who find it are few (Matt. 7:13–14). Christianity is the only religion that is really a non-religion, in the sense that we don’t work to God but God comes all the way to us. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4–6). God in Christ does it all.

The narrow door Jesus was speaking of is the narrow door of his own death. We would not seek this door on 2 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

our own, much less find it. Who in their right minds would construct a religion out of an all-sufficient, allatoning sacrificial death of the Son of God in which the sinner is justified before God? To the wisdom of the world, this is utter nonsense, not to mention bad for morality in general. That’s why from start to finish, God must do the work of salvation for us. We would not have it this way on our own.

As with everything else in Christianity, it all hangs on the death and resurrection of Jesus. While it is theoretically possible that there are other ways for a sinner to stand justified before God, God has not revealed any.

Instead, he sent his only begotten Son who claimed to be the only way to the Father (John 14:6). On its own, that might be an outrageous example of hubris on the part of Jesus. But then, he’s the only One who died and rose bodily from the dead. We’re going to have to take his word on that one.

Stellman—Well, in a certain sense it is true that all paths lead to God. The Bible teaches that all people, great and small, rich and poor, will stand before their Maker. The problem isn’t getting to God, it’s being accepted by him.

Many today feel that God will happily receive all who stand before him with a smile and a warm hug (R. C. Sproul jokingly calls this view “Justification by Death”).

But if we take a few moments to consider who this God is, it becomes necessary to reevaluate our position and question our confidence.

Let’s use the realm of civic justice as an illustration.

Suppose there were a judge in a certain town who was known for being an accepting, gregarious fellow in private, and his magnanimous personality spilled over into his work. So when thieves, murderers, and kidnappers stand before him, he just can’t help but love them and let them off with a small slap on the wrist. If this were to happen over and over, the town would rise up and demand justice, wouldn’t they? And rightly so. We all have an inherent sense of right and wrong (which really flares up when we’re the ones wronged!) which tells us that criminals should be punished.

But whatever sense of justice and fairness we share as humans beings is there because we have been made in God’s image. If we think evil should be punished, how much more true is this when we consider God and his standards, his holiness, and his judgment? God is infinitely more pure, just, and offended at sin than we, and therefore his very nature demands that sinners be punished for their actions.

The good news, of course, is that God is also infinitely more gracious and merciful than we, and for this reason he has sent his Son into the world to walk in our shoes, live the life we have failed to live, and die the death that our sins demand. So though it is true that “all paths lead to God,” it is also true that only one of those paths leads to forgiveness and blessing. All others lead to eternal destruction.

How can Jesus be the only way?

Cwirla—This question is similar to the previous one. At issue is the “scandal of particularity,” that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and that “no one comes to the Father except by him” (John 14:6). Statements like these would be hubris at best, insanity at worst, except for the fact that Jesus died on a cross and bodily rose from the dead.

This is why the Apostle Paul makes the bodily resurrection of Jesus as an historic fact the lynchpin of his apologetic. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). If Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead, we could not be sure of any of his claims or the claims of his apostles. They could easily be the work of madmen or ambitious religious zealots.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus, an historic fact established by the testimony of eyewitnesses who saw him, touched him, heard him, ate with him, validates Jesus’ claim to be the way, the truth, and the life.

The Buddha didn’t rise from the dead; Mohammed didn’t rise from the dead. No one else but Jesus died and rose. This means we have to take all of his claims seriously, or we will be living in denial of a plain fact of history.

What often lies behind this question is failure to apprehend the paradox that salvation in Christ is both inclusive and exclusive at the same time, and so people charge God with being “unfair.” Jesus is the inclusive Savior of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who drew all into his death when he was lifted up on the cross. “He is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). At the same time, Jesus is exclusively the Savior of the world; the world has no other Savior because the world has no other death that atones for sin.

Brown—The Bible is very clear about the exclusivity of Christianity. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The apostles subsequently preached this same message: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). But this is precisely what many people in our culture find so scandalous and offensive about Christianity. An objector will often ask, “But isn’t God pleased with the person who lives a good, moral life and sincerely tries to do what is right even if he doesn’t come to God through Jesus Christ? What happens to that person when he dies?”

The answer, according to Scripture, is very simple: the person who truly lives a good and moral life does not need to come to God through Christ at all. A good person is in no danger of God’s judgment and needs no Savior. He has nothing to worry about; when he dies he will go directly to heaven on his own merit.

But the question is not what happens to good people when they die; rather, the question is: What happens to guilty people when they die? The problem is that the standard of goodness and morality is not our own, but God’s, and he demands perfection! Says Paul in Romans 2:13: “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law.” This is something that only Christ has achieved. No one except Jesus has lived a good and moral life that is acceptable to God. This is Paul’s whole argument in Romans 1:18–3:20, namely, that everyone has sinned against God and the whole world is under his wrath. Thus, there are no good people. Our own righteous deeds are not good enough for a holy God who must, by his very nature, demand a righteousness as good as his own. This is what makes Christ the only way to salvation: he is the only true doer of the law. He is the only one who has kept the law perfectly, satisfying all its demands for those who believe (see Rom. 8:1–4).

Still, one might object: But if Jesus is the only way, what about the natives in the deep jungles of South America who have never heard of Jesus? How can God judge people for rejecting Jesus if they have never heard of Jesus?

Again, the biblical answer is rather simple. God will not and cannot punish someone for rejecting Christ who has never heard of Christ. That would be unjust and there is no injustice in God. A person is not condemned for rejecting Jesus of whom they have never heard.

Rather, they are condemned for rejecting the Father who has made himself clear to the whole world (see Rom. 1:19–20).

Stellman—It is certainly true that a really good answer to a question that no one is asking will still fall flat.

Appreciating the fact that Jesus is God’s only solution demands that we recognize the problem.

If our problem were that we were a bit confused and in need of some practical guidance and advice, then the claim that “Jesus is the only way” would be quite arrogant. After all, plenty of men and women throughout history have offered profound insight into the various problems their generations faced. Or if our problem were that we were somewhat wayward and misdirected, and needed some inspiring figure to put spring and purpose back into our steps, then to say that “Jesus is the only way” would, again, appear silly. History has no lack of powerful and charismatic figures whose influence has been incalculable. We don’t need Jesus to gain practical tips for living or to find a magnetic personality to inspire us to better ourselves.

But there is something we do need him for: righteousness. It is not happiness, practical wisdom, or sufficient inspiration that man lacks, but righteousness. The Bible says, “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death” (Prov. 11:4). Paul wrote that his hope of heaven was based on the fact that he did M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 27

not trust in “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil.

3:9). It is our lack of righteousness and our failure to keep God’s law that will be glaringly brought to the fore on the day of judgment, and when this occurs, all the self-help gurus and witty and profound sages in the world will be of no avail.

This is why Jesus is the only way. As God and Man he was uniquely qualified to stand as Mediator between these two estranged parties and make reconciliation by his blood. He fulfilled all of our covenant obligations, and then took upon himself the covenant curse that we deserve to incur. These are very unique claims, but such a One is necessary if fallen man is ever to be redeemed. When we see the problem as God presents it in his Word, the claim that Jesus is the only solution ceases to sound arrogant, but becomes our only hope in life and death.

Without Excuse (continued from page 7) Christian”—that is, the person who, apart from explicit faith in Christ, shows that he or she is nevertheless united to Christ by a positive response to revelation through good works. For Paul, such a person is not even a hypothetical possibility, since by nature we do the same thing with revelation every time we encounter it: suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Paul’s treatment here early in Romans also sheds light on the second question: How much does one have to know to be saved? As he will argue in chapter 10, faith does not climb up to God or well up from within but comes to us from the outside, by the preaching of the gospel. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” which messengers bring (10:17). The thing to do in this case is to reverse the spotlight, taking it off of ourselves and our faith and putting it back on Christ.

We are not God and we do not have any list of propositions in scripture to which assent is required in order to qualify as saving faith. Although we have plenty of propositions about the person and work of Christ, these merely serve to give definition to the person in whom we place our trust. It is trust in Christ, not the number of true propositions we hold, that is the empty hand that receives 2 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

William Cwirla is pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, California.

Michael Brown is pastor of Christ United Reformed Church in Santee, California.

Jason Stellman is pastor of Exile Presbyterian Church in Woodinville, Washington.

A. Craig Troxel is pastor of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and lecturer in systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

the treasures of God’s kingdom. We may hold doctrines that, if taken to their logical conclusion, would obscure or even deny the gospel, yet by a “felicitous inconsistency,” as our older theologians expressed it, embrace Christ and all his benefits. Every believer is filled with conflicting beliefs, doubts, experiences, expectations, and convictions that would conquer and extinguish faith if it were not for God’s persevering grace.

In a certain sense, ironic as it may seem, many at the extreme ends of “inclusivism” and “exclusivism” focus on information. Either the Buddhist is exonerated or the Arminian is condemned for lack of information. However, as we can infer from Paul’s argument, both approaches reflect a type of works-righteousness. All people, including Christians, are condemned by the law, but the good news is that God has found a way to justify any and every guilty person by Jesus Christ, through faith in him. In fact, it may well be that the summary of Paul’s main argument throughout this letter is to be found in chapter 11: “For God has committed them all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all” (v. 32). ■

Michael Horton is professor of apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

Where Do We Start?

A Conversation about Apologetics with W. Robert Godfrey, R.C. Sproul, and Rod Rosenbladt MR: Our objective in this conversation is to consider apologetics, which is essentially a defense of the faith as a courtroom attorney would present it. Scripture exhorts us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have to those who ask. Traditionally there have been three basic positions within mainstream Evangelicalism—especially in the last one hundred years—with respect to how we should reach out to non-Christians. Those three positions are represented in this conversation by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary California, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, and Dr. R. C. Sproul, chairman of Ligonier Ministries.

Dr. Godfrey, would you open our discussion by outlining presuppositionalism for us?

WRG: The basic position of presuppositionalism is that no one comes to any question neutrally, that presuppositions stemming from a variety of religious points of view have to be taken very seriously in any kind of communication, and that we do not approach any question related to the Scripture and the gospel as if it were in doubt. Instead, it is the certain revelation of our God and on the basis of that certain revelation we carry out our defense of the faith.

MR: Dr. Sproul, classical apologetics is the position which you have defended, especially in the book you wrote with Art Lindsley and John Gerstner, Classical Apologetics. Would you explain that position?

RCS: We certainly begin with broad areas of agreement with the other two schools represented here. For example, we believe that there are necessary epistemological presuppositions that human beings share.

MR: What do you mean by “epistemological”?

RCS: I mean that, in terms of the necessary assumptions for knowledge—such things as the law of non-contradiction and the law of causality—we have much common ground. We all assume the basic reliability of sense perception; we know, too, that there are limitations to our objectivity because of the old subject/object problem; and we also all agree that when we are engaged in dialogue in the defense of the faith with the skeptic or

the unbeliever, we are not prepared to surrender that which is precious to us and that of which we are convinced.

But we do have a debate about the fundamental question of whether the existence of God is something that is presupposed in the argument, or it is something we have the burden to prove rationally and empirically.

In contrast to presuppositionalism, classical apologetics generally believes it has the burden to demonstrate the existence of God, and we do this by using the classical proofs. There is a different set of criteria by which classical apologetics is distinguished from evidentialism.

MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, could you elaborate on the evidentialist position?

RR: Basically, the evidentialist is willing to acknowledge that there are certain heuristic presuppositions we all make, and we should acknowledge that we make them. But, he wants to keep those as minimal as possible and as methodological as possible. The emphasis in evidentialism is to work from the facts to a conclusion, and, as Bishop Joseph Butler (an Anglican moral philosopher, 1692-1752) said, it is going to be probabilistic in the way that it is done. We will tend to start with Christ as God and work backwards to God, though if you press an evidentialist and he has to use the classical proofs, he’ll do it. But we tend to argue from fulfilled prophecy and miracle—particularly the Resurrection of Christ from the dead—that the soundest conclusion to M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 29

example, said that one of the values of apologetics is to stop the mouths of the deep breath, and take a leap of faith into the dark. obstreperous.

Thus, we work at it for pre-evangelisHe calls people out of the dark and into the light— tic purposes, because we ask people to crucify don’t the primary light being the self-revelation of God their minds. Christ doesn’t ask you to close your eyes, that we all agree is there. take a deep breath, and take a leap of faith into the dark. make from the facts is that Jesus was Christ and God. He calls people out of the dark and into the light—the That does not mean, of course, that a person will primary light being the self-revelation of God that we all become a Christian, but it does mean that he can come agree is there. to the conclusion, based on facts, that the claims of Additionally, though, I think the most significant Christ describe states of affairs which prevailed. value of apologetics is not just pre-evangelism, but the support of the Christian from the avalanche of skeptiMR: Dr. Godfrey, as a presuppositionalist, what is your cism and criticism. The devil, the enemy, is saying, “You great concern about those who are not presuppositionhave to stop being rational, you have to stop being scialist in their apologetics? entific, you have to stop using your mind and your senses and your analytical skills. Just take this leap of faith.”

WRG: Our general orientation is that we are concerned That intimidates Christians, and an intimidated not to grant a prereligious neutrality to the investigation Christian in many ways is a paralyzed one. So, if the of evidence. We are committed to the notion that in the enemy can quench the bold proclamation and witness of apologetic process we must recognize clearly the strong the believer, he’s made tremendous progress. Thus, one religious convictions and presuppositions that anyone of the most important levels of apologetics is to be a supbrings to such a discussion—whether they are Christian port system. When we answer the critic, explaining presuppositions, on the one hand, or non-Christian prewhy we believe what we believe, we are also saying to suppositions, on the other. We are willing and eager to the Christian, “Hey, there is a reason for the hope that is look at and discuss evidence, but evidence and facts can within you, and God has given abundant proofs of the never be seen as brute facts or uninterpreted facts. They Christ that we serve, and so on.” are always interpreted in the light of certain presuppositions and religious commitments, and to fail to recognize MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, does the evidentialist differ on this that implies a neutrality in relation to basic religious point? Does the evidentialist think that a person can be questions that should not be granted. swayed into the kingdom by amassing evidence upon evidence? Is there a point at which one additional piece MR: Drs. Sproul and Rosenbladt, what about that? Can of evidence becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s an unbeliever come to what are called “brute facts” and back, and suddenly the skeptic is born again because just sort of “bump into them,” or are all facts interpretthere was that one additional piece of evidence? ed through a particular presuppositional grid?

RR: No, and unfortunately, there are many times when RCS: The critique of alternate systems to the fullythat is the way the evidentialist position is characterized. orbed theism we see in Christianity is part of the great We will always attribute conversion to the sovereign strength of presuppositionalism. Additionally, because work of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who are Lutherans presuppositionalism stands so squarely in the Reformed use means of grace language here. Those means might tradition, it has a clear commitment to the ideas that be the means the Spirit uses, but it is finally always the God has clearly revealed himself to every human being supernatural activity of the Spirit through the proclama(as Paul teaches so manifestly in Romans 1), and that tion of the gospel, period. God converts. the fallen, corrupted man has a mind that has been capWe will, nonetheless, hold to brute facts. Our paraltured and held captive by sin. We certainly agree with lel will be with science and we will seek to do a minimal all of our hearts that nobody comes to this question from amount of analysis of the motives or of the ontology of a perspective of neutrality. the fallen mind. Evidentialists believe that somebody Yet, at the same time, we believe that the arguments can (through arguments from fulfilled prophecy in mirfor the existence of God are objectively compelling. This acle and particularly to the resurrection) come to the does not mean, though, that we think the evidence will conclusion that Jesus was in fact the promised Christ convert anybody. The Reformed and Lutherans don’t and that his promises are true because he is God. This believe that the evidence converts people. Calvin, for does not mean that they will necessarily become

Christ doesn’t ask you to close your eyes, take a

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Christians. The will is mixed in here, and if the person does become a Christian, then it was God the Holy Spirit who accomplished that.

We do not believe it is inconsistent to believe, at one and the same time, that God converts the will, and that brute facts can be defended as open to all human minds.

Our most common parallel is with engineering or science, with the belief that knowledge can be had of something in an objective way, and that religious facts are no different from nonreligious facts. If when Quirinius was governor of Syria, God became man and as John said, gave evidence of this—that he was who he said he was—then the distinction between “religious facts” and “non-religious facts” is gone. That is, when Christ became flesh, the evidence was made available to believer and unbeliever alike.

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RCS: Certainly that can happen, but I think that argument is overstated. Look, for example, at the Reformed tradition. We have a dispute about what is the most consistent, biblical-theological method of apologetics. Is it presuppositional? Is it the classical approach? But we all consider this an intramural debate among ourselves.

If it did take up all our time and we weren’t engaged in the actual business of apologetics, that would be a scandal. I spend a whole lot of my waking hours speaking and writing in defense of Christianity from a classical model. And then there are the evidentialists…

You know, we have not distinguished among the different kinds of evidentialists, which might be helpful.

Because there are some evidentialists who believe you can “evidence” a person into a converted state...

MR: Those are Arminians.

MR: Dr. Godfrey, does the presuppositionalist deny that the resurrection is a public event? Is this only accessible through the eyes of faith as an historical event? Where does all of this talk about evidences fit?

WRG: The presuppositionalist believes that there is real history, there are real facts, and there is real objectivity, but we are also concerned always to remember in the conversation that the unbeliever, as Romans 1 says, suppresses the truth in unbelief and that therefore one can’t assume that this unbeliever is a perfectly neutral evaluator of these facts. Instead, he comes to evidence with a suppressing attitude towards the truth as it is in Christ.

But that is not to say that the use of evidence becomes irrelevant, because we do still need to answer his assault on the gospel. We need to answer his honest questions about the gospel. As such, there are many points, I think, where we would agree with much of the work done by classical or evidentialist apologetics in presenting the evidence that supports the case of Christianity.

We don’t see commitment to Christianity as something irrational. There are abundant reasons to be a Christian.

The problem is that those reasons are suppressed and warped by the unbeliever, and that always must be kept in mind in the apologetic process.

MR: One of the questions people often ask of confessional Lutherans and Calvinists is: “You sort of academic types, you Lutherans and Calvinists, are people who talk a lot about this book, that book, this author, and that author. You talk a lot about theories, but what about the people out there who actually need to hear some kind of defense of the Christian faith. They need to come in contact with Christianity somehow, but instead of finding some way of actually carrying out the apologetic task, aren’t you guys always just arguing amongst yourselves?” Do you think that this is a valid criticism? Do you think that there is so much reflection on the mechanics of apologetics that we don’t actually engage in reaching the lost world?

RCS: Yes, that’s exactly right. Those of us with a classical viewpoint agree that evidence is very important.

We also agree that empirical evidence is “probabilistic.”

Now that is one of the things that drives the presuppositionalists crazy. They say, “Wait a minute. We don’t want to go out and tell people that God probably exists, even if we can say that the probability quotient is astronomical. We want to say that God certainly exists.” So the presuppositionalist says, “Unless you start with God’s existence as a presupposition, you will always end up with some element of doubt. You will always have less than one hundred percent certainty, so you’re obviously giving too much away.”

The classical apologist would respond that simply declaring that God is certainly true isn’t an evidence for it. Yet we also differ from the evidentialist in this regard.

We believe that the classical arguments for the existence of God are demonstrative and compelling—rationally compelling, not just probabilistic. We believe that it can be reduced to a formal argument that nobody can gainsay rationally. Now, on questions of historical matters, we would agree with the evidentialists that in any empirical arena one can never have inductively a hundred percent of the evidence in at any one time.

MR: So, Dr. Rosenbladt, if historical arguments are necessarily probabilistic, and if, as Dr. Sproul argues, reason can construct an irrefutable argument about the existence of God, what is wrong with starting with the doctrine of God? Your argument about working backwards from miracles, and especially the resurrection of Christ, ultimately tried to prove God’s existence. What is then wrong with starting at the existence of God, instead of at some historical point?

RR: Well, I’m fascinated. I’d be glad to hear Dr. Sproul talk more about the validity of the proofs, which ones, and how. This is certainly fascinating to somebody who has a background in philosophy. But there are also M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 31

some of us who have a background first in science, and if push comes to shove, especially in this era, and if one is forced to choose between rational consistency and facts, there are certain of us who will choose the facts first, and try to make the system or logical theory fit it later as best we can.

Dr. Sproul is exactly correct then in saying that this line of argument forces the evidentialist to be limited to probabilistic arguments. But we prefer to begin with the incarnate God, and to work from that back to an argument for the Father. We are thus limited to probability, but this is built in whenever you’re taking your knowledge in through your senses.

MR: Dr. Godfrey, what is your concern with probabilistic arguments?

WRG: Well, it seems that we would want to begin with the Scriptures, and the certainty that we have of divine revelation in them. We are not willing at any point or in any way to set that certainty aside in the apologetic process. So, while we understand that the person to whom we are speaking doesn’t accept the authority of Scriptures, or perhaps even the existence of God, nonetheless we think that in the apologetic process, we cannot set that aside as an issue to be tested or to be brought into uncertainty. We begin from a foundational statement that we are certain of the truths revealed in Scripture and that cannot be put on the table as something to be investigated like a cadaver. It remains the living truth from which we have to operate in the apologetic process.

MR: So what does a presuppositionalist say to someone who says, “That is circular reasoning. You’re assuming your conclusion without proving it.”

WRG: In the first place, one would have to go back and say why is it really that every one of us is a Christian?

The presuppositional apologist reads Scripture to say that we have heard the voice of the Savior, we recognize the voice of God in the Scripture, and it is not because we’ve amassed a certain amount of evidence to reach a certain level of wisdom. But God has spoken to us through the Word and brought us to himself, and it is out of that recognition of God that we operate. If you want to call that a circle, that’s okay, but I’m not sure that is the best way of looking at it. It is taking into account the reality of God’s action in time in relation to his people.

RCS: An underlying theme in much of this discussion has to do with epistemology: How does a person know what he knows? How do we come to any kind of truth— to the truth of God, or the cross, or the Bible, or anything else? In terms of supremacies, we agree that there is a primacy to the Word of God—that is our highest authority.

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But it is useful to draw a distinction between this supremacy and the actual human progress of knowledge, of knowing anything. Nobody starts with the Bible because you can’t read a Bible when you’re born, and you can’t even understand it when someone is reading it to you when you’re born. I think the question we are discussing here is not one of supremacy, but rather, “How does a human being progress in knowledge?” We would argue that the first step in any apologetic has to be self-awareness or self-consciousness.

Much of this goes back to Augustine, because he said that self-awareness and God-awareness are corollaries, they’re reciprocal. He was saying that there is not a great time gap here, the instant you’re aware of yourself as a self, you are aware of yourself as a finite, dependent being. So with self-awareness comes an immediate awareness of God. I think this is the insight that the presuppositionalists more than anything else are trying to honor and to protect. As Calvin said, you can’t know who you are until you first know who God is, because a correct knowledge of who we are is dependent upon the knowledge of the One whose image we are. But, on the other hand, Calvin says paradoxically, you can’t even know who God is until you are the one who is knowing something. So when we say that we start with selfawareness or self-consciousness, we are not saying that self-consciousness or self-awareness is an autonomous thing. It’s simply a given, an immediate apprehension of consciousness.

When we say that there is a formal proof of the existence of God, my awareness of myself as a self is, as Auguste Comte (a French positivist philosopher, 17981857) called it, a “transcendental apperception.” It’s not an empirical perception; it is not something that we learn through the senses. It is indeed mental, so it is still in the formal arena. Now when classical apologists ask the question, we say, “If there is such a thing as a self, if I exist—as Descartes argued—what are the necessary conditions for that?” And we would say that, logically, the very awareness of existence demands what Aquinas called an idea of “necessary being”—necessary not only ontologically, but logically. We are saying that the idea of the self rationally compels the idea of God. If anything exists, something must be self-existent and eternal. There has to be being, and that’s where we start philosophically to show the truth claims of the Bible.

The Bible does assume the existence of God, but it comes long after God has already demonstrated himself to every human being through what we call general revelation, both empirically in the theater of nature and immediately in the human soul. God has revealed his existence both outside and inside of us. We are saying, “Look! God has revealed himself. Now here’s what makes that revelation morally compelling.” We would all agree that God’s revelation is sufficient to leave every human being without an excuse at the bar of his judgment. Again, we’re just arguing about where we start,

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what’s the best strategy, what’s the best methodology.

MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, why not start with the question of being and the question of the self? Why do you start at the resurrection?

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miracle is God’s attesting the identity of Jesus. He is authenticating Jesus as his Son, as a supreme agent of revelation. We think this because a miracle can’t even be identified as a miracle until you first establish the existence of a transcendent, supernatural God…

RR: Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge that if there WRG: And the presuppositionalist would point out that is a way to approach this matter through the ontological although the evidence is certain and clear and comargument, certainly it must be along the lines that Dr. pelling, most of those who saw it didn’t believe.

Sproul just mentioned. This must be said first.

Therefore, as an apologetic strategy, more is needed than But think back in the New Testament how Jesus set simply saying, “This evidence is compelling.” For prehimself before his hearers. Take an example like the suppositionalists, we want to say at the beginning that paralytic being lowered down through the roof in just as God is clearly known in natural revelation so that Mark’s Gospel. The crowds were too thick for his friends those who reject it are without excuse, so too God is to get him there on the cot, so they lowered him down clearly known in special revelation and those who reject through the roof. Jesus approaches him and his first it are without excuse. When Moses stood at the burnwords are, “Be of good cheer, my son. Your sins are foring bush he immediately recognized the presence of God given.” In the back of the in special revelation, and room the Pharisees argue every human being where amongst themselves and God specially reveals himself None of us thinks that our grumble saying, “Who can is obligated to recognize and arguments convert. Only the forgive sins, but God only?” receive that revelation. Now Jesus then asks a question that doesn’t stop the conversovereign work of the that is many times badly sation. It doesn’t mean that Holy Spirit converts. answered in sermons: we cannot press the inconsis“Which is easier to say, ‘your tencies of unbelieving sins be forgiven’ or ‘rise, take thought or that we cannot up your bed and walk’?” The answer to that question is, press the abundant evidence God has to himself. But in it is easier to say, “your sins be forgiven.” Why? that whole process that wall of unbelief that we face Because it’s invisible. Then he follows that by saying, cannot ever be forgotten.

“In order that you may know that the Son of Man does have the authority to forgive sins, I say to you, ‘Rise, RR: In regard to Dr. Sproul’s point about the necessity take up your bed and walk.’” of arguing for a transcendent, supernatural God prior to In other words, it seems to evidentialists more cona particular miracle, everybody who argues empirically genial to the New Testament to follow that sort of patmust have some sort of rationale about miracles. But tern and to be drawn to conclusions in that kind of a evidentialists don’t believe that the answer to this is to way. What does that mean? Well, it draws us continubegin with the existence of God in order to explain mirally outside of ourselves, out to the evidence. Now, acles, but again to start from the bottom. Note the peragain, if a person does become a Christian, it’s a “no sistent difference in our methods between working from credit thing.” That’s God’s sovereign act through the the top, down (in the classical model), and from the botgospel—the Spirit acting through the gospel—but it tom, up (in evidentialism). seems to us that this is more biblically appropriate or fitWhat the evidentialist argues is that—as in scientific ting than the more philosophically sophisticated ways. observation—all events have a degree of unusualness to them, but it’s going to be analog. It’s going to be continRCS: This is a perfect illustration of where the evidenuous. It’s going to be like a rainbow. It isn’t going to be tialist school of thought differs from classical apologetics, binary as in a logical proof. Instead, you are going to in terms of the preferred starting point and procedure. I have degrees of unusualness and those who are trained look at that same text and say, “Okay, the Pharisees are in science are used to this. You are going to have someskeptics here. They need some apologetics. ‘Who does thing that is a true anomaly and it will catch your notice. this guy think he is? Only God can forgive sins.’ Now, That is sort of an analogy to miracle—a very minuscule they’ve already been convinced of the reality of God, so one. Then you work from there to how can you adethe dispute here is not about God’s existence. The disquately explain this. And the evidentialist says that there pute is about the identity of Jesus. And what does Jesus are going to be some events that took place in history do? He performs a miracle.” that you are going to be hard pressed to explain without Now what some of my evidentialist brothers tend to recourse to a supernatural God who really is there. think is that the miracles of Jesus prove the existence of God. We think, on the other hand, that the function of RCS: Or by just rejecting them as bad reporting and…

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RR: But you wouldn’t actually do that, would you?

RCS: No I wouldn’t, but…

WRG: Sort of the way that the average Lutheran explains away the average Pentecostal claims to miracles.

[Laughter] MR: This was civilized up to a given point …

WRG: But we would disappoint everybody if we continued to be civilized.

MR: That’s right. They expect less of us—always trying to live down to people’s expectations. This has been a very helpful discussion. Many people have asked us questions about the differences among the various views. It is important for us to reiterate, just for clarification, that these issues are not divisive in the same ways that theological issues are divisive between, for instance, Reformation folk and non-Reformation folk.

This is a discussion within the Reformation fold.

Additionally, this is not a debate about whether or not you speak to non-Christians. It’s not even a question of whether you use evidences. It’s not even a question of whether you do appeal to people’s presuppositions or whether people have presuppositions. It’s not a debate over whether you can argue people into the kingdom of heaven or whether they need to be called by the Holy Spirit in order to understand the things of God….

RCS: It is so important when we have these discussions to understand what we’re agreeing about and what we’re disagreeing about.

I’ve been invited to Westminster Seminary a few times to discuss these matters with the presuppositionalists, and I like to begin by asking this primary question, or this prior question: “What are we concerned about in these debates?”

And I hear the presuppositionalists saying to me, “R. C., we don’t want to pretend there’s a neutrality. We don’t want to give one second’s credibility to the guy who claims autonomy, that he could just make this decision on the basis of the strength of his own mind through naked, speculative reason. We are not Aristotelian and the God we’re trying to defend is not the God of the philosophers. He’s not an abstract unmoved mover, so we’re talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” This is one of the presuppositionalists’ great concerns, and when they hear the classical apologists arguing in abstract terms using Aristotelian categories or Platonic categories, they’re very much afraid that we’re going to negotiate those non-negotiables. At this point, I really feel their pain.

We do share these concerns.

Now let me tell you my concern. I don’t want presuppositionalists to give the pagan an excuse morally for 3 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

rejecting God’s self-revelation by presenting an argument that they can see is circular, and therefore self-defeating.

And I don’t want you to give the impression to people that Christianity is a form of gnosticism—that you can’t even have a cognitive knowledge of God apart from conversion. You can’t have a saving knowledge of God apart from conversion. We all agree on that. But cognitive knowledge we can have apart from conversion.

This is a helpful way to begin to get a better understanding of each other. We say to each other, “What is it about my approach that you worried about?” Once we can try to find a way to recognize those concerns, then we can work together much better—because we all do have the same ultimate concern here.

RR: Amen to all of that. I suppose the evidentialists’ concerns have to do with anything that presents Christianity as a closed shop, anything that implies that there is some secret key combination to get you into the knowledge that isn’t available publicly. We tend to be most nervous about anyone saying anything which sounds like, “I’ve got it, and until you make the key move you won’t. Once you believe, then you’ll know.”

But I agree with you, R. C., as we understand where we differ and what our concerns are, we become more aware of our common enterprise. None of us thinks that our arguments convert. Only the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit converts. Agreeing about this, let’s talk then about our responsibility to give an account of the hope that we have.

This roundtable discussion originally appeared in Modern Reformation March/April 1997.

PREACHING FROM THE CHOIR perspectives

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Heinrich Schütz: A Most Personal Statement of Gospel Truth

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any artists and composers from medieval times are unknown to us. Not

choral voices, musical features and elements that because they did not make significant contributions, but because an artist’s are not necessarily compatible at the outset. But individuality was not meant to be celebrated. Anonymity meant a servant he was also the master of understatement. Forced class status, no doubt, but it also signified modesty. This by the Thirty Years’ War to reduce his resources, he wrote changed with the coming of the Renaissance and the the Kleine geistliche Koncerte (Little Sacred Concertos, 1636, Reformation. In our day, individualism is unbridled and 1639), motets for a few solo voices with organ accompanihas become a major social problem. But in the sevenment. Indeed, deeply affected by war, many of his compoteenth century (thanks in large part, to developments in sitions describe strife, followed by peace. One of his most the Christian church), individuality was a good thing. often performed works is the motet series, Geistliche Paintings rightly reflected the personal imprint of artists; Chormusik (Spiritual Choir music, 1648). It includes the poems were from the soul. Humility did not have to consuperb “Selig Sind die Toten” (Blessed Are the Dead) from flict with self-expression, because the gospel is both objecRevelation 14:13. Besides being a well-crafted musical tively true and deeply personal in its application. composition, Schütz’s setting of this powerful text is a serThe choral composer Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) was mon in sound. The opening section meditates on the the most significant musical figure of his time. His peace, but also the finality of death in the Lord. The next approach is wonderfully personal, while at the same time section opens with Ja!, Yes, says the Spirit, in a first awakrich in technique. He brought together the two great styles ening. “They rest now from all their labors,” is what the of his day, Italian and German, thus establishing the basic Spirit says, no doubt about the Protestant emphasis on juscharacteristics of the Lutheran choral approach, flourishtification here. And then, twice, a comment is made in ing in the baroque, but evident through the nineteenth which the music becomes busier: “And all their works do century and beyond. The only music of his we have today follow after them,” using Werke to mean the good works is his church music. Although he is known to have writthat leave their mark, in contrast to Arbeit, the hard labor ten madrigals, some ballet, and other stage works, possibly of life which has ceased. Brahms, too, composed a mareven an opera, all these have been lost. The last and greatvelous setting of these comforting words in the German est of the Protestant choral composers known as the “three Requiem (1866), which has been called “a prophetic serS’s of his century” (Schein, Scheidt, and Schütz), his works mon from individual experience, with universal applicarange from the most streamlined, such as the four-part tion.” He owed much to Schütz. harmonic settings of the Psalter (1628), to large-scale comPerhaps Schütz’s best-known work is The Seven Last positions such as the Christmas Oratorio (1664), with its Words (1645). Lacking altogether in theatricality, it simply narrative portions, its different dramatic scenes rendered focuses on Scripture. Enshrined in a narrative (taken from with arias, choruses, and instrumental segments. the Book of Saints and Martyrs by Vincentus Schuruck, Choral conductors love Schütz’s music because of a par1617), it resembles a musical illumination. For, above all, ticular quality, not as common as one would think: they Schütz wanted to preach the Bible in music. As Friedrich are sing-able. Chorists do not have to strain to sing the Blume put it, in this music “Holy Scripture was released parts. The phrases are natural, leaving enough places to from the overly subjective, affect-laden interpretations breathe so there is no abnormal exertion. Not that the into which it had fallen, and was gradually raised to the music is easy; it is often demanding. sphere of revelation.” At the same time, one senses Schütz was a great admirer of Giovanni Gabrieli in Schütz’s own identification with Christ.

Venice, with whom he studied for four years. Much of it So well acquainted was he with the reality of life and is grand, full of color, using the so-called concertato style, death, Schütz even prepared his own funeral. He wanted which means engaging different instruments, solo and Psalm 119:54 to be the text for the sermon: “Your statutes [continued on page 43] M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 35

REVIEWS wh at ’s

b e i n g

r ead

Of Commentaries on the Bible and Culture…

Jobes’s innovative theory pertains to the historical background of the book of 1 Peter, in Testament (BECNT) series is, on the whole, simply outstanding. Biblical which the discussion about Petrine authorship and epistocommentator and associate professor of New Testament at Westmont lary recipients is inextricably intertwined. Here the author College, Karen Jobes structures a carefully argued scenario in which the “forexhibits considerable eigners and resident alien” recipients of this early skill and learning in Catholic epistle (usually thought to be indigenous this valuable and Christians of Asia Minor converted either by the evangewell-written resource lization of Peter en route between Jerusalem and Rome for pastors, seminarior by anonymous evangelists from Pauline churches in ans, and learned adjoining regions) may be understood to be Christians laypersons. probably converted in Rome and holding shared associaHigh standards tions with the Apostle Peter but then, as likely particiwere set early in this pants in a Roman colonization program, were displaced series with the publito Asia Minor: hence Peter’s fitting but familiar exilic cation of Darrell L. allusions and nomenclature. Jobes adds, Bock’s colossal twovolume commentary “[Her] colonization theory also provides a more on the Gospel of Luke specific motivation for the letter, motivation that is and continued with lacking if the description of the recipients is read additional releases solely as spiritual metaphor. Peter, apostle of Jesus (John, Romans, 1 Christ, was addressing Christians who had been Corinthians, Philippians, converted elsewhere … and he writes to encourage I Peter and Revelation), finally them in their Christian commitment when they

by Karen H. Jobes yielding this comprefind themselves scattered across a desolate and Baker Academic, 2005 hensive, erudite, and pagan Asia Minor” (41).

364 pages (hardback), $39.99 comparatively concise volume on an epistle Martin Luther believed contained The author’s first of two compositional contributions all that is necessary for a Christian to know. Jobes is to render Peter’s usage of the Septuagint (LXX)—the adeptly navigates a legion of existing commentaries and scriptural context in which the apostle wrote—accessible scholarly articles, covering a whole spectrum of to readers as a hermeneutical apparatus “truer to the hermeneutical traditions, schools, and ideological allehistorical origins of the letter” (xi). This exegetical giances, and in the process posits consistently reliable method not only underscores 1 Peter’s intertestamental biblical exegesis, without muting the theological implicorrelations and realized eschatological perspective of cations inherent in disputed texts, such as 1 Peter the kingdom of grace (as opposed to glory) in Christ, but 3:18–22. also it highlights the apostle’s text-based, Christological Particularly noteworthy is the author’s enlightened approach to pastoral care and theologizing. isagogical presentation. Jobes’s introduction is a delight Jobes’s second exegetical contribution entails an to read not merely because it is expertly composed, but analysis of the syntax of 1 Peter based on principles of because it also contains the seeds and development of an bilingual interference, challenging the oft-repeated original theoretical proposal and two compositional clarrenunciation of Petrine authorship due to the (purportifications that collectively serve as a stimulating contried) high quality of the epistle’s Greek and thereby justibution to the exegetical and expository study of 1 Peter. fying future research of a Semitic author for whom

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his installment of 1 Peter within the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New

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Greek was a second language. Her objective and quantifiable analysis, substantially augmented by a detailed fourteen-page excursus (325–338), concludes that the syntax exhibits elements consistent with a Semiticspeaking author for whom Greek was a subordinate tongue.

Further critical analysis shall determine whether or not Jobes’s syntactical research and isagogical proposal concerning the recipients of 1 Peter shall be an abiding legacy in Petrine studies. In the meantime, Jobes’s contributions warrant due consideration and, to be sure, enhance the overall profitability of her admirable commentary.

But because this commentary purposes to be omniaccessible, it possesses unavoidable limitations for every type of reader. Technicians are apt to complain that the scholia has been unreasonably truncated and that Jobes has not sufficiently probed the nuances and quality of 1 Peter’s Greek syntax despite the scholarly excursus that concludes the volume; meanwhile, nonspecialists will find the linguistic analysis and evaluations of source, form, redaction, literary, and rhetorical criticisms (from nearly everyone who has so much as written a sticky note on 1 Peter), tedious and pedantic, if not distracting and disconcerting. Additionally, stylistic, production, and formatting curiosities (such as the forfeiting of comparative Greek and English pericopes for an exclusively English rendition of text at the beginning of each chapter; the redundant and perhaps unwelcome employment and over-usage of transliterations; a cumbersome citation policy; and Baker’s stingy margin allotment) needlessly detract from the qualitative presentation of Jobes’s otherwise laudable work.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned, 1 Peter by Karen H. Jobes is to be preferred for its Protestant exegetical approach and Reformational theological sensitivities over a number of favorite evangelical commentaries, including Bruce B. Barton’s contribution to the Life Application Bible Commentary series and Scott McKnight’s volume in The NIV Application Commentaries, taking its place instead alongside Peter H. David’s and Ramsey Michaels’s distinguished commentaries on 1 Peter. Beyond the excellent introduction, which warrants a thorough reading at the time of purchase, the exegetical and exposition portions of 1 Peter in BECNT prove themselves insightful on most passages, resulting in a commentary that should be a dependable companion for discerning homilogicians and teachers of the New Testament.

SHORT NOTICES Consider the Lilies: A Plea for Creational Theology

by T. M. Moore P & R Publishing, 2005 248 pages (paperback), $16.99 Most orthodox Christians recognize a role for “general revelation”— God’s revelation of himself through his created world. In Consider the Lilies: A Plea for Creational Theology, author and pastor T. M. Moore urges us to make much more use of that revelation than we have.

Creational theology sees revelation in nature not as an add-on to the special revelation of Scripture, but rather as an essential aid and interpreter of biblical truth. If, as the psalmist says, God is “pouring forth speech” through his creation, then the people of God ought to be listening.

Moore sees this as more than a call to intentional personal meditation; a developed ability to hear and see the creational message should spur us to live theology, not just think about it.

Ryken’s Bible Handbook: A Guide to Reading and Studying the Bible

by Leland Ryken, Philip Ryken, and James Wilhoit Tyndale House Publishers, 2005 672 pages (hardcover), $24.00 This handbook provides a wealth of material to introduce readers to the Bible as a whole and to each individual book. Included are fact sheets, outlines, literary and thematic overviews, as well as key doctrines and how each book contributes to the overall story of salvation in Christ. Already declared by some to replace the Haley’s Bible Handbook.

John J. Bombaro Koloa, Hawaii

(continued on page 39)

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How To Read Genesis

by Tremper Longman III InterVarsity Press, 2005 192 pages (paperback), $13.00 Christians Evangelical lack no zeal in their love for Scripture, but they often lack a strategy for reading it with understanding.

Believers frequently ignore the broad outlines of narrative and plot, focusing instead on “what this text means to me.” Interpretation is a suspect, and liberalizing, tendency that silences the Bible’s “literal” meaning.

Tremper Longman’s How to Read Genesis—along with his similar volumes on Psalms and Proverbs—is a welcome and helpful corrective to these errors.

Longman begins with a robust argument for the necessity of having a comprehensive reading strategy. If we really care to understand Scripture, we must give thought to the literary, historical, and theological context of the Bible. Part 2 addresses the basic literary questions: Who wrote this book? Why did he write it?

Longman does a good job of addressing critical arguments about author and date in an accessible way. The next section puts Genesis in the literary context of other ancient creation and flood texts, illustrating its distinctive theology. In Part 4, Longman brings all these elements together to give an overview of the book. This mini-commentary provides a helpful framework for understanding how the episodes we know so well fit into a broader story. Longman concludes by showing how New Testament readers rightly saw God’s promise of Christ in Genesis, even if Moses or his audience may not have fully grasped this divine intent.

Longman deserves praise for giving laymen the tools to engage the Bible more thoughtfully. Genesis is first and foremost “God’s story,” and we must understand it on its own terms before seeking a personalized meaning.

If Longman succeeds in correcting common evangelical errors of interpretive method, it isn’t clear that he does so well in improving upon evangelical theology. In Genesis, “God pursues human beings with his grace,” and the patriarchs respond by embarking on a “rocky journey of faith.” In Longman’s Genesis, there is much Gospel and little Law. Even God’s judgment is portrayed as gracious, as at Babel. The line between the godly and ungodly line of men is a blurry one, as when we are told of Esau’s offspring whom “God cares for these people even though they aren’t directly related to his redemptive strategy begun with Abraham.” Sin gets short shrift.

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It’s more of a bad day in our faith journey than an incalculable offense against the holiness and glory of God. This weakness could have been corrected had Longman been truer to his own principles when it came to reading Genesis in its biblical context. Israel in the wilderness is after all the original audience. The redemptive story of Exodus and [failed] conquest necessarily puts a finer point on the particularity of God’s grace, and this particularity is not very flattering. Yes, those not directly related to God’s Abrahamic redemptive strategy are invited to join, but in the ordinary course of events they are directly opposed to it and pay the price. The wilderness experience is not so much a journey of fidelity as infidelity. Israel’s sin is, if possible, worse than that of the Egyptians. Genesis reminds them that they sold themselves into bondage in the first place, the bondage to which they yearn to return. It is this degree of depravity that God overcomes, dealing with sin by pouring out his wrath, first on Egypt, then on Israel herself, finally on a sacrificial substitute.

The message of Genesis is not that God will always be there—waiting for us, smiling—if we persevere on our faith journey. It is that God has saved us from our sin, despite our sin.

Brian Lee Alexandria, Virginia

Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church

by James M. Ault, Jr. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 435 pages (hardback), $27.95 In this brilliant and enlightening book, James M. Ault, Jr., initiates his readers into the world of a fundamentalist church. Ault, an independent Harvardtrained sociologist living in N o r t h a m p t o n , Massachusetts, spent three years immersed as a participant-observant with the Shawmut River Baptist Church (he changed the name to protect identities) in Massachusetts in an effort to understand New Right politics and the churches behind it. He first chronicled the congregation’s life in the public television documentary Born Again (1987); Spirit and Flesh serves as his “field notes,” filled with analysis and a narrative that often surprises and always engages.

Against typical secular assessments of fundamentalist Protestantism, which emphasize power and hierarchical gender relationships, Ault argued that churches like Shawmut River were built upon kin relationships that often empowered women even while engaging in “patriarchal” rhetoric; served to bring family members to faith, to sustain them in that faith, and to exercise discipline when they faltered; and provided for a type of ethical flexibility and adaptability even in the face of “absolutist” ethical claims.

In addition, by viewing Fundamentalism as embedded in familial relationships, Ault enabled the reader to understand why fundamentalists became politically involved in the 1970s and 1980s over the issues of abortion and public education and why they are heavily invested today in the fight over homosexuality: these political issues each strike at the essence of fundamentalist religion, namely, the tight family relationships that sustain churches like Shawmut River.

In addition, Ault claimed that fundamentalist “traditionalism” is rooted in a collective, oral discourse that “has a contingent, dynamic quality involving change, growth, adaptation, and invention” (208). The communicative event for this oral discourse is the Sunday sermon in which the community’s ideals, its traditions, are defended and reinforced. Not only doctrinal traditions, but especially cultural and social mores—such as teenage chastity, cultural separation, and abstinence from alcohol—are communicated to the younger generation through the community’s oral discourse.

In the book, one of the central and most disruptive events is the pastor’s daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When the pastor, as keeper and transmitter of fundamentalist traditions, “fails” to pass them on adequately to the next generation, the church becomes a political battleground that eventually leads the larger church “family” to choose sides in order to preserve its peace and traditions.

Finally, Ault’s book is useful for helping those of us who minister in the Presbyterian and Reformed world to take stock. After all, to a secular world, conservative Presbyterians look very much like the fundamentalist Baptists whom Ault describes. And as we minister, it is useful to reckon with the reality that our congregations are often built upon kin relationships; what might be the effects of seeing the church as a collection of families shaped by traditions communicated orally? Above all, in a surprising twist at the end of the book, we can learn the importance of a loving community to bring someone, like Ault himself, back to the Christian faith in which he was raised.

Sean Michael Lucas Covenant Theological Seminary St. Louis, Missouri

Short Notices (continued from page 37)

Grandpa’s Box: Retelling the Biblical Story of Redemption

by Starr Meade P & R Publishing, 2005 240 pages (paperback), $13.99 Grandpa’s Box is a redemptive-historical reading of the Bible expressed at a child’s level and creatively presented in the form of a grandfather’s conversation with his grandchildren.

Grandpa takes advantage of the grandchildren’s curiosity at the diverse items in his “war chest,” making each item into a visible focal point for teaching the story of redemption. Grandpa’s retelling of God’s own great “war story” unites all the familiar Bible stories into the message of Christ’s great victory over Satan. Grandpa’s Box will surely aid many parents in bringing their children to a saving understanding of the Bible and the gospel.

ESV Children’s Bible Crossway/Good News, 2005 1,632 pages (hardcover), $24.99 A children’s Bible usually refers to a book containing Bible stories rewritten for children. Not so in this instance. This children’s Bible includes the entire ESV text together with illustrations and study helps designed for children. The study helps, which appear at the end of the Bible, are exceptional introductions to biblical truth and basic Christian practices such as Bible reading and prayer. The theological perspective is consistently evangelical and Reformed.

Parents should note that the illustrations do include renderings of Jesus.

Reviews by Mark Traphagen Editor, wtsbooks.com Editor’s Note: Short Notices in the January/February 2006 issue was provided by Mark Traphagen, not Matthew Harmon. We apologize for the misprint.

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A Different Jesus? The Christ of the Latter-day Saints

by Robert L. Millet Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005 244 pages (paperback), $16.00 What is an evangelical?

The label has been subjected to intense scrutiny over the last few decades—with the word becoming more and more elastic. Those who have argued for a tight, theological definition (primarily those evangelicals with Reformed sympathies) have found themselves in the minority.

Oxford theologian Alister McGrath, although sympathetic with these concerns, admits that this approach is unacceptable. Why? “It is a simple matter of fact that any theologically rigorous definition of evangelicalism tends to end up excluding an embarrassingly large number of people who regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as Evangelicals.” Instead, as argued by such evangelicals as Donald Dayton (who writes out of an Arminian tradition), the term should be defined in other ways (with the not-sosubtle suggestion that the Reformed folks should now be perceived as being on the periphery given the way Evangelicalism is presently constituted). The term, we are repeatedly told, must be defined in such a way as to gain wide acceptance across the evangelical landscape.

Following the lead of the British historian David Bebbington, Wesley scholar Kenneth Collins recently attempted to describe the major features of Evangelicalism in terms of four key characteristics. Taken together, these four things constitute what it means to be an evangelical: The normative value of Scripture, the necessity of conversion, the cruciality of the atoning work of Christ, and the imperative of evangelism. Well now, is everybody happy?

We finally have a definition that everyone across the broad spectrum of Evangelicalism can agree on—or can we?

Which brings me Robert L. Millet, who writes a book, published by an evangelical publisher, carrying glowing endorsements from high-profile evangelicals, including a foreword and an afterword by Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary. Millet is a Mormon and a professor in the Religious Studies Department at Brigham Young University. He is described by the evangelicals associated with this book as a gracious, honest, sincere, and passionate man of faith. Mouw portrays him not only as a close friend but as a person of great integrity. Mouw, who admits a certain degree of nervousness in his appreciation for what Millet has written (182) nonetheless, with true evangelical ethos, finds 4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Millet’s personal testimony very compelling. What would move an evangelical Calvinist like Mouw to embrace Millet, a dyed-in-the-wool Mormon, not only as a good friend, but as a fellow Christian (evangelical)? He says in his afterword that he personally is convinced “that Bob Millet is in fact trusting in the Jesus of the Bible for his salvation” (183).

Millet uses very “evangelical”-sounding words and phrases to convey his convictions, all of which Mouw says he takes at face value. He speaks of “trusting” only in Jesus for his acceptance with God, or “I love the Lord,” and “how completely I trust him,” and of his “heartfelt acceptance of Jesus.”

He also sounds a lot like your typical garden-variety evangelical when it comes to accenting the love of God. He says, Our God is the God of all creation, an infinite, eternal, and omni-loving Being who will do all that He can to lead and direct, to bring greater light into the lives of His children, to save as many as will be saved. He is the only true God and thus the only Deity who can hear and respond to the earnest petitions of His children. He is the God of the Catholics, the Protestants, the Buddhists, the Hindus, and all those who seek to know and love and offer praise and adoration to the true and living God. I have been a Latter-day Saint all my life, but I do not in any way believe the Almighty loves Latter-day Saints any more than He loves Anglicans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, Jews, or Muslims. He loves us all, and is pleased with any and every halting effort on our part to learn of Him, serve Him, and be true to the light within us. (63, 95) Except for that last remark, what more could you ask from any professing evangelical?

Well, Millet’s book deals with more than just his personal testimony about how much Jesus means to him (and I don’t doubt his sincerity). He is unapologetic in his defense of Mormon theology. To begin with, he explicitly rejects the cardinal doctrine of the Trinity, candidly admitting that Mormonism believes in “Three distinct Gods” who are “three distinct personages, three Beings, three separate Gods.” In layman’s language this is polytheism pure and simple. He acknowledges that if an acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to being a Christian, then of course Latter-day Saints are not Christian, for they believe the doctrine of the Trinity, as expressed in modern Protestant and Catholic theology, is the product of the reconciliation of Christian theology and Greek philosophy (171). This is a rather incredible claim coming from someone who should know better. He demonstrates throughout the book that he is widely read in evangelical literature, and does not hesitate to tell us so.

True to standard Mormon claims, Millet vigorously contends that after the first century—the authority and power to act in God’s name “was lost” (40), until it was recovered in the early nineteenth century by Joseph Smith. This refrain is played over and over again. Only Mormons possess the fullness of the gospel, and of course, Joseph Smith

is given exalted status as The Prophet and Apostle of God, and his chosen instrument for restoration of the gospel and the true Church of Christ (58, 158). Which brings us to the crux of the matter, who is the Christ of Mormonism?

Despite Millet’s insistence that his Jesus is the same one that we met in the pages of the New Testament, it is the other scriptures of Mormonism that define him. This Jesus was born, “as we all were, the spirit children of the Father” (20). This Jesus is a spirit brother of Lucifer (21). This Jesus is the Christ of Joseph Smith and is considered absolutely foundational to Mormonism (39). It is conceded that the Christ of “traditional” Christianity and the Christ of Mormonism are very different, and in substantial ways.

Why? Because the Christ of orthodox Christianity is rooted in theological creeds, while the Christ of Mormonism “comes from the witness of a prophet—Joseph Smith” (174). Contrary to Millet’s claim that Christ is the central figure in the doctrine and practice of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, by his later admission, holds that place of honor. In fact, without Joseph Smith, there is no Mormonism. The Jesus of Mormonism is distinctively the Christ of Joseph Smith. The two cannot be separated.

Likewise, the gospel of Mormonism is radically different from the gospel that evangelicals have embraced.

Sola Fide, the material principle of the Reformation and the doctrine Luther rightly called “the article by which the church stands and falls” is outrightly rejected. In its place is erected an elaborate system of “principles” (24), which are described in Millet’s words as, “obedience to Laws essential to salvation” (22).

Millet has no hesitancy in declaring that Mormonism rejects any concept of total depravity (84), as well as the critically important doctrine of original sin (86). In fact, Millet presents what only can be called a full-blown Pelagian concept of grace (this is woven through the book). Like Pelagius, Millet (quoting from Mormon texts 2 Nephi 31:19 and Moroni 6:4) says, “We must work to our limit, and then rely upon the merits, mercy, and grace of the Holy One of Israel …(69, my emphasis). Like Pelagius, Millet underscores Mormon belief that children are born innocent. Like Pelagius, Millet teaches the Mormon doctrine that all human beings have “the (innate) capacity” to be saved, and to “strive to do what we can (his emphasis) do” to secure salvation.

The effects of the Fall, in his words, only “tend to entice humankind away from God” (103, my emphasis). Like Pelagius, Joseph Smith, the central figure in Mormonism, taught that there is no transfer, or imputation, of Adam’s sin and guilt to his posterity. This is so central to Mormonism that it is listed as one of the thirteen Articles of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The critically important Creator/creature distinction is likewise discarded.

The distance between God and man, he says, “is still tremendous, almost infinite” (144, my emphasis). Millet graciously allows for some sort of salvation for non-Mormons, but only Mormons who have been baptized by the “proper authority,” will gain entrance into “the highest heaven” (49).

Not surprisingly, Sola Scriptura is likewise rejected while

the absolute truthfulness and trustworthiness of The Book of Mormon is wholeheartedly affirmed. (151). However, Millet says, “We do not believe in prophetic or apostolic infallibility” (XIV). Does this mean that Millet is willing to admit that the Mormon Scriptures contain theological errors? Hardly. Millet is concerned here with the kind of embarrassing statements that Mormon prophets Joseph Smith and Brigham Young made off the record, so to speak.

Things like Smith’s claim that the moon was populated by people who dressed like Quakers, or Young’s equally absurd declaration that the Sun was inhabited—or even more embarrassing, Brigham Young’s doctrine of “AdamGod.” Millet labels these kinds of things “extraneous” and as such, have no bearing on Mormon doctrine, which is restricted to the official standards of the LDS Church. But Millet finds himself in a bit of a bind with this kind of distinction. In a genuine attempt to be irenic and sensitive to Christians outside the camp, Millet feels constrained to put the best spin possible on Joseph Smith’s claims that God personally told him, in reference to all other churches that “all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt”—a very harsh indictment and something Millet tries mightily to soften.

Although Millet is forthright in admitting that he has “no desire whatsoever to compromise, or concede one whit on doctrine in order to minimize differences, or court favor in anyway” (166), he is nonetheless anxious that evangelicals come to view Mormons simply as Christians with their own particular “tradition.”

Millet briefly addresses issues that in the last few years have cast serious doubts about the credibility of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Two of these require special mention: First, modern advances in the study of human DNA have conclusively shown that Native Americans are of Asiatic ancestry and not, as the Book of Mormon teaches, of Jewish ancestry. Second, the recent discovery of the “Joseph Smith papyri” demonstrated that Smith’s translation of the Book of Abraham (which is part of Mormon scripture) was a hoax (the document was an excerpt from an Egyptian book of the dead). Press reports of this proved extremely embarrassing to Mormons, but evidently not to Millet. Both of these legitimate concerns are summarily dismissed as having no merit (153–157).

Millet closes by once again seeking to establish his Christian credentials by means of his personal testimony. He relates a conversation he had with “two prominent” evangelical theologians. After discussing their differences, one of the two evangelicals asked, “Okay Bob, here’s the question of questions, the one thing I would like to ask in order to determine what you really believe.” I indicated that I thought I was ready for his query, though I readily admit that his preface to the question was a bit unnerving. He continues, “You are standing before the judgment bar of the Almighty, and God turns to you and asks, ‘Robert Millet, what right do you have to enter heaven?

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Why should I let you in?’” I looked my friend in the eye and replied, “I would say to God: ‘I claim the right to enter heaven because of my complete trust in reliance upon the merits and mercy and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.’” My questioner stared at me for about ten seconds, smiled gently, and said: “Bob, that’s the correct answer to the question.” (178) The impression Millet wishes to leave is that this totally satisfied the two evangelicals about the genuineness of his profession. But it didn’t. David F. Wells was one of the two men. The other was fellow faculty member at GordonConwell theological seminary, Haddon Robinson (who asked Millet that question). They did not drop the matter, nor were they completely satisfied with Millet’s answer.

They both continued to press him about his distinctive Mormon beliefs, particularly those centered around his Mormon Christology and soteriology. Unlike Mouw, Wells and Robinson were not convinced that Millet’s beliefs were distinctively “Christian,” despite his sincere testimony.

Our postmodern makeup demands tolerance (which has taken on an entirely different meaning than it once did), especially when it comes to distinctively religious matters. Senior evangelical statesman Donald Bloesch, in The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call For Unity Amid Diversity, warned, “In our striving for church unity, we must not lose sight of our mandate to counter doctrinal error, for nothing subverts the cause of unity more than a latitudinarianism which signifies giving up on real church unity in favor of mutual tolerance” (152).

Millet and evangelicals like Mouw want very much to engage in “civil discourse,” or in Mouw’s words, “We feel we can differ theologically with people without being disagreeable in any sense” (173). I agree—unless that implies that any criticism of Mormon claims to be Christian are automatically ruled out of bounds and labeled “anti-Mormon propaganda.” Mouw rightly recognizes that these disagreements have “profound implications.” One of us—either evangelical or Mormon) is preaching a false gospel. They are not the same gospel.

However, Mouw does not consider Millet’s Jesus “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4), and his Mormon gospel “another gospel” (Gal. 1:6). I do.

Richard Mouw has over the years shown himself to be a confessional Calvinist who conscientiously identifies with the likes of Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, Louis Berkhof, G. C. Berkouwer, and Anthony Hoekema.

This makes it all the more surprising that he would, even with guarded qualifications here and there, leave his fellow Christians the mistaken impression that Millet’s gospel (which is defined by his Mormonism) is a legitimate form of Christianity. Did he bother to consider the impact this could have on those Christians that would best be described as God’s little ones and subject to being tossed to and fro by false doctrine (Eph. 4:4)? Mouw expressed concern about violating the ninth commandment by not giving Millet a fair hearing. After a careful 4 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

reading of Millet’s book, I am more than ever convinced that Millet’s Mormonism is not Christianity, and that Mouw would think otherwise is inexplicable. In addition to his concerns about the ninth commandment, he should ponder seriously our Lord’s words in Matthew 18:5,6.

Gary Johnson Redeemer Presbyterian Church Mesa, Arizona

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 227 pages (hardback), $23.95 What does a writer do after her husband of forty years collapses of a massive coronary event while she is mixing the salad at the dinner table? She writes. If that writer is Joan Didion, she writes an intelligent, searching memoir of her first year of life without. Without her husband and co-writer, John Gregory Dunne. Without the support of their daughter, Quintana, who is in a coma when her father dies.

Without clarity. Without answers. She describes that period as The Year of Magical Thinking. The year begins a few days after John’s death, when Didion types her first reactions in a new file on her computer: Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.

The question of self-pity is the first of many questions she explores in the months following John’s death. Did death happen to him or to me, she wonders. She had thought herself independent, yet now she worries about who will take care of her. She begins to sleep with the lights on, fearing that if she gets up at night and trips over something in the dark, it might be days before someone finds her. Though she is surrounded by supportive friends and family, she feels invisible, unstable, fragile without John.

She discovers contradictions in her responses. How can she be simultaneously angry at him for abandoning her and blame herself for letting him die? She reminds

herself that she does not believe in bodily resurrection, yet she cannot bring herself to donate his corneas or give away his shoes, sure that he will need them when he returns. Are these contradictions, she suggests, inherent in the “primitive dread” of the human soul?

And what is death? Where is John now? What if they were wrong in thinking that death leads to nothingness? If she could reverse time, what might John come back knowing about the universe?

Allowing her writer’s instincts to bring focus to her struggle, she goes to the literature. She reads Freud, C. S. Lewis, Euripides, W. H. Auden. She requests an autopsy and studies medical reports on John’s diagnosis because she wants to know exactly when and how and why he died. (Would he have lived if only she had urged him to try a new medication? Why are we open to the “persistent message that we can avert death”?)

She reads psychiatric studies on “normal bereavement” versus “pathological bereavement.”

(Pathological bereavement is defined as that of “unusual dependency.” What is “unusual dependency” in a forty-year marriage and business partnership?)

She is no longer a wife, but she cannot bring herself to check “widow” on the marital status question on paperwork. John had once suggested she would remarry within a year if something ever happened to him. Of course you can love more than one person, she says, but “Marriage is memory … For forty years I saw myself through John’s eyes” (197). Remarry? She cannot even throw out the broken alarm clock he gave her or record over his voice on the answering machine! Both are surely betrayal.

She regrets that she did not sufficiently appreciate her life with him. What would she have done differently if she had truly believed he would someday be gone?

What would he have done differently, for that matter?

Had they wasted their lives? It seems suddenly clear that she never knew him as deeply as she thought she had.

No magic would bring him back, she finally acknowledges; no human power could have kept him alive.

Some events are beyond our ability to control. That stark reality leads her to the ultimate question: What is the meaning of human existence?

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. This litany from John’s funeral has potential to resolve her questions, but when she turns to geology (a lifelong interest) to inform her faith, she interprets the phrase as a literal description of the constant changing of the earth, the unending erosion of the shores and mountains, the inexorable shifting of the geological structures that could throw up mountains and islands and could just as reliably take them away. …That the scheme could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow.

No one was watching me (190).

She concludes that John’s final message to her is that she “had to go with the change” (225). Human experience is to live and love for a time, then no more. It is appropriate to acknowledge the ache, the confusion, the loss. But in the end the impersonal universe will go on as before.

A month after publication, The Year of Magical Thinking garnered the National Book Award for nonfiction. In their coverage of the award ceremony, the Associated Press declared it “quickly becoming the classic portrait of grief,” sought after by bereaved spouses and their supportive friends. Didion is articulate, compelling, asking the most significant questions of life and death; for those reasons this book is worthy of the high acclaim with which it has been received.

But Didion’s otherwise acute insight draws attention to the emptiness of her answer, which after so much searching seems like a resigned shrug of the intellectual shoulders. To complete the quest she has begun, we must turn from the final page of her memoir to the eternal promise of Scripture. There we discover the purpose of a life created to glorify God, the assurance of a future resurrection.

His eye is on the sparrow, Ms. Didion. The one watching you is the Man of Sorrows, accustomed to grief. He will not trivialize your loss; he will share it. He will redeem it. He will transform it to your joy and his glory.

That is the magical thinking of Christianity.

Mindy L. Withrow Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mindy Withrow is an author of church history books for children and also hosts a literary blog at mindywithrow.blogspot.com.

Preaching from the Choir (continued from page 37) have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.” His final work was appropriately entitled Schwanengesang (Swan Song), a set of thirteen motets, all settings of texts from Psalm 119 in Luther’s translation of the Bible. The Lutheran view at the time was that the Book of Psalms sums up all of the theological content of the Bible, and Psalm 119 represents the essence of all the Psalms. He divided the Psalm into eleven portions, each one representing two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The piece concludes with Psalm 100 and the Magnificat. This extraordinary music embodies the principle he learned from Luther: “The music brings the text alive.” Could we not revisit this approach in the church today?

Dr. Edgar’s quotation from Friedrich Blume is taken from Blume’s Protestant Church Music: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), p. 212.

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FAMILY MATTERS r e sou rces

fo r

homes

The Importance of Missionary Stories

A

merican children live on an island. Its inhabitants enjoy high levels of com-

missionary William McElwee Miller.

Iran fort, affluence, and self-indulgence. As natives of the island, American chil- (known as Persia in the past) and its religion, dren have little awareness of needs off the island. Even in the limited realm Islam, are often in the news. While helping chilof church life, our children have every advantage. dren understand Muslim beliefs, this book upholds a genChurches and Christian parents must find ways to uine concern for Muslim people and demonstrates a willacquaint the next generation with the world’s need for the ingness to work hard to call them to Christ. A different gospel. We must teach and encourage a healthy appreciakind of book, Operation World by Patrick Johnstone and tion for the church in other countries and for world misJason Mandryk, provides an excellent family prayer sions. resource. Families can look up any country to learn curOf course, children learn about missions best when they rent information on government, standard of living, probhear from real missionaries themselves. Fairview lems, and the status of church and gospel.

Reformed Presbyterian Church in Industry, Pennsylvania, The Voice of the Martyrs will send Link International, an hosts a missionary conference for children each year, eight-page quarterly publication, free of charge for chilsimultaneously with its missions conference for adults. dren in kindergarten through middle school. Link presents Even before the conference opens, learning begins. Each information about countries where Christians are persechildren’s Sunday School class researches a missionary the cuted, and recounts stories of young believers in those church supports and prepares table decorations based on countries, listing requests for prayer. The magazine also that missionary’s field of ministry. At the conference, the describes ways American children are helping Christians in decorations cover tables for the shared dinners before each other countries. It offers opportunities for its readers to session. After dinner, adults and children at Fairview RPC help as well. gather to hear from a missionary guest. The speaker If you know children who enjoy being on the computexplains his or her ministry, including those things that er, they will find a link just for them provided by Wycliffe would be of special interest to children. Then adults stay Bible Translators at wycliffe.org. Children can read stories, to hear more, while children move to another room. play games, work puzzles, all designed to teach them There, fully engaged at their own level, children sing about specific countries and about the work of translating songs, memorize Scripture, and watch puppet skits, all the Bible. related to the mission theme. Another guest comes to tell This is but a partial list of the many resources available them stories of his or her ministry experience. This time, for educating our children about the needs of the worldthe message is geared specifically to children. wide church and of people who do not have the gospel. In One year’s organizer, Charity Tevelde, wanted to proclaiming the glory of God to the next generation, let us emphasize some of the options available in mission work. think of more than just our own children. Let us also She invited missionary guests based on how long their work hard to ensure that our children will commit themservice had been. One speaker described his short-term selves to proclaiming God’s glory throughout their entire commitment of two years. The next evening, someone world. told of working in a foreign country for a few weeks. The following session featured a career missionary. By the end Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: of the week, children saw that mission work has room for Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P & R many Christians, even those who cannot make it a career, Publishing, 2000). as well as room for all kinds of gifts. The last speaker of the week explained to the children how they could tell the gospel message right where they are, sharing it with those around them.

Books relating missionary stories can also open children’s eyes to the needy world in which they live. P & R Books has recently reprinted Tales from Persia by career

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Does God Believe in Atheists?

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Seeking God

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