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EFORMATION VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1

Taking Every Thought Captive to the Obedience of Christ: Approaches in Apologetics

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TAKING EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE TO THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST: APPROACHES IN APOLOGETICS FEATURES 8 The Incarnate Christ: The Apologetic Thrust of Lutheran Theology John Warwick Montgomery Luther does not deny natural theology; he simply insists that the search for the God who saves begin at the connecting link between earth and heaven: the Incarnation.

13 Unbelievers and the Knowledge of God: Biblical Warrant for a Presuppositional Apologetic Kenneth Scott Oliphint Given that every person, as a creature created by the Creator, knows the true God but seeks to suppress that knowledge, what is a proper defense of the Christian faith?

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17 Reason as Starting Point: The Rationality of Classical Apologetics Jonathan N. Gerstner Reason is not only the appropriate starting point of all inquiry, it is the only conceivable starting point of any inquiry.

23 How Real People Believe: A Defense of Reformed Epistemology Kelly James Clark Belief in God is more like belief in a person than belief in atoms. The scientific approach—doubt first, consider all of the available evidence, and believe later—seems inappropriate to personal relations.

28 Legal Rather than Evangelical Knowledge: Calvin on the Limits of Natural Theology

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DEPARTMENTS 2 4 21 27

In This Issue…

Letters Quotes In Print

32 34 38 40

Review Glossary Endnotes On My Mind

Michael S. Horton Attempts to speculate about the hidden essence of God are pointless. As the “shipwrecked creatures” that we are, even our consideration of natural theology must look toward the Savior who is found only in Scripture.

Cover: Rembrandt Harmensz, van Rijn. Doubting of St. Thomas.

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia, Art Resources.

IN THIS ISSUE… ANDTHE NEXT ISSUE

By Michael S. Horton

A publication of Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals Editor-in-Chief Dr. Michael S. Horton Assistant Editor Benjamin E. Sasse

Apologetics

Production Editor Irene H. Hetherington

s in our day, lawyers flourished in the first century, providing a storehouse of metaphors for Christian discourse. An apologia (from which we get “apology”) was the attorney’s defense of the client in a court of law. So when we come to 1 Peter 3:15, for instance, it is not a surprise that this imagery should be applied to the defense of the faith: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that you have, with meekness and fear….”

The call here to “sanctify the Lord God in your hearts” strikes us as strange. But Peter is suggesting, not that we make God holy, but that we set him apart—or even more properly, above—in our hearts. Surely we do this by “pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ…” (2 Cor. 10:4). But, more positively, we distinguish God from every ideology, philosophy, and religion by being prepared to give people reasons for the hope. It is not simply our hope or our faith, but the faith “once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3), that we are prepared to defend and advance. The personal is certainly not absent, since Peter says that this is the hope that we have, but the defense of the Gospel must be centrally concerned with God’s achievement in the person and work of Christ. This is to be undertaken only “with meekness and fear,” realizing our own weakness while taking our interlocutor’s objections seriously.

The context of Peter’s exhortation is the suffering church, God’s aliens, for whom intense persecution was a daily reality. Religious pluralism was something the early Christians knew as well as any late twentieth century person. But they didn’t huddle in a corner or carve out a ghetto of private belief and practice; they were called to meet the objectors with a reasoned defense. Had the early church proclaimed Jesus as a fine example or as the greatest moralist/philosopher—indeed, had they even proclaimed him as a manifestation of the divine presence in the world—there would hardly have been any difficulty for them. Rome liked religion: the more, the merrier. But these believers were resolved to proclaim Jesus as the Creator and Redeemer, whose resurrection had vindicated his claim to be the judge of the world. All who trust in him have eternal life, and the rest “stand condemned already,” as he himself declared (John 3:18).

In the first “defense” by the apostles, recorded in Acts, the apologetic takes the form of telling the story of Israel around the person of Christ. He is the missing piece to the puzzle of Israel’s history, but such an integral piece that apart from the knowledge of him, the puzzle remains a hopeless mystery. As the Great Commission moves the apostles, especially Paul, outside of the Jerusalem church, it becomes increasingly important to relate the person and work of Christ to the history not only of Israel but of the world. Redemption is to be as extensive as creation, as it moves “from Jerusalem to Judea to the uttermost parts of the world.” So secular philosophers are cited by Paul on Mars Hill—not as authorities, but as points of contact.

Following this expanding horizon across the landscape of the Gospels is

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continued from page 2 fascinating. Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, showing the messianic credentials of Israel’s Savior. Mark begins his Gospel with the prophetic preparation for the Messiah, as John the Baptist stands at the end of the line of Old Testament prophets and at the gateway to the Kingdom of God foreshadowed by the Jewish theocracy. The whole Old Testament prepares the way for the Messiah, and now John the Baptist embodies their longing. Luke’s account opens with a dedicatory preface to an eminent man named Theophilus in an effort to provide “an orderly account” of Jesus’ person and work, “that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed” (Luke 1:4).

But when we come to John’s Gospel, the latest, there is a different opening: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” To be sure, this Gospel is as persistent as the others in showing Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. But at least its opening is a striking example of the apologetic expansion of horizons. Now even the Greeks and Romans—indeed, “the uttermost parts of the earth”—will have to reckon with this one whom God raised to life. If he were the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes, the central and defining character in one nation’s plot, fine. “King of the Jews?”

No problem, at least for the empire, especially when Jesus himself clarified that his kingdom was not geopolitical. A curious provincial religion was hardly a challenge to the imperial cult. But John says that this lower-class Jewish teacher, judged a criminal of the highest order according to Roman law, is the one whom the Greeks thought of as the impersonal but all-ruling principle of universal rationality, order, and language.

The “Logos” (Word) was a secular, not a Jewish, philosophical category as it is employed here. Now the Christians were looking for trouble not only in Jerusalem, but in the gentile world as well. The Jews were looking for a Messiah; the Greeks (and Romans) were looking for the basis for all truth, reason, and stability in the universe. Jesus Christ, John says, is the fulfillment not only of Israel’s history, but of God’s purpose for world history. He is the Savior of the World and the King of Kings; Israel’s Messiah and Rome’s Logos.

But throughout history, the church has struggled over the extent to which its apologetic strategies depend on secular philosophy. “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”, Tertullian demanded in the third century.

In answer to the question, other church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria replied, “A lot!” While Tertullian said he believed precisely because the Gospel is absurd, Clement drew freely from Greek philosophy as

if it were a sort of preparation for the Gospel. Ever since, the debate has raged. Tradition has it that after his conversion, Justin Martyr continued to wear his philosopher’s gown, having simply switched philosophies. On Clement’s side have often been, unfortunately, the Protestant liberals like Schleiermacher who sought to make Christianity appealing to its “cultured despisers” in Berlin’s salons of Romanticism.

Rudolf Bultmann went so far as to eliminate from the faith anything that would be considered ridiculous to the modern mind. But this approach has also included many, like Thomas Aquinas, B. B. Warfield, and C. S. Lewis, who, though cautious of unbelieving presuppositions, defended the faith by incorporating the insights of “natural revelation.” “All truth is God’s truth,” they insist, echoing Augustine.

Closer to Tertullian, there have been those like Luther, who, identifying reason as “the devil’s whore,” excoriated the speculative rationalism that sought to scale Zion’s heights and take God captive. Judging the mind an “idol factory,” Calvin too argued that one begins with reliance on God’s testimony to Christ and not with arguments. But the reformers were far from the extreme that one finds, for instance, in Søren Kierkegaard: Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective certainty. If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

If I wish to preserve my faith, I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.1 Echoing Kierkegaard, Karl Barth labored the argument that there is absolutely no point of contact between the Christian and unbelief apart from an encounter with Jesus Christ.

There is in fact so much to say about apologetics that we cannot explore it comprehensively in one issue.

As such, we are dividing the subject in a manner that is not altogether satisfactory—but then again, neither is limiting the discussion to a mere forty pages. Roughly speaking, we are dividing the topic into points of contact and disagreement amongst ourselves (in this issue), and points of contact and argument with the unbelieving world (in the next issue). In this issue, we will be defining some terms, we will be arguing for the legitimacy and necessity of the apologetic task against those within the Christian theological tradition who continued on page 7 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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LETTERS I share the concer n you expressed in the September/October issue of modernR EFORMATION about free-market influences on American church life.

There is no doubt that even in confessional churches doctrinal commitments and denominational heritage are belittled, buried, and befogged in the belief that something else will appeal to today’s less brandconscious churchgoers. And as one turns to causeoriented parachurch organizations, it is too often clear that the marketing machinery trumps mission.

And yet, we American Christians are as much involved in an exercise in cultural contextualization as are missionaries in Irian Jaya. The Gospel was not first proclaimed in a market economy or in an industrialized society or in a literate society. The church had adapted and contextualized both its institutional forms and its instructional and expressive forms as it moved into new cultures and as time brought forth ever-new cultural forms. There should be no more surprise that American religion has almost always been dominated by a populist, democratic, and market-oriented strain than that the church which emerged in the Constantinian period resembled the Roman imperium or that the religion of the Reformers was laced with Renaissance humanism. When has the form of the church everywhere not been to a significant degree molded to its surrounding culture?

All cultures are not equal; and no culture is neutral.

But the issue is not whether the church will resemble a host culture, but rather whether it will be wise and godly in what it adopts and adapts to and whether it will be sufficiently alert to resist the most harmful features of a given culture.

The genius of American evangelicalism has been its ability to see the potential in such typically American features as rapidly developing mass communication and theory and practice of corporate management. Its Achilles’ heel is precisely the same ability. I applaud you for helping us to spot those dangers, but I am disappointed that you have not helped us spot the divine opportunities.

Let me turn now to some misunderstandings and inaccuracies. First, there is the “editorial” you twice referred to as having “called for an Evangelicalism with a center rather than a circumference.” On the March 4, 1996 editorial page of Christianity Today, Tom Oden wrote: There is a fantasy abroad that the Christian community can have a center without a circumference. Since we gather around Jesus, it 4

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is argued, it is our center, not our boundaries, that matter. But this is the persistent illusion of compulsive hyper-tolerationism. A community with no boundaries can neither have a center nor be a community… . The circle of faith cannot identify its center without recognizing its margins.

What you say that our editorial page called for is what we termed “a fantasy” and a “persistent illusion.” If you so thoroughly misread this editorial, it is small wonder that other aspects of what CT has published were construed as they were.

There are some other misunderstandings: on page 11, you say that CT’s current priorities reflect “an obligation to the constituency of its new owners.” What new owners? CT’s board of directors is a selfperpetuating group in continuity with the very first board. Harold John Ockenga was chair for the first twenty-five years, and his close ally, Billy Graham, has been chair since Ockenga retired.

And here is another lack of clarity: also on page 11, you write that Pew funding made it possible for Carl Henry to have free rein “to provide a thoughtful and faithful alternative to modernism, but now the magazine must appeal to the broad evangelical market in order to be commercially viable.” The implication seems to be that Pew should still be funding the magazine to a great extent. My sense of the history of this magazine and the Pew Trusts is that that was not an option. The choice was not between commercial viability and foundation funding; it was between commercial viability and nonviability.

John Warwick Montgomery’s essay, subtitled, “Origins of the Specious,” contained some specious history. He writes that after “the operation was moved to the Wheaton, Illinois, area … Henry left in disgust.” But Henry resigned as Christianity Today’s editor a decade before the move took place. Likewise, Montgomery’s reference to attempts at a “facade of intellectual respectability” provided “now” by a list of “members of a ‘Christianity Today Institute,’” on the masthead shows he has not looked at CT’s masthead for at least three years.

You said in a letter that the September/October issue of modernREFORMATION was not “meant as an attack on Christianity Today,” and on page 11 you wrote that were MR to be subjected to the same market factors as CT it “will fare no better.” But especially as I reached the end of the issue and read David Wells’ ad hominem MODERN REFORMATION

effrontery, suggesting that there was nothing I would stand for if it meant losing some readers, I felt assaulted and insulted. Despite your assurances, most readers would find it difficult to take this issue of MR as anything other than an attack on CT. David Neff Vice President and Executive Editor Christianity Today EDITORS’ RESPONSE We do agree, of course, with Mr. Neff ’s suggestion that ministry takes place necessarily within a cultural context and that we are, as historical creatures, simply not given the option of deciding whether we will be shaped by our time and place in some fairly significant ways. We should neither lionize nor demonize our culture carte blanche, but engage in some sort of a theological and ethical benefit-cost analysis.

Now, to the specific concerns Mr. Neff raised regarding this issue. First, Michael Horton’s piece did not cite a specific article, but he was referring to a letter to the editor by Roger Olson, a consulting editor and regular contributor to CT (April 29, 1996), who criticized Thomas Oden’s editorial. Although Olson’s position with the magazine makes this more than just another letter to the editor, “letter to the editor,” rather than “editorial,” is the proper reference. We apologize for this error. Second, his information on CT’s “obligation to the constituency of its new owners” came from a source within CT who wished to remain anonymous.

Mr. Horton’s point about Pew was not that they should still be underwriting the magazine. Instead, it was to raise the very question Mr. Neff avoids in his letter. Mr. Neff writes, “The choice was not between commercial viability and foundation funding; it was between commercial viability and nonviability.” This is precisely the point we were trying to make. It is this frankly “bottom-line” decision that is made every day throughout the vast network of parachurch agencies as well as churches. Why should the magazine have remained in publication? Was it perpetuating a vision for the theological sustenance of the pastor and thoughtful layperson in the face of challenges, or was it simply perpetuating itself ? Why should it have remained in circulation if it could no longer serve that vision given the challenges of “commercial viability”?

Finally, the concerns related to Montgomery’s article are fair enough. He lives in England and has been somewhat out of touch with CT over the past few years, but that hardly disqualifies his deep involvement in the past. While not quite the same as a thousand years to

God, “not so long ago” may be precisely that in the mind of a veteran. Nonetheless, we should have caught these errors, and for this oversight we apologize.

The heart of our concern with CT, though, is the apparent lack of interest in defending classical evangelical theology in thoughtful and fairly straightforward ways. The “megashift” cover-story in 1990 exposed the growing rift between “new model” and “old model” thinking on the nature of God, the atonement, and so forth. In recent years, it seems that when serious theological issues are tackled in CT, the “new model” is most decisive. For instance, the February 3, 1997, issue of CT ran not merely one article arguing for divine passibility (i.e., the view that God suffers), but two articles on the topic—both arguing this position! The Council of Chalcedon (451) is simply dismissed by Ngien in his piece on this point, treated as part of the problem. At a time when evangelicals are openly debating not only justification, the nature of sin and atonement, and other related doctrines, but even classical theism, the CT that faithfully and critically, but intelligently and constructively interacted with Tillich, Barth, and Brunner from the perspective of orthodoxy does not seem to be around anymore.

The strength of Christianity Today in its early vision was that it was willing neither to follow the mainline churches into cultural captivity nor to ignore the challenges and opportunities of its time and place.

Critics could still caricature evangelical scholars—and they did, but at least the evangelicals stood for concrete distinctives. We at modernREFORMATION wholeheartedly endorse the vision of free and open discussion with a wide range of theological convictions. But while Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants come to the table usually as Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc., does anyone really know what it means to come to the table as an evangelical anymore?

It’s not the end of the Kingdom of God if no one does, but at least it would mark an important event.

As a reader of modernREFORMATION for some time now, the September/October issue may be your most important yet. As a Roman Catholic I can assure you that pandering to popular culture is not unique to evangelicals. I would like to point out, though, that you reformers seem to want it both ways. You lament that since John Wesley, “evangelical ecclesiology … has suffered from Gnostic docetism.” Further on you state that “today the Church must also contend for its own visible, institutional existence.” Please read a history of the Reformation, and consider the reformers’ promotion of the concept of the “Church invisible.” This is why the Reformation is still ongoing, because it was not JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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really a reformation but an attack on the Church as an institution. Seems too late now to lament the loss of the visible Church.

Nonetheless, keep up the good work. Thank you and your staff for a publication that makes one think about now and eternity. I believe that the Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen would be pleased to see these issues debated. The following is from his excellent The Decline of Controversy: Once there were lost islands, but most of them have been found; once there were lost causes, but many of them have been retrieved; but there is one lost art that has not been definitely recovered, and without which no civilization can long survive, and that is the art of controversy.

The hardest thing to find in the world today is an argument. Because so few are thinking, naturally there are found but few to argue.

Prejudice there is in abundance and sentiment too, for these things are born of enthusiasms without the pain of labor. Thinking, on the contrary, is a difficult task; it is the hardest work a man can do—that is perhaps why so few indulge in it. Thought-saving devices have been invented that rival labor-saving devices in their ingenuity. Fine-sounding phrases like “Life is bigger than logic,” or “Progress is the spirit of the age,” go rattling by us like express-trains, carrying the burden of those who are too lazy to think for themselves.

Not even philosophers argue today; they only explain away … Even those periodicals which pride themselves upon their openmindedness on all questions are far from practicing the lost ar t of controversy. Their pages contain no controversies, but only presentations of points of view; these never rise to the level of abstract thought in which argument clashes with argument like steel with steel, but rather they content themselves with the personal reflections of one who has lost his faith, writing against the sanctity of marriage, and of another who has kept his faith, writing in favor of it. Both sides are shooting off fire-crackers, making all the noise of an intellectual warfare and creating the illusion of conflict, but it is only a sham battle in which there are not casualties; there are plenty 6

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of explosions, but never an exploded argument.

The causes underlying this decline in the art of controversy are twofold: religious and philosophical. Modern religion has enunciated one great and fundamental dogma that is at the basis of all the other dogmas, and that is, that religion must be freed from dogmas. Creeds and confessions of faith are no longer the fashion; religious leaders have agreed not to disagree and those beliefs for which some of our ancestors would have died they have melted into a spineless Humanism. Like other Pilates they have turned their backs on the uniqueness of truth and have opened their arms wide to all the moods and fancies the hour might dictate. The passing of creeds and dogmas means the passing of controversies. Creeds and dogmas are social; prejudices are private. Believers bump into one another at a thousand different angles, but bigots keep out of one another’s way, because prejudice is anti-social. I can imagine an old-fashioned Calvinist who holds that the word “damn” has a tremendous dogmatic significance, coming to intellectual blows with an old-fashioned Methodist who holds that it is only a curse word; but I cannot imagine a controversy if both decide to damn damnation, like our Modernists who no longer believe in Hell.

The second cause, which is philosophical, bases itself on that peculiar American philosophy called “Pragmatism,” the aim of which is to prove that all proofs are useless.

Hegel, of Germany, rationalized error; James, of America, dera-tionalized truth. As a result, there has spr ung up a disturbing indifference to truth, and a tendency to regard the useful as the true, and the impractical as the false. The man who can make up his mind when proofs are presented to him is looked upon as a bigot, and the man who ignores proofs and the search for truth is looked upon as broadminded and tolerant. … The Catholic Church perhaps more than the other forms of Christianity notices the decline in the ar t of controversy. Never before … has she been so intellectually impoverished for want of good sound intellectual opposition as she is at the present time.

Today there are no foe-men MODERN REFORMATION

worthy of her steel. And if the Church today is not producing great chunks of thought, or what might be called “thinkage” it is because she has not been challenged to do so. The best in everything comes from the throwing down of a gauntlet—even the best in thought.

Alex Calabrese Via Internet I would like Michael Horton to define more clearly what he means by the “institutional church.” Horton writes: “An important shift occurred in Whitefield’s ministry: the institutional church while not directly attacked, was no longer to be regarded by the masses as the bearer of the kingdom keys. If the established churches would not accept the revivals, one no longer had to be ‘sent’ by them, but simply had to create an alternative authority: that of the market place.”

I am wondering how the early church felt as it had to loosen itself from the grip and ideology of its Jewish heritage. Or for that matter how did Luther feel when he had to go outside of “established authority” to accomplish what he felt God wanted him to say and do.

I think we jump to too quick of an answer by assuming the marketplace became the new authority.

Michael Tomko Via America On-Line Bravo! on your insightful commentary (Sept/Oct 1997) regarding “the evangelical movement’s institutional bondage to the marketplace.” However, I think one continued from page 3 have opposed apologetics, and we will be exploring some of the major—and often competing—apologetic schools within Christian thought. Then, in the next issue, we will look at some of the particular issues that apologetics encounters today when it engages unbelievers.

As we define our terms and schools in this issue, it is helpful to recognize that “classical apologetics” and the so-called “evidentialist” or “Princeton apologetic,” presented here by Jonathan Gerstner and John Warwick Montgomery respectively, are closer to Clement.

Conversely, the positions of “presuppositionalism” and “Reformed epistemology,” presented here by Scott Oliphint and Kelly James Clark, are closer to Tertullian.

But let’s not forget that we are dealing with a spectrum.

None of our writers in this issue is a rationalist (ultimacy of reason), an empiricist (ultimacy of sense-

should be extremely cautious about offering suggestions on how to set the situation right. Although Mr. Horton sees a need for a “turn from criticism to construction” and believes “we can no longer offer judgments without suggestions and alternatives,” I find much wisdom in the words of T. S. Eliot (Christianity and Culture): It is much more the business of the Church to say what is wrong, that is, what is inconsistent with Christian doctrine, than to propose particular schemes of improvement. What is right enters the realm of the expedient and is contingent upon place and time, the degree of culture, the temperament of a people. But the Church can say what is always and everywhere wrong. And without this firm assurance of first principles which it is the business of the Church to repeat in and out of season, the World will constantly confuse the right with the expedient.

Although Eliot is here concerned with Christianity’s relationship to the world, in an age in which the church increasingly resembles the world, his advice is well taken.

Randall Green Woodland Hills, CA modernREFORMATION: Letters to the Editor 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Fax: (215) 735-5133 ModernRef@aol.com www.remembrancer.com/ace

experience), or a fideist (ultimacy of an irrational “leap”). All of our writers in this issue believe that the mind as well as the heart is darkened by sin, and that no one can understand the things of God apart from God’s grace. Furthermore, despite their differences, they all deny that there is any “neutral” territory of knowledge which apologetics can claim as being devoid of presuppositions. None of these writers maintains that arguments or evidences are illegitimate in apologetics.

And they all agree that there is no saving truth apart from the knowledge of God disclosed in Jesus Christ and revealed in Scripture.

Come to think of it, while there is much disagreement as well, there is quite a lot of agreement.

At a time when it is sometimes easier to debate apologetics than to engage in the defense of the faith, may God give us the grace to see both his honor and the good of our neighbor in proper perspective.

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The Incarnate Christ: THE APOLOGETICTHRUST OF LUTHERANTHEOLOGY JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Is Luther Opposed to Apologetics?

Energy need not be expended here in refuting the contention that Luther had no objective grounding for his faith. Merely his affirmation at Worms—“I am bound by the Scriptures that I have adduced, and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God”—should be 8

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enough to show that for Luther truth was hardly subjective.1 Our task here is the more specialized one of determining to what extent Luther’s theology encourages the apologetic use of Christianity’s factual character in setting forth the faith.

Granted that for Luther God’s Word was objectively true; does it follow that its truth can be established and defended in the marketplace of ideas, or is the sinful character of humanity an absolute barrier?

Former Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan argues that there is a dichotomy between an existential Luther and his Aristotelian-apologetic followers. In Luther, admits Pelikan, “we do have at least one passage in which he expounds what virtually amounts to an argument [for God’s existence] from the analogy of being. The detailed commentary on Genesis, our chief source for the old Luther, deals with natural theology several times.”2 But note that Pelikan attributes this apologetic emphasis to “the old Luther,” not to the Reformer in his theological prime.

Those of us who see no tension between Lutheranism and apologetics could answer with Luther editor E. M. Plass that Luther’s Genesis commentary comprises the “longest and, in many respects, the Corey Wilkinson, scratchboard

One of the primary objections to apologetics within Lutheran circles this century is the critique (offered especially

by Bultmann and his followers) that Luther’s central conviction that a man is justified by grace through faith and his concomitant refusal to confuse Law with Gospel eliminated for him all uses of objective evidences in “defending” the faith.

Luther’s immediate followers, this critique continues, departed from Luther when they returned to Aristotle in endeavoring to establish the truth of faith by objective argument. Such argumentation is foreign to true Lutheran belief, we are told, and must be excised as a cancer.

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maturest of his lectures.” 3 However, this line of approach is unnecessary, for, as Luther scholars such as Philip S. Watson have shown, the Reformer’s concern with natural theology was by no means limited to his later years. As early as 1525, Luther is expressly teaching in The Bondage of the Will that “knowledge of predestination and of God’s prescience has been left in the world [after the Fall] no less certainly than the notion of the Godhead itself.” 4 In his Galatians commentary (1531)—considered by many to be the greatest of Luther’s writings—he condemns all attempts by the sinner to justify himself on the basis of the natural knowledge of God. Yet, at the same time, he stoutly defends the existence of such natural knowledge and encourages the Christian to dispute intelligently with unbelievers on the basis of it: When you are to dispute with Jews, Turks, Papists, Heretics, etc., concerning the power, wisdom, and majesty of God, employ all your intelligence and industry to that end, and be as profound and as subtle a disputer as you can …

Such arguments [for divine truth based on human and earthly analogy] are good when they are grounded upon the ordinance of God. But when they are taken from man’s cor r upt affections, they are naught.5 Though all efforts at self-salvation through natural theology must be unqualifiedly condemned, Luther sees the natural knowledge of God and of his law inscribed on every man’s heart as the point of contact—the common ground—which makes the evangelistic task possible.

If the natural law were not written and given in the heart by God, one would have to preach to an ass, horse, ox, or cow for a hundred thousand years before they accepted the law, although they have ears, eyes, and heart as a man. They too can hear it, but it does not enter their heart.

Why? What is wrong? Their soul is not so formed and fashioned that such a thing might enter it. But a man, when the law is set before him, soon says: Yes, it is so, he cannot deny it.

He could not be so quickly convinced, were it not written in his heart before.6 However, retorts the anti-apologetic Lutheran, does this really penetrate to the heart of Luther’s position?

Though he held to natural knowledge of God, he nonetheless refused to allow such knowledge a place in salvation. As specialists on Luther’s view of “reason” point out, Luther indeed encourages rational operations in the secular realm (the ear thly kingdom) but

categorically rejects reason as a normative rule in the realm of salvation (the spiritual kingdom).7 Reason must never be allowed to operate magisterially in relation to God’s Word; where this occurs, reason becomes Madam Jezebel—the Devil’s Whore.

The Kingdom of Reason embraces such human activities as caring for a family, building a home, serving as a magistrate, and looking after cows.

All that can be demanded of me by God in such a sphere of activity is that I should “do my best.” The important thing not to overlook is that this Kingdom has its boundaries; the error of the sophists is that they carry the saying “to do one’s best” (facere quod in se est) over into the regnum spirituale, in which a man is able to do nothing but sin. In outward affairs or in the affairs of the body man is master: “He is hardly,” as Luther dryly remarks, “the cow’s servant.” But in spiritual affairs he is a servant or slave, “sold under sin.” “For the Kingdom of Human Reason must be separated as far as possible from the Spiritual Kingdom.”8 And what possible good can an apologetic do when, in Luther’s thinking, natural knowledge of God offers no substitute whatever for the Word of God in Jesus Christ?

Knowledge of the Deus absconditus (the hidden God) can only impart terror; the Deus revelatus (God revealed in Christ) offers the sole avenue to peace and salvation. He is accessible, not to reason and demonstration, but to the eyes of faith. Even Christ’s miracles did not convince those who would not accept his Word: “When miracles are performed, they are appreciated only by the pious.”9 One must come in faith to the lowly Christ of the manger and there, paradoxically, one will meet the Divine Savior.

Luther’s theology calls for proclamation of this truth, rather than an impossible defense of it which invariably appeals to the “natural man” desiring to justify himself.10 Is Luther Kantian?

Luther carefully distinguished two kingdoms, the earthly and the spiritual (considering this distinction to be one of the most valuable aspects of his theology).11 But does this distinction dichotomize the world into a secular realm where reason and proof operate, and a spiritual realm where evidence has no place? This is precisely the impression given by many interpreters of Luther. Especially revealing is Rober t Fischer’s declaration that for Luther “such insights [reason, experience, common sense] operate in what would later be called the phenomenal realm; they do not penetrate the noumenal.”12 The use of the terms “noumenal” and “phenomenal” (borrowed from the Kantian critical JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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philosophy, which is itself dependent upon a Platonic separation of the realm of “ideas” or “ideals” from the phenomenal world of sense experience) is most significant. Luther is painlessly being absorbed into the idealistic-dualistic frame of reference characteristic of much of twentieth century Protestant thought. Why can neo-orthodox theologians and the like confidently hold to their “theological insights” while simultaneously accepting the most destructive judgments of biblical critics regarding alleged factual errors in the biblical material and the supposed historical unreliability of the scriptural accounts of our Lord’s life? Simply because the (noumenal) truth of theological statements, they believe, is in no way dependent on the phenomenal, secular issues connected with biblical history.

After all, they argue, the Bible conveys religious, not scientific or historical truth.

Is Luther to be assimilated to this Platonic-Kantian perspective? The answer depends squarely on what kind of connection Luther saw between the two kingdoms. If he, in fact, kept them in watertight compartments, then a positive apologetic originating in the secular realm could not in principle prove truths in the spiritual sphere. Luther’s belief in a natural theology, however, strongly suggests some kind of connecting link between the kingdoms in his thinking. But what precisely is the nature of the link?

Ernst Troeltsch is best known in Reformation studies for his negative views of Luther’s social ethics.13 Troeltsch claims that Luther’s theology produced social quietism because, he argues, Luther never connected the theological insights operative in his spiritual kingdom with the activities of the earthly kingdom. This allegation has been decisively refuted by George Forell, who shows that Luther’s two kingdoms are connected as to origin, for “these two separate realms are ultimately both God’s realms”; and they are linked in practice by the individual Christian believer, who is a citizen of both simultaneously. (Forell writes, “Luther explains that a point of contact between the secular realm and the spiritual realm exists in the person of the individual Christian.”)14 Today, parallel vindication of Luther is needed epistemologically.

The Incarnation as Link Between the Two Kingdoms As the individual Christian unites the two kingdoms in his person, thereby bridging the sociological gap between them, so the Incarnate Christ links the two realms epistemologically. The incarnational center of Luther’s theology eliminates entirely the possibility of making him an advocate of “two-fold truth.” In the sharpest possible opposition to Platonic dualism (and to the related modern dichotomies of Kantianism and of Lessing’s “ditch” between historical fact and absolute truth), Luther declares that Jesus Christ, in his own person, offers immediate access to the Divine. One begins with the earthly and finds the heavenly. Luther’s words in the final version of his Galatians commentary should be carefully pondered: Paul is in the habit of linking together Jesus Christ and God the Father so frequently: he wants to teach us the Christian religion, which does not begin at the very top, as all other religions do, but at the very bottom …

[If] you would think or treat of your salvation, you must stop speculating about the majesty of God; you must forget all thoughts of good works, tradition, philosophy, and even the divine Law. Hasten to the stable and the lap of the mother and apprehend this infant Son of the Virgin. Look at Him being born, nursed, and growing up, walking among men, teaching, dying, returning from the dead, and being exalted above all the heavens, in possession of power over all. In this way you can cause the sun to dispel the clouds and can avoid all fear…15

The facts of God’s existence

and of his incarnate revelation in Jesus Christ stand as objectively true and evidentially compelling wholly apart from belief in them. Faith in no sense creates their facticity.

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Luther insists that the search for God begin at the connecting link between earth and heaven which exists at the point of the Incarnation. There we find a genuine human being (“nursed and growing up,” “dying”) but also Very God of Very God (“returning from the dead and being exalted above all the heavens”). “Philosophy,” which starts elsewhere, must be forgotten; absolute truth is available only here. Why does Luther concentrate relatively little on traditional proofs for God’s existence (even though he considered such argumentation valid)?

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If you begin your study of God by trying to determine how He rules the world, how He burned Sodom and Gomorrah with infernal fire, whether He has elected this person or that, and thus begin with the works of the High Majesty, then you will presently break your neck and be hurled from heaven, suffering a fall like Lucifer’s.

For such procedure amounts to beginning on top and building the roof before you have laid the foundation. Therefore, letting God do whatever He is doing, you must begin at the bottom and say: I do not want to know God until I have first known this Man; for so read the passages of Scripture: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”; again: “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me” (John 14:6). And there are more passages to the same effect.16 Luther is not anti-apologetic; he is, rather, exceedingly careful in his starting-point. The point de depart must be Christ. In methodology one must “begin at the bottom” with the Incarnation, and no reasoning (or anything else, for that matter) can be legitimately regarded as ground for works-righteousness or selfjustification.

Admittedly, Luther did not build a formal apologetic from this incar national starting point. His task was not to defend the soundness of the biblical history or of its picture of Christ. In the sixteenth century no reputable theologians of any school of thought questioned the veracity of the scriptural text.

The cold winds of rationalistic biblical criticism had not yet begun to blow. (To be sure, Renaissance humanists such as Lorenzo Valla would later be regarded as precursors of such criticism, but they posed no threat to biblical authority in Luther’s time.) Luther often said that he did his best work when angry, i.e., he recognized that his theological activities were determined in large part by the contemporary pressures upon him. These pressures came, not from unbelievers doubting the authority of the Word, but from churchmen who misinterpreted it. Thus Luther’s battles were hermeneutic rather than apologetic.17 But the fundamental themes of Luther’s theology were most definitely hospitable to a positive apologetic, and bore fruit when, not so many years later, the very

authority of the Word came under fire. We have already stressed the central role the Incarnation played in Luther’s thought—offering a bridge from ordinary human experience to the divine tr uth of God’s revelation. There are many closely related themes of great apologetic consequence in his theology. We will note four here: 1) Psychosomatic holism. Luther refused, in debate with Zwingli and others, to separate Christ’s spirit from his body. He thereby avoided the trap of “spiritualist” theology which is, in the last analysis, unverifiable and indefensible. (Our century’s modernists make this sort of dichotomous claim when they say that Christ rose from the dead “spiritually” but not necessarily in his body.) 18 2) A constant epistemological insistence on the objectivity of Christian truth. Luther repeatedly asserts that to find the true meaning of the Gospel one must always go from “the outward to the inward,” and that the Gospel lies entirely extra nos (outside of us). These two positions not only preclude subjectivism and auto-salvation, but also provide the foundation for the teaching of the orthodox Lutheran dogmaticians that notitia (objective fact) must always ground fiducia (personal, subjective commitment), and that Christian heart conviction can be justified by external evidence.19 3) Sacramental teaching. His firm maintenance of the finitum est capax infiniti20 principle places him most definitely outside the Platonist camp and opens the way to the widest variety of apologetic operations. Luther believed that every fact in the world— “even the most insignificant leaf of a tree”—becomes a potential avenue to Christ.21 4) Inductive methodology. Luther required that one discover what Scripture is actually saying and not force it into alien categories (e.g., Zwingli’s metaphysical speculations about the nature of “bodies”).

This made possible the defense of the faith in a world soon to recognize the necessity of open, inductive, scientific procedures. Such scientists as Brahe and Kepler who followed Luther’s hermeneutic were at the forefront of both scientific advance and the apologetic reconciliation of Scripture and scientific discovery.22 Though not an apologist in the strict sense, Luther provided, through such theological insights, the basic orientation necessary for the apologetic emphases of the classical Lutheran dogmaticians. Anti-apologetic interpreters of Luther have found it especially galling to admit that in the efforts of the dogmaticians and Lutheran scientists such as Kepler to harmonize science and Scripture, “Luther had led the way with related Corey Wilkinson, scratchboard

Because for him it did not constitute the proper point of departure:

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interpretations of Genesis.”23 But is it not far more reasonable to see a positive relationship between the apologetic activity of the great Lutheran theologians following Luther and the work of Luther himself, rather than to claim that somehow all of these theologians unwittingly managed to distort his theology?

But, these anti-apologetic Lutherans ask, did not these orthodox Lutheran apologists inevitably weaken the biblical picture of man’s total depravity, de-emphasize the scriptural teaching concerning the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation, and introduce a subtle synergism into preaching of the Gospel of divine grace? Not at all. In retaining Luther’s view of the Incarnation as the center of theology, the orthodox dogmaticians rightly opposed any attempt to dehumanize man. No concept of the Fall should lead to a loss of man’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood in matters secular, or (which is the same thing) to distinguish true from false claims that God was in fact incarnate in the secular sphere.

Nor did this apologetic approach produce a “depneumatized” theology. The dogmaticians rightly maintained that the fides humana or “historical faith” could not in itself save. Notitia is possessed by the devils also, who tremble but are not saved because of it. There must be the personal commitment—the commitment of the whole person—to Christ for salvation, and that is brought about solely by the Spirit’s work. At the same time, however, the orthodox theologians correctly refused to say (as the modern neo-orthodox do) that this personal commitment through the work of the

Holy Spirit somehow “produces” the only evidence of its reality. Hardly! The facts of God’s existence and of his incar nate revelation in Jesus Christ stand as objectively true and evidentially compelling wholly apart from belief in them. Faith in no sense creates their facticity. They stand over against man, judging him by their sheer veracity and compelling force.

“Synergism”? Hardly, for everything is done by God, nothing by man. The evidential facts are God’s work, and the sinner’s personal acceptance of them— and of the Person on whom they center—is entirely the product of the Holy Spirit. To argue that the Reformation dogmaticians fell into synergism because they defended the faith and expected a rational response from the sinner would require our condemning their preaching as well (and, indeed, all Christian preaching), on the ground that it presupposes a responsible decision on the sinner’s part. But the same Paul who asserted that men are saved by grace alone (Eph. 2:8-9, etc.) told the Philippian jailer to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

He defended God’s truth in philosophical terms on the Areopagus and cited historical evidence for Christ’s resurrection in conjunction with his statement of the nature of the Gospel (I Cor. 15). Lutheranism follows in the great apostle’s train. MR John Warwick Montgomery, Professor Emeritus at the University of Luton and a practicing Barrister in England, is the author of more than forty books with topics ranging from theology and apologetics to law and ethics.

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Unbelievers and the Knowledge of God: BIBLICAL WARRANT FOR A PRESUPPOSITIONAL APOLOGETIC KENNETH SCOTT OLIPHINT This article will set forth several of the main theological tenets of an approach to apologetics typically labeled “presuppositionalism.” That label itself can be confusing, since there are various approaches seeking to take presuppositions seriously and to incorporate them in their methods. E. J. Carnell, Francis Schaeffer, and many others have been aware of the crucial role that presuppositions play in our thinking. As such, our first task is to clarify what kind of presuppositionalism is being discussed.

I believe the apologetic approach presented most consistently by Cornelius Van Til during his forty plus years at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia is the approach most informed by and dependent upon traditional Reformed theology. If that is so, then it would follow that such a constr uct is the most consistently Reformed. I realize there are other Christian approaches. I would even argue that it is the Christian apologist’s task to make his apologetic method consistent with his theology. It would then be out of place for a person convinced of an Arminian or evangelical theology to espouse a Reformed apologetic.

Apologetics must not simply refrain from violating the theological principles held by the apologist, but must be informed and dependent on such principles. It would be logically and theologically inconsistent, therefore, for one who is Refor med in theolog y to hold to an apologetic that is informed and dependent upon Arminian theological tenets.

But what are the principles on which a Reformed apologetic depends? Given that the Reformed tradition carries with it various theological nuances, some of which are at least implicitly inconsistent, I will mention two that seem to be most apologetically relevant.

The Covenant I have often thought that a tr uly Refor med apologetic should be refer red to, not as a presuppositional apologetic, but as a covenantal apologetic. While there are certainly aspects to the JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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biblical teaching on the covenant that are less relevant to apologetics, some, nevertheless, should be highlighted.

The first thing worth considering when we develop a biblical apologetical approach is that every living person is in a relationship to the one true God. It seems to me that this tr uth is all too easy to forget. Such forgetfulness may be due, in part, to the emphasis on the radical transformation that takes place when God adopts us into his eternal family; an emphasis that we must continue to have. However, because we often focus on the relationship we have to God by virtue of our union with Christ, we can forget that unbelievers are related to God as well. We should remember that even those outside of Christ are in a covenant relationship to the God who made them. They are not, of course, his adopted children; that privilege is reserved for Christ’s own. But they are as they live, move and exist, both on this side and on the other side of death, in a covenant relationship with God. This relationship (and here it is much like that of those redeemed) is sovereignly initiated by God. It is based on his creative activity, and is one in which the person himself is responsible to keep God’s law. This is a truth that the apostle Paul wants to teach us at the beginning of Romans.

In Romans 1:18 and following, Paul describes the universal condition of mankind. His particular concern is to articulate just how and why it is that those who do not have the oracles of God, who have not had the law of God delivered to them, are nevertheless legitimately held responsible by God and are objects of his wrath.

Paul sets out, then, to answer the perennial question, “What about those who have not been included in the special covenant God has made with his people?” Or, to use New Covenant language, “What about those who have never heard of Christ?” His answer is not simply to lay it all at the feet of God’s holy justice—a kind of sanctified agnosticism—but is instead amazingly specific in its content.

Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Notice that Paul is saying that there is an attribute of God that is revealed. His initial concern, therefore, is to set forth the fact that God is revealing himself from heaven. It is revealed because the very revelation from heaven that God has given continues to be suppressed, subverted and twisted almost beyond recognition. God’s wrath is revealed because human beings have taken the revelation of the character of God and have attempted to hold it down (v. 18). They have exchanged its glory for a lie, have decided, in spite of what they know, to worship and serve something created rather than the Creator (v.

25), and have openly approved of those things that they know deserve death (v. 32). Therefore, in many cases, God gives them over to the consistent consequences of 14

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what they attempt to believe (vv. 24-28). Paul’s point here is to stress that these treasonous acts against God are not acts accomplished out of ignorance. They are acts of disobedience against the God whom they know. And note well—Paul is not out to assert that some people know that there is a god; Paul’s specific language is that all people know the one true God (v. 21). And, if nineteenth century Princeton theologian Charles Hodge is right, people do not simply know that this God exists, but they know “all the divine perfections.”1 They know that God is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; they comprehend that he is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute (WCF II:1). They know of God’s mercy and kindness, which should lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4), but they refuse to repent. Such is the psychology of every unbeliever. Every person, even those outside of Christ, knows God and his attributes.

And it is important to see that those outside of Christ and of his special covenant blessings know these things, not because of what they have done, intellectually or otherwise, but because of what God has accomplished and is accomplishing in revealing himself to them. There is no hint here of an intellectual process producing these truths about God, but rather, as Paul says, that which is known about God is evident within them, because God made it evident to them. (Even if this knowledge of God were a result of one’s intellectual activity, such activity would have to be universal in its scope, because Paul’s conclusion in verse 20 is that this knowledge of God renders all people without excuse before God.) All of this, of course, is couched in the language of covenant. God sovereignly initiates (in this case by vir tue of creation and providence) both the circumstances and the terms of this arrangement, and having done so he holds people responsible for carrying out those terms. God gives to all people life and breath and all things (Acts 17), showing thereby his goodness to us, but he also gives us his law, requiring that we keep it and promising to judge us by it (Rom. 2:1-16). There can be no question, furthermore, that as Paul writes he has the covenant with Adam in mind, a covenant sovereignly given when Adam was created. As covenant creatures, then, all people know the God that we Christians serve, the only true God; they know what he requires of them; and they know that failure to meet his standards is deserving of death. What they do with this knowledge, however, is the second point of Reformed theology that we need to discuss.

The Human Condition Paul makes clear that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven because the knowledge that all men have of MODERN REFORMATION

God, which is both understood and clearly seen through what has been made (Rom. 1:20), is simultaneously being suppressed or held down. It is not the case, therefore, that the unbeliever will readily or explicitly admit this knowledge. It is, in that sense, a kind of “subconscious” knowledge that people have. The effects of sin are such that people will not face this knowledge if they can avoid it; but they cannot avoid it. It comes, as Paul tells us, through the inescapable medium of creation. To avoid it would be to annihilate oneself, which is utterly impossible.

The next step short of avoidance, then, is to hold it down, to suppress it, to attempt to ensure that it is never a part of one’s life and thinking. This suppression causes a person to live and think against his or her better knowledge; it is to live and think irrationally.

It is important to see the tremendous amount of energy that is required for the unbeliever to accomplish this task of suppression.

God’s revelation bombards his creatures day and night, both within and without us. It never lets up because creation screams it and creation never goes away. So the unbeliever goes about his daily life attempting to submerge as much of creation as he can, all the while necessarily living within its bounds. Such is the futility of sin. Such is the condition of unbelief. Recently, our military attempted to “smoke out” some rebels from a compound in which they were holed up by playing music as loudly as possible, twenty-four hours a day. The theory was that those inside would eventually “crack” and surrender. The unbeliever’s thought and life are like that.

Night and day pour forth the “speech” of God; all day, every day, as the heart beats, the revelation of God screams his attributes. And the unbeliever attempts all the while to pretend that no One is there. There will inevitably be, consequently, various tensions and irrationalities in the everyday life of unbelief.

But the false cannot totally avoid truth’s attack; darkness cannot withstand the light. Unbelievers cannot pretend forever. They can’t even pretend consistently in a given day. As we said, to do so would be to annihilate oneself. The unbeliever knows God and is repeatedly confronted with his character in the richness of the revelation that comes from heaven. He cannot continually suppress it. This knowledge of God that the unbeliever has is like a beach ball in a swimming pool: the unbeliever

attempts to hold it down and in spite of his best efforts, no matter how strong he is, one slip, one letting down of the guard, and the ball comes rushing to the top, back in plain sight, just as it was intended to be all along.

So it is with the knowledge of God. Unbelievers will, in spite of their best efforts, both attempt to suppress this clear knowledge that they have, and also to make use of it when it is pragmatically beneficial to them. They will mix this knowledge of God that they have with the perversions that they work to create. Thus, perversions and distortions can be recognized in what they think and do, showing all the while the truth of Paul’s teaching in Romans. They will show that, as a matter of fact, they do know God. In spite of their perversions, their sinful exchange, their attempts to suppress and reject, the truth of God comes through nevertheless. It was this that Paul was expressing as he spoke to the philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts 17. He told them that he was not only going to declare the God whom they had concluded was unknown, but also that their own poets had given evidence of God’s attributes, though they had applied such truths so as to make them false. Their poets had rightly said that it was in God that they lived, moved and existed, but in that knowledge they sinfully and culpably ascribed such things to Zeus, rather than to the God who had made them and given them all things.

Given that everyone, in all

places at all times knows the true God but seeks to suppress that knowledge, what is a proper defense of the Christian faith?

So How Do We Defend the Faith?

Given the above, certain things seem to be true of every person. First, all people, even unbelievers, know God. They do not simply know a proposition about God, but they are covenantally related to God in such a way that, in the core of their created beings, they know intimately the God who made them. But, second, they also attempt throughout their lives as unbelievers to hold down that knowledge, to distance themselves from it. Yet they are not able to do so. They cannot do so because this revelation of God permeates creation, and creation is the place where the unbeliever, as God’s creature, must always live.

So there is, in the life of every unbeliever, nearinsurmountable tension; tension that will reveal itself both in their thinking and in their living. A Reformed apologetic seeks to work with that tension in order to JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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offer the only resolution to it. Tension in thinking, commonly called irrationalism, can be resolved only by accepting Christianity. Tension in one’s living, commonly referred to these days as “dysfunction,” can also be resolved only by accepting Christianity— trusting Christ.

So what is our defense, given these truths? Given the fact that everyone, in all places at all times, knows the true God but seeks to suppress that knowledge, exchanging it for a lie, what is a proper defense of the Christian faith? We should first understand that because all of creation testifies infallibly to the existence and character of God, we may start anywhere in our defense of the faith. Any fact, to be a fact, is created and sustained by God in the first place, and reveals his character in the second place. So there can be no fact that will disprove him, on the one hand, and every fact proves him, on the other. Since, then, the creation proves God, and since the unbeliever knows this God who is proved in all things, there are at least two possible broad avenues open to us.

We may want to ask the unbeliever to make sense of the world in which he is living, given that he continues to deny the God who made it all. We ask him, then, to give an account of those things that he takes for granted, or takes to be true. In doing this, we are relying on the implications of the truth Paul discusses in Romans. We are relying on the fact that the unbeliever wants his life to make some kind of sense, to be more than the every day routine seems to indicate. He may say that such things are not important to him, but because he lives in God’s world, his life will show that they are. In asking him to give an account of his world, we understand that, apart from God’s regenerating work, he will not be able to do so. But this provides the avenue for our communication of the Gospel. What the unbeliever claims to know, as well as what he does, cannot be accounted for except on the presupposition of Christianity’s truth.

Perhaps, for example, we talk to an unbeliever about one of the theistic proofs. One version of the cosmological argument wants to work from the necessity of a cause/effect relationship to a first cause. As Christians, we don’t want to deny that there must be a first cause, or that implied in the notion of an effect is, necessarily, a cause. But we should understand that such things are true only because Christianity is true and not because there are more or less neutral rational principles out there to which all, in the same way, submit. Or, we may want to ask the unbeliever to make sense of the notion of logic. As Christians, we want to affirm the necessity of logic for thinking, but (as in air for breathing) such necessity can only be accounted for because of Christianity, and not because of some idea of eternal 16

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categories that are independent of God. We may want to ask him to make sense of his life insurance policy, given the fact that so few people can be trusted, or that there is no guarantee that tomorrow will be like today, or that the sun will come up, or anything else that the unbeliever takes for granted. Any fact, any activity, any statement, the very discussion which we have with an unbeliever, all can be accounted for—justified—only because God is who he says he is and Christianity is what Christ says it is.

There is another approach that we can take as well.

We may want to ask the unbeliever to look at the world from our own, Christian, perspective for a while. In doing that, we are well aware that he simply cannot see things from that perspective unless his heart is changed and he is transformed. But, like our communication of the Gospel, it is the truth of the matter that the Spirit uses to conver t sinners. Like the cosmological argument, or logic, or life insurance—none can be accounted for unless Christianity is true—and it is that very fact that is the point of contention.

You may have noticed by this time that the word “presupposition” has been conspicuous by its absence.

The discussion so far has focused on the theology behind the defense. When we ask unbelievers to make sense of their world, we inquire about their presuppositions. Not only so, but we question their presuppositions realizing all the while that the existence and knowledge of God is something the unbeliever, just by virtue of who he is, has indelibly imprinted on his soul—forever. So our defense, not unlike the proclamation of the gospel, attempts to show the unbeliever the truth of the matter—the truth of the world, of his life, of logic, etc.—and leaves the understanding of such things to God and his mercy.

We argue, then, from the impossibility of the contrary position—and any position that is not the Christian position is contrary to it. We do not simply argue from the impossibility of something; we are not trying to assert the absolute necessity of something which God has made, be it logic, the air that we breath, or anything else that is necessary for living and thinking.

Rather, we are attempting to assert the impossibility of any contrary world, including the things within it, except the one which God has made and in which we all live.

Thus, we argue from the sole possibility of Christianity alone for living and thinking in a world which God has made and in which he has placed his covenant creatures, even those still in bondage to sin. MR Dr. Oliphint, the co-author of If I Should Die Before I Wake: Help for Those Who Hope for Heaven, is assistant professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

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Reason as Starting Point: THE RATIONALITY OF CLASSICAL APOLOGETICS JONATHAN N. GERSTNER Anyone starting with his or her own reason and the data of creation will be inevitably drawn to conclude that God exists. • One’s own consciousness and reason is not only the appropriate star ting point of all inquiry, it is the only conceivable starting point of any inquiry. • Anyone exposed to the Christian Scriptures who has sufficient opportunity to use his or her reason to investigate the evidence for its inspiration will inevitably draw the conclusion that it is the true Word of God. • The Christian apologist is called to demonstrate the truth of the faith through rationally compelling proofs.

These bold statements are the key tenets of the sound methodology of Christian apologetics known as “classical apologetics.” This methodology is so named because the confidence that reason undergirds the Christian religion has been the classic perspective of the church. In Scripture Elijah boldly challenges the people to weigh the evidence and “if Baal is God, follow him” (I Kings 18:21). There is no reticence to call people to decide in light of the evidence. God, speaking through Isaiah, calls fallen man to reason together with him (Is. 1:18).

Christ exhorts his incredulous disciple Thomas to place his hands in Christ’s side, even while chastising his slowness to trust reliable witnesses (John 20:27). Paul

at Mars Hill goes so far as to quote statements from two pagan thinkers to document what may be known about God from nature (Acts 17:28). Building on this base, Paul presents special revelation about what God had done through Jesus Christ. No account in Scripture shows the slightest reluctance to appeal to man’s reason to examine the truth of the living God. The often misinterpreted first chapters of I Corinthians in fact present a classical understanding. Paul rejects oratorical wrangling and the flowery rhetorical emptiness which is considered wisdom by much of the world, to ensure that believers’ faith rests in “demonstration of the Spirit” and of the power of God (I Cor. 2:4-5). Paul is assuring not merely a more godly foundation but a more rationally secure one as well. Only a teacher sent from God like Paul could do mighty miracles: It is only rational to give assent to the tidings they bring (John 3:1).

Defenders of the classical understanding that reason undergirds the Christian faith diverge over which JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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particular rational methodology is the best to address a particular challenge, but all grant that reason is the place to begin and end the apologetic venture. Although for all Protestants the case for classical apologetics ultimately stands alone on Scripture’s authority, it is significant to note how this view has dominated Christianity throughout its history from the early church throughout the middle ages to the Reformation.

Despite significant contemporary rejection, it historically became particularly embedded in the Reformed tradition and its great universities and seminaries, reaching its climax at Princeton Seminary during its era of orthodoxy (1812-1929).

The Good Gift of Reason and the Reprobate Mind If Reason points unswervingly to the truth of the Christian religion, why are so many brilliant thinkers opposed to the Christian faith? A simple way of answering is that people have darkened their minds, not their reason. The heart does not like what the reason sees and holds down the truth in unrighteousness. The first chapter of Romans makes clear that by the light of reason and the evidence of nature, God makes his existence and attributes clear to everyone. However, this knowledge is not well received by fallen people. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21, emphasis added). From this wicked heart that holds down the truth in unrighteousness, people become futile in their imaginations and are given over to a reprobate mind, or mindset. This mindset neither accepts spiritual truths about God, nor knows these truths experientially (I Cor. 2:14) because the heart hates them. However, this mindset is not reasonable, nor rationally consistent. The reason still points to God. A key illustration of the human condition from a classical apologetics perspective is that of a doctor with a patient. If the doctor tells a patient that he is to die from an inoperable brain tumor, the first reaction is predictable. There must be a mistake! This reaction is not a rationally weighed decision. He intellectually knows that the doctor is a trained professional and highly unlikely to have given such a precise and devastating diagnosis without careful analysis. However the heart finds the news so devastating, that it holds the truth down. This denial stage may last for moments or years. If it is imperative that the doctor get through to the patient in spite of his denial, the only recourse is to try to force the patient to examine the evidence rationally. The doctor may, for example, make him look at the x-ray of his condition. Now the patient has the power to refuse to examine the evidence or to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what it clearly shows, because he 18

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so fears what it demonstrates. Still this classical methodology is the doctor’s only recourse. He is certainly leaving his patient without excuse.

So it is with classical apologetics. All biblical apologists know that the unbeliever has a biased heart and has produced a wicked mindset against the truth of God. Given that the reprobate mindset does not accept the truth of God, the question is how ought it to be approached? There are truly only two options available: reason with the person or ignore the person. If one reasons with the person, following the clear example of Scripture, as well as centuries of Christian apologetics, one is following a classical perspective. But isn’t this a little like preaching to dead bones? Such a practice itself is not without biblical precedent. We cry out to those dead in trespasses and sins, “whosoever will, let him come,” knowing that only those resurrected by God’s grace will be made willing. So to reason with those of wicked mindset who suppress the tr uth in unrighteousness is no more unreasonable.

However, there is an additional truth undergirding the field of Christian apologetics. Although the wicked mindset cannot lovingly accept spiritual truth, the fallen mind’s reason can still ascertain much truth. Although a person cannot know these truths experientially, he or she can know much about them. Indeed, all those who come to saving faith in Christ have already understood part of the claims of Christ intellectually. Although apologetics cannot make someone believe, nor can it make him “know” the beauty of the truths presented, apologetics indeed can demonstrate the truth of the content of the faith. For the natural man, to know God is to hate God, yet some acknowledge God’s existence despite their dislike of him simply by the overwhelmingly airtight case for the truth. The greatest evil mind, Satan himself, is a prime example. Some patients will acknowledge the deadly tumor in their bodies despite how little they like that truth. The Puritans called such intellectually convinced unconverted people “seekers.” One of many sad effects of the relative decline of classical apologetics during this century, before its current resurgence, is the decline of those intellectually persuaded by the case for Christianity before coming to a saving knowledge of God. Reversing a False Copernican Revolution Some contemporary critics of classical apologetics accuse it of making too much use of philosophy in defense of the faith. Its defenders willingly acknowledge that whatever is true in philosophy is in fact God’s truth and is of much use in defending the Christian faith.

However, most contemporary critics themselves have uncritically swallowed the central postulates of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The key elements of Kant’s epistemolog y must be rejected since they MODERN REFORMATION

undercut the hear t of both general and special revelation. Historians of philosophy describe Kant’s views as a Copernican revolution in which epistemology (the study of how we know what we know) moved from viewing the object as containing objective truth received by a primarily passive observer. Instead, for Kant and his followers, the subject (or observer) brings his own categories and ways of perceiving reality. This switch to focusing on the subject rather than the object, is the key to contemporary subjectivism in our culture, and also to the methodology of the presuppositional school of apologetics. For this school, one does not have the remnants of the natural image of God to view objective reality and ascertain truth. Rather, one’s own presuppositions directly affect the very content of what is perceived. For all the nuance among different practitioners of this school, this starting with presuppositions in the subject of epistemolog y is a givenness of humanity, and one is exhorted to adopt the existence of God and the Scriptures as the divinely inspired word of God as the only appropriate presupposition on which all truth rests.

Indisputably, par t of the attractiveness of presuppositionalism at this century’s end is the way in which it grants the subjective presuppositions of Kantian epistemology and thus meshes well with the mindset of our culture. The classical apologist must fight upstream to reassert the objectivity of truth and the capacity of man to perceive it via reason. However, upstream we must go, as has so often been the case in church history.

Classical apologetics grants that every sinful person by nature brings his presuppositions to his perception of the world. Indeed, these false presuppositions are the heart of what is known as the reprobate mind spoken of in Scripture. However, to bring one’s presuppositions to the search for truth is in fact the heart of sin. Christians are not called to exhort unbelievers to exchange their own wicked presuppositions for godly ones. Rather, they are to exhort unbelievers to strip away their presuppositions and return to the internal irrefutable truth of reason as the starting point of all search for truth. Reason is irrefutable as the starting point of

intellectual endeavor, for one cannot refute reason without becoming internally incoherent. Reason and the data of nature then irrefutably point to the existence of God. When a person is given the opportunity to investigate the truth of the Christian Scriptures, he or she discovers this. But these tr uths are not presuppositions, they are conclusions.

Classical apologists join with our presuppositional colleagues in destroying the false presuppositions of the unbelievers we approach. We delight in pointing out that our colleagues’ use of reason in critiquing these false world views shows their own subtle and unintentional realization that reason is in fact the only valid starting point of human inquiry. But we also gladly point unbelievers to valid arguments from reason which establish the truths of God’s existence and Scripture.

Reversing a philosophical Coper nican revolution is difficult.

Kant’s emphasis on the truth of the subject has undercut not only the field of apologetics but also all the other disciplines of study.

For instance, exegesis has become for many the study of what one brings to the text. The defense of Christianity needs to reclaim reason as a God-given starting point.

Given that the reprobate

mindset does not accept the truth of God, the question is how ought it to be approached?

There are truly only two options available: reason with the person or ignore the person.

Between Rationalism and Fideism Lest the reader misunderstand, I need to make absolutely clear the difference between saying, on the one hand, that reason is a God-given starting point and that rational argumentation is the methodology of sound apologetics, and saying, on the other hand, that reason is meant to be the finishing point of theology. Opponents often unfairly accuse classical apologetics of rationalism.

This is simply not the case. A rationalist is one who accepts as true only those propositions which can be directly proven by human reason, while irrationally refusing to accept anything given by direct revelation from God. The classical apologist attacks rationalism as not only wicked, but also as irrational. To say that reason is the starting point in ascertaining truth in no way negates that reason may point to information from a Supreme Being of much greater intelligence than humanity possesses, which it is eminently rational to accept, eminently irrational to reject. To give a simple JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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illustration, it is eminently irrational for me to refuse to accept the information concerning my physical condition given by a trained physician unless he can prove to me with my high school knowledge of biology all the reasons he has for his diagnosis. It is infinitely more irrational to refuse to accept the wisdom given by the all knowing and totally truthful God because it goes beyond human reason’s ability to comprehend it all. Thus, it is unfair to accuse classical apologists of rationalism.

Indeed, it is the classical apologist who cries the loudest against the wickedness of such a mindset. Classical apologists add to the presuppositionalist’s critique, insisting that rationalism is not even rational.

However, on the other side, classical apologetics also attacks the opposite error of fideism. Fideism believes in faith as a means of receiving wisdom apart from a rational foundation for the faith. Fideists consider it a godly thing to accept something “on faith” even though there is no reason to believe the source that one is trusting. Although fideism has surfaced around the edges of Christianity from earliest days, its present day resurgence among Christian intellectuals was again largely influenced by Immanuel Kant. Kant is famous for his claim of having destroyed reason to make room for faith. Many godly believers have indeed accepted this view of faith as something existing apart from a rational foundation.

On the surface fideism sounds like a godly perspective. Who does not initially resonate with hearing man’s evil reason attacked in the name of Christ?

However, this attack on reason is at least as reprehensible as the medieval church’s tendency to attack the body as being in and of itself evil. Although our bodies are constantly used for evil until our heart is changed, it is blasphemous to call this part of God’s good creation evil in and of itself. It is even worse to call the reason God has given as part of his image in us evil, even though all acknowledge that one’s wicked heart will cause one to abuse his reasoning capacity for evil. Still, reason is a gift of God, and there is valid and invalid reason, not wicked reason. The intellectual Christian faith is based upon valid reasoning.

It is worth noting that the purest form of fideism is often found in cults and false religions. But a leap of faith is always dishonoring to God who created us in his image with a rational soul. (Though God, in his infinite mercy, sometimes allows people to stumble into the actual truth of the Scriptures.) Rather, God usually expects that we investigate and see if, in fact, the claimed revelation we see is that of God or Baal. Faith is certain as Hebrews points out, because it is taking God at his Word, and God’s existence and the truth of his Word has already been demonstrated abundantly to the reason. The reason then rationally takes its rest when it receives conclusive proof that the one speaking is God who cannot lie. Faith 20

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is certain because it is founded on reason.

But then one will ask: where is the struggle of faith?

This struggle of faith is not the struggle of the rationality of the faith. The devils have passed the intellectual persuasion aspect of faith, and tremble.

Rather the struggle of faith is the fiducial or trust aspect. Intellectually, one knows what Christianity claims, but will he or she by God’s Spirit trust the God behind the revelation? This new heart is entirely the gift of God, and the struggle remains in the believer to trust God in the midst of trials. It was eminently rational for Job to understand that God was working all things together for his good. It was eminently a great struggle to subdue his doubting heart to trust God in the midst of all the pain he experienced. Classical apologetics desires to clear up the intellectual problems of faith, so that the true experiential problems of faith appropriately can come to the fore.

Conclusion The truth of classical apologetics is one of the richest truths given to the church. Even at the height of medieval error the church never lost its awareness that human reason pointed unfailingly to the truth of God. The growing return to the appropriate distinction between reason as a gift of God and the wicked heart’s attempts to abuse it, gives reason for hope that the church is awakening from a period of fideist slumber.

Classical apologetics remains the key for the church to give once again a reason for the hope that is in us as we face a new millennium of false mindsets challenging the wisdom of God. MR Dr. Gerstner, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, is professor of apologetics and church history at Knox Theological Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He is the author of a forthcoming book on apologetics to be entitled Apologetics for Everyone.

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MODERN REFORMATION

QUOTES “We trust not because ‘a God’ exists, but because this God exists.”—C. S. Lewis, “On Obstinacy in Belief,” in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays, 25.

What is apologetics? Apologetics is the reasoned defense of the Christian religion. Christianity is a faith, to be sure; but there are reasons for this faith. Faith is not to be confused with reason; but neither is it to be separated from it.

— R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics, 13 Christianity has the answer… . But why does it keep silent? Or why does it just say to people who are increasingly estranged from biblical language and thought patterns, “have faith, have faith,” without really answering the chilling questions being cried out in agony. Jesus saves: indeed, but that means not only saving your soul out of the shipwreck of this world! His saving g race redeems us here and now… . He is able to redeem us, really and truly, not just “spiritually” in a narrow sense.

— H. R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, 222 Basil Mitchell speaks of an agnostic friend of his who says that the trouble with contemporary versions of Christianity is that they are not worth disbelieving in. A Jesus who merely offers us ethical prescriptions that are platitudinous, or perhaps worse, simply reinforce our political or social prejudices, is hardly likely to be the Jesus who contains the solution to the problem of the meaning of human life and death.

— C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith, 41

The cultic mind shields its distinctives by contending that religious criteria of truth are different in kind from those which educated people honor when they read a newspaper or study auto mechanics. Orthodoxy rejects this in the name of common sense and revelation.

When Scripture speaks of truth, it means precisely what the man on the street means. Whether a person listens to a political speech or reads the Bible, he is called upon to judge the sufficiency of the evidences… .

— Edward John Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology, 87 Belief in the existence of God is in the same boat as belief in other minds, the past, and perceptual objects; in each case God has so constructed us that in the right circumstances we form the belief in question. But then the belief that there is such a person as God is as much among the deliverances of reason as those other beliefs. From this vantage point we can see, therefore, that the Refor med epistemologist is not a fideist at all with respect to belief in God. He does not hold that there is any conflict between faith and reason here, and he does not even hold that we cannot attain this fundamental truth by reason; he holds, instead, that it is among the deliverances of reason.

— Alvin Plantinga, Faith and Rationality, 90, ed. by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff We need, therefore, no empirical example to make the idea of a person morally well-pleasing to God our archetype; this idea as an archetype is already present in our reason.

— Immanuel Kant, on why he thought an incarnate Savior was unnecessary, Religion within the Limits, 56 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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[B. B.] Warfield professed to find [Abraham] Kuyper’s views simply baffling. To him it seemed crucial that the Holy Spirit, though unquestionably primary in granting faith, always worked through means. “The Holy Spirit does not work a blind, an ungrounded faith in the heart.” Rather the Holy Spirit granted “just a new ability of the heart to respond to the grounds of faith.”

So why not expect that there would be sufficient evidence for the Christian faith if we only examined it carefully? Faith, said Warfield, is “a form of conviction and is, therefore, necessarily grounded in evidence.” To the objection that this stance might seem to make faith dependent on arguments, Warfield retorted simply: “We do not believe in the existence of the sun without evidence because we are not learned in astronomical science.” Whether individual believers needed to stop and analyze the evidence was to Warfield of little impor tance. The impor tant point for Christian apologetics was that evidence could be analyzed and the faith could be shown to be fully rational.

— George Marsden, in Faith and Rationality, 252, ed. by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff [The] knower himself needs interpretation as well as the things he knows. The human mind as the knowing subject, makes its contribution to the knowledge it obtains. It will be quite impossible then to find a common area of knowledge between believers and unbelievers unless there is agreement between them as to the nature of man himself. But there is no such agreement.

— Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 84 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

— Romans 1:18-21 22

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What Christians find in Christ through faith inclines them at certain points to accept with regard to him testimony about matters of fact which would be inconclusive if offered with regard to any other man.

The Christian who refused to take that step would in my opinion be pedantic and irrational, like a man who required the same guarantees for trusting a friend which he would require for trusting a stranger. Thus it is possible through faith and evidence, and through neither alone, to believe that Christ really and corporeally rose from the dead, not merely that his death on the cross had a supernatural silver lining significant for our salvation… We must believe neither without evidence nor against evidence.

— Austin Farrer, in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. by H. W. Bartsch, trans. by R. H. Fuller, 221 [Calvin] speaks with impatience of speculative, and what we may call inferential theology, and he is accordingly himself spoken of with impatience by moder n historians of thought as a “merely Biblical theologian,” who is, therefore, without any real doctrine of God, such as Zwingli has. The reproach, if it be a reproach, is just.

Calvin refused to go beyond “what is written”—written plainly in the book of nature or in the book of revelation. He insisted that we can know nothing of God, for example, except what He has chosen to make known to us in His works and Word; all beyond this is but empty fancy, which merely “flutters” in the brain.

— Benjamin B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine, 482 When you are to dispute with Jews, Turks, Papists, Heretics, etc., concerning the power, wisdom, and majesty of God, employ all your intelligence and industry to that end, and be as profound and as subtle a disputer as you can … Such arguments [for divine truth based on human and earthly analogy] are good when they are grounded upon the ordinance of God. But when they are taken from man’s corrupt affections, they are naught.

— Martin Luther, Commentary of Galatians 1:3 and 3:15

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How Real People Believe: A DEFENSE OF REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY KELLY JAMES CLARK

Suppose, even worse, that your son Clifford comes home after taking his first philosophy course in college.

He persuades you of the truth of the so-called “problem of other minds.” How do you know that other minds and, therefore, other people exist? How do you know that people are not simply cleverly constructed robots with excellent makeup jobs? How do you know that behind the person facade lies a person—someone with thoughts, desires and feelings? You can’t experience another person’s feelings; you can’t see another person’s thoughts (even if you cut off the top of their head and

peered into their brain); and even politicians can’t really feel another person’s pain. Yet thoughts, desires, and feelings are all essential to being a person. So you can’t tell from the outside or just by looking, so to speak, if someone is a person. I can know that I am a person because I experience my own thoughts, feelings and desires. But I can’t know, because I don’t have any access to your inner-experience, if you, or anyone else, is a person.

Since you can’t know if anyone else is a person, you rightly infer that you can’t know if your wife is a person. Unsure that your wife is a person, how do you treat her? Do you hire a philosophical detective to search the philosophical literature for a proof that people-like things really are people? Do you avoid cuddling in the meantime, given your aversion to snuggling with machines? Or do you simply trust your deep-seated conviction that, in spite of the lack of evidence, your wife is a person and deserves to be treated as such?

Two final “supposes.” Suppose that you come to believe that there is a God because your parents taught you from the cradle up that God exists. Or suppose that you are on a retreat or on the top of a mountain and have a sense of being loved by God or that God created the universe. You begin to believe in God, not because you are persuaded by the argument from design—you are simply taken with belief in God. You just find Chuck Dillon, pen and ink

Suppose a stranger, let’s call him David, sends you a note that declares that your wife is cheating on you. No pictures are included, no dates or times, no names. Just the assertion of your wife’s unfaithfulness. You have had already fifteen good, and so far as you know, faithful years with your wife.

Her behavior hasn’t changed dramatically in the past few years. Except for David’s allegation, you have no reason to believe there has been a breach in the relationship. What should you do?

Confront her with what you take to be the truth, straight from David’s letter? Hire a detective to follow her for a week and hope against hope the letter is a hoax? Or do you simply remain secure in the trust that you have built up all those years?

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yourself believing, what you had heretofore denied, that God exists. Now you have come across the writings of David Hume and W. K. Clifford who insist that you base all of your beliefs on evidence. Hume raises a further point: your belief in an all-loving, omnipotent God is inconsistent with the evil that there is in the world. Given the fact of evil, God cannot exist. To meet this demand for evidence, do you become a temporary agnostic and begin perusing the texts of Aquinas, Augustine and Paley for a good proof of God’s existence? Do you give up belief in God because you see Hume’s point and can’t see how God and evil could be reconciled? Or do you remain steady in your trust in God in spite of the lack of evidence and even in the face of counter-evidence?

My Suppose-This and Suppose-That stories are intended to raise the problem of the relationship of our important beliefs to evidence (and counter-evidence).

Since the Enlightenment, there has been a demand to expose all of our beliefs to the searching criticism of reason. If a belief is unsupported by the evidence, it is irrational to believe it. It is the position of Reformed epistemology (likely the position that Calvin held) that belief in God, like belief in other persons, does not require the support of evidence or argument in order for it to be rational. This is a startling claim for many an atheist or theist. Most atheist intellectuals feel comfort in their disbelief in God because they judge that there is little or no evidence for God’s existence. Many theistic thinkers, however, in particular Roman Catholics and some recent Protestant evangelicals, insist that belief in God requires evidence and that such a demand should and can be met. So the claim that a person does not need evidence in order to rationally believe in God runs against the grain for atheist thinkers and has raised the ire of many theists. In spite of the strong response to Reformed epistemology, I believe it is eminently defensible. In order to defend it, let us examine its critique of the enlightenment demand for evidence.

The Demand for Evidence W. K. Clifford, in an oft-cited article, claims that it is wrong, always and everywhere, for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Such a strong claim makes one speculate on Clifford’s childhood: one imagines young W. K. constantly pestering his parents with “Why? Why? Why?….” It is this childish attitude toward inquiry and the risks that belief requires that led William James to chastise Clifford as an enfant terrible.

But, rather than disparage his character, let’s examine the deficiencies of his claim that everything must be believed only on the basis of sufficient evidence (relevance: If everything must be based on sufficient evidence, so must belief in God).

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The first problem with Clifford’s universal demand for evidence is that it cannot meet its own demand.

Clifford offers two fetching examples (of shipowners who send unseaworthy ships to sea) in support of his claim. The examples powerfully demonstrate that in cases like the example, rational belief requires evidence.

No one would disagree: some beliefs require evidence for their rational acceptability. But all beliefs in every circumstance? That’s an exceedingly strong claim to make and, it turns out, one that cannot be based on evidence.

Consider what someone like Clifford might allow us to take for evidence: beliefs that we acquire through sensory experience and beliefs that are self-evident like logic and mathematics. Next rainy day, make a list of all of your experiential beliefs: The sky is blue, grass is green, most trees are taller than most grasshoppers, slugs leave a slimy trail…. Now add to this list all of your logical and mathematical beliefs: 2 + 2 = 4, every proposition is either true or false, all of the even numbers that I know of are the sum of two prime numbers, in Euclidean geometry the interior angles of triangles equal 180°. Considering these propositions, try to deduce the conclusion that it is wrong, always and everywhere, for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.

None of the propositions that are allowed as evidence have anything at all to do with the conclusion. So Clifford’s universal demand for evidence cannot satisfy its own standard! Therefore, by Clifford’s own criterion, it must be irrational. More likely, however, the demand is simply false and it is easy to see why.

We, finite beings that we are, simply cannot meet such a demand. Consider all of the beliefs that you currently hold. How many of those have met Clifford’s strict demand for evidence? Clifford intends for all of us, like a scientist in a laboratory, to test all of our beliefs all of the time. Could your beliefs survive Clifford’s test?

Think of how many of your beliefs, even scientific ones, are acquired just because someone told you. Not having been to Paraguay, I only have testimonial evidence that Paraguay is a country in South America. For all I know, all of the mapmakers have conspired to delude us about the existence of Paraguay (and even South America!).

And, since I have been to relatively few countries around the world, I must believe in the existence of most countries (and that other people inhabit them and speak in that language) without support of evidence. I believe that e = mc2 and that matter is made up of tiny little particles not because of experiments in a chemistry or physics lab (for all of my experiments failed) but because my science teachers told me so. Most of the beliefs that I have acquired are based on my trust in my teachers and not on careful consideration of what Clifford would consider adequate evidence. And in this busy day and MODERN REFORMATION

age, I don’t really have the time to live up to Clifford’s demand for evidence! If we had the leisure to test all of our beliefs, perhaps we could meet the demand. But since we cannot meet that demand, we cannot be obligated to do so.

Even if we had the time, however, we could not meet this universal demand for evidence. The demand for evidence simply cannot be met in a large number of cases with the cognitive equipment that we have. No one, as mentioned above, has ever been able to prove the existence of other persons. No one has ever been able to prove that we were not created five minutes ago with our memories intact. No one has been able to prove the reality of the past or that, in the future, the sun will rise.

This list could go on and on. There is a limit to the things that human beings can prove. A great deal of what we believe is based on faith, not on evidence or arguments.

I use the ter m “faith” here but I think it is misleading. I don’t mean to oppose faith to knowledge in these instances. For surely we know that the earth is more than five minutes old and that the sun will rise tomorrow (although, maybe not in cloudy Grand Rapids!) and that Paul converted to Christianity (and lots of other truths about the past), etc., etc., etc. In these cases, we know lots of things but we cannot prove them. We have to trust or rely on the cognitive faculties which produce these beliefs. We rely on our memory to produce memory beliefs. (I remember having coffee with my breakfast this morning.) We rely on an inductive faculty to produce beliefs about the veracity of natural laws. (If I let go of this magazine, it will fall to the ground.) We rely on our cognitive faculties when we believe that there are other persons, there is a past, there is a world independent of our mind, or what other people tell us. We can’t help but trust our cognitive faculties.

It is easy to see why. Reasoning must start somewhere. Suppose we were required to offer evidence or arguments for all of our beliefs. If we offer statements 1-4 as evidence for 5, we would have to offer arguments to support 1-4. And then we would have to offer arguments in support of the arguments that are used to support 1-4. And then we would need arguments… .

You get the point. Reasoning must start somewhere.

There have to be some truths that we can just accept and reason from. Why not start with belief in God?

Without Evidence or Argument We have been outfitted with cognitive faculties that produce beliefs from which we can reason. The kinds of beliefs that we do and must reason to is a small subset of the kinds of beliefs that we do and must accept without the aid of a proof. That’s the long and short of the human believing condition. We, in most cases, must rely on our God-given intellectual equipment to produce beliefs, without evidence or argument, in the appropriate circumstances. Is it reasonable to believe that God has created us with a cognitive faculty which produces belief in God without evidence or argument?

There are at least three reasons to believe that it is proper or rational for a person to accept belief in God without the need for an argument. First, there are very few people who have access to or the ability to assess most theistic arguments. It is hard to imagine, therefore, that the demand for evidence would be a requirement of belief. My grandmother, a paradigm of the non-philosophical believer, would cackle if I informed her that her belief in God was irrational because she was unable to understand Aquinas’s second Way or to refute Hume’s version of the argument from evil. The demand for evidence is an imperialistic attempt to make philosophers out of people who have no need to become philosophers. It is telling that very few philosophers (like most ordinary folk) have come to belief in God on the basis of theistic arguments. I commissioned and published a collection of spiritual autobiographies from prominent Christian philosophers just to see if philosophers were any different from my grandmother on this count. They weren’t.

Second, it seems that God has given us an awareness of himself that is not dependent on theistic arguments. It is hard to imagine that God would make rational belief as difficult as those that demand evidence contend. I encourage anyone who thinks that evidence is required for rational belief in God, to study very carefully the theistic arguments, their refutations and counter-refutations, and their increasing subtlety yet decreasing charm. Adequate assessment of these arguments would require a lengthy and torturous tour through the history of philosophy and may require the honing of one’s logical and metaphysical skills beyond the capacity of most of us. Why put that sort of barrier between us and God? John Calvin (as good a

The primary obstacle to belief in God is moral rather than intellectual.

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Calvinist as any) believed that God had provided us with a sense of the divine. He writes: “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.”

This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. Ever renewing its memory, he repeatedly sheds fresh drops…. Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle furiously are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God, is abundant testimony that this conviction, namely that there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within, as it were in the very marrow.

From this we conclude that it is not a doctrine that must first be learned in school, but one of which each of us is master from his mother’s womb and which nature itself permits no one to forget.

Calvin contends that people are accountable to God for their unbelief not because they have failed to submit to a convincing theistic proof, but because they have suppressed the truth that God has implanted within their minds. It is natural to suppose that if God created us with cognitive faculties which by and large reliably produce beliefs without the need for evidence, he would likewise provide us with a cognitive faculty which produces belief in himself without the need for evidence.

Third, belief in God is more like belief in a person than belief in atoms. Consider the examples that started this essay. The scientific approach—doubt first, consider all of the available evidence, and believe later— seems inappropriate to personal relations. What seems manifestly reasonable for physicists in their laboratory seems desperately deficient in human relations. Human relations demand trust, commitment and faith. If belief in God is more like belief in other persons than belief in atoms, then the trust that is appropriate to persons will be appropriate to God. We cannot and should not arbitrarily insist that the scientific method is appropriate to every kind of human practice. The fastidious scientist, who cannot leave the demand for evidence in her laboratory, will find herself cut off from relationships that she could otherwise reasonably maintain—with friends, family and, even, God.

coercive, evidence of God’s existence. By non-coercive, I mean that the theistic arguments aren’t of such power and illumination that they should be expected to persuade all rational creatures. Rational people can rationally reject the theistic proofs. Rational people (and this is a fact that we must live with) rationally disagree. Nonetheless, I believe that someone could rationally believe in God on the basis of theistic arguments, but no one must.

I also believe, like Calvin, that the natural knowledge of himself that God has implanted within us has been overlaid by sin. Redemption includes the gradual removal of the effects of sin on our minds. Attention to theistic arguments might do that. Also, some of the barriers to religious belief—such as the problem of evil or the alleged threat of science to religion—may need to be removed before one can see the light that has been shining all along.

But the scales can fall from the mind’s eye in a wide variety of means: on a mountaintop, while listening to a sermon, through a humbling experience, or by reading The Chronicles of Narnia. The list goes on yet a certain common feature should be noticed (and not the fact that few people have ever acquired belief in God as a result of the study of theistic proofs). The primary obstacle to belief in God is moral rather than intellectual. On the mountain one may feel one’s smallness in relation to the grandness of it all. The sermon may convict one of sin. The loss of a job or a divorce may reveal one’s unjustified pride. And The Chronicles of Narnia may awaken the dormant faith of a child. In all of these cases, the scales slide off the mind’s eye when the overweening self is exposed.

Humility, not proofs, seems more appropriate to the realization of belief in God. My approach to belief in God has been rather descriptive. I believe that we need to pay much more attention to how people actually acquire beliefs. The psychology of believing may tell us a great deal about our cognitive equipment. The lessons learned from observing people and their beliefs support the position that I have defended: rational people may rationally believe in God without evidence or argument. MR Dr. Kelly James Clark, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, earned his doctorate at University of Notre Dame where he studied with Alvin Plantinga, a prominent defender of Reformed epistemology. Dr. Clark is author of numerous books and articles on the philosophy of religion and epistemology including When Faith Is Not Enough, Philosophers Who Believe, and Return to Reason (a defense of Reformed epistemology).

With or Without Evidence I haven’t said that belief in God could not be based on evidence or argument. Indeed, I am inclined to think that the theistic arguments do provide some non26

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MODERN REFORMATION

IN PRINT The Gospel in a Pluralist Society Lesslie Newbigin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) What is the Christian message in a society marked by religious pluralism, ethnic diversity, and cultural relativism? A highly respected Christian leader and ecumenical figure, Newbigin provides brilliant analysis of contemporary (secular, humanist, pluralist) culture and suggests how Christians can more confidently affirm their faith in such a context.

B-NEWB-1 Paperback, $17.00

History and Christianity: A Vigorous, Convincing Presentation of the Evidence for a Historical Jesus John Warwick Montgomery, (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1964) Developed from a seminar Dr. Montgomery presented at the University of British Columbia, History and Christianity defends the historicity and accuracy of the New Testament as well as the truly divine and truly human nature of Christ.

Provides excellent material for class discussion or individual study.

B-MON-1 Paperback, $8.00

Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, Arthur Lindsley (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984) Must a person accept Christianity on faith alone, or is there a reasoned defense for being a Christian? The authors of this book hold that Christianity is eminently reasonable.

The primacy of the mind in the Christian faith can be affirmed without denying the importance of the heart.

B-SPR-2 Paperback, $17.00

When Faith is Not Enough Kelly J. Clark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) When Faith is Not Enough addresses two subjects often ignored, repressed or denied by believers: doubt and the meaning of life.

Discussions of both issues are developed around the central theme of faith: how to have faith in the midst of doubts; how faith alone synthesizes the disparate elements of ourselves— finite and infinite, wicked and good, necessary and free, temporal and eter nal, body and spirit—into a meaningful whole.

B-CLAR-1 Paperback, $18.00

The Defense of the Faith Cornelius Van Til (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Refor med Publishing Co, 1955) After laying a foundation in the Christian views of God, man, salvation, the world, and knowledge, Van Til explores the roles of authority, reason, and theistic proof, while contrasting Roman Catholic, Arminian, and Reformed methods of defending the faith. As attacks on Christianity become more numerous and pronounced, Cornelius Van Til’s classic treatment on apologetics endures as crucial reading for our time.

B-VAN-6 Paperback, $10.00

Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga, editors (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) Available at your local bookstore or library Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers Kelly J. Clark (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993).

Re-print not yet available All books (unless otherwise indicated) are available from MR by calling (800) 956-2644. Phones are answered from 8:30 am through 4:30 pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. For further book recommendations and an on-line resources catalogue, please visit our website at www.remembrancer.com/ace.

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Legal Rather than Evangelical Knowledge: CALVIN ONTHE LIMITS OF NATURALTHEOLOGY MICHAEL S. HORTON

As we see in his opening to the Institutes, Calvin’s g reat concer n in relating faith and reason is pastoral rather than philosophical.

While Thomas Aquinas begins his magisterial work by inquiring into the nature of God as supreme being, Calvin’s opening question is both practical and existential. The knowledge of God and of oneself, he argues, is dialectical (i.e., getting to know God and ourselves is a process that moves back and forth). Furthermore, this knowledge is chiefly concerned with the relationship between God and humanity. Far from being either a rationalistic or mystical 28

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end in itself, contemplating God leads us to selfknowledge. Its chief yield is the realization that we are naked, stripped of all righteousness and any basis for self-confidence. The purpose of this knowledge, then, is to lead to an existential crisis (1.1.1-2). This knowledge of our nakedness is an awareness of our need, but the knowledge that Christ is the solution to our problem is found exclusively in special revelation.

Calvin’s approach thus stands in sharp contrast to the goals of the philosophers. Descartes’ objective is “to demonstrate the existence of God and the soul.”1 Plato aims to contemplate the essence of Being. But Calvin writes: “What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. What wore the face of power will prove itself the most miserable weakness. That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God” (1.1.2).

Steven Burch, pen and ink

While sometimes characterized as the “Age of Faith,” the sixteenth century actually had its share of religious skeptics. When John Calvin encountered these men, he often found it necessary to provide arguments that might “shut the mouth of the obstreperous.” In other words, he was not opposed to engaging in subtle arguments. At the same time, though, it is instructive to consider his views of the limits of such argumentation. Natural theology is useful to refute the arguments of unbelievers and it may be useful to convince some people of the existence of a God, but we must be mindful lest we forget that natural theology has definite limits. It can never provide saving knowledge.

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The knowledge of God, far from reinforcing our philosophical and religious presuppositions, undoes them.

The Futility of Speculation Trying to prove the existence of a supreme being is not so much wrong as it is pointless, Calvin says. “Now, the knowledge of God, as I understand it,” he writes, “is that by which we not only conceive that there is a God but also grasp what befits us and is proper to his glory, in fine, what is to our advantage to know of him.”2 That which is to our advantage is that which is proper to God’s glory, and vice versa. In other words, our own human experience cannot be separated from theology, for existence is prior to reflection. Our questions are marked out not by speculative, abstract objectivity, but by the concerns of our lives—concerns, nevertheless, that God reveals to us as the great issues of our existence.3 Furthermore, knowledge of God is not an end in itself. Nor indeed is such knowledge even possible if we try to seek out God in his hidden being or general attributes apart from Christ. “In this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as Father or as Author of salvation, or favorable in any way, until Christ the Mediator comes forward to reconcile him to us.”

Knowledge of God the Creator is essential, to be sure.

From the “sense of God” written on our conscience and discerned in creation, we can know that God is great, majestic, powerful, just, and good in a providential sense.

A Buddhist monk is not wrong about everything. Nor is the Moslem in error when he or she says that God is just and will punish sinners. Even an atheist can appreciate the beauty of a sunset over an Alpine peak.

And this is important knowledge: indeed, it should lead us to seek God’s self-disclosure in Scripture, which reveals also that God is the one who has promised us reconciliation. But we need to retain this distinction between what can be known about God by nature and what can be known only by Scripture. Calvin writes: “[It] is one thing to feel that God as our Maker supports us by his power, governs us by his providence, nourishes us by his goodness, and attends us with all sorts of blessings—and another thing to embrace the grace of reconciliation offered to us in Christ” (1.2.1).

This is more than parenthetical; for Calvin, theology is useless apart from Christology, for apart from Christ there can be no saving knowledge of God. And the only knowledge that is ultimately useful for shipwrecked creatures is personal knowledge of a Savior.

But this is not what people seem to be interested in when they approach apologetics in a merely theoretical way: “What is God? Men who pose this question are merely toying with idle speculations,” Calvin asserts.

The sort of absent deity of the Epicureans (deists, in modern parlance) is of no use to us. “What help is it,

in short, to know a God with whom we have nothing to do?” (1.2.2). Thus, he is unimpressed with the Platonic contemplative model, adopted by medieval mystics and speculative theologians. It is this world (not a realm of ideas and forms) that is, after all, “the theater of God’s glory,” one of Calvin’s favorite metaphors. Even the knowledge of God as Creator does not lead us into speculation concerning essences and substances, but into the existential question: “What is my obligation to this God if he is my Creator?” “For, to begin with, the pious mind does not dream up for itself any god it pleases, but contemplates the one and only true God. And it does not attach to him whatever it pleases, but is content to hold him to be as he manifests himself.”4 Everyone Knows God … In a Legal Sense at Least In chapter three of the Institutes, Calvin argues that the knowledge of God is implanted in the conscience prior to any acquired knowledge. This theme will be reiterated by the Reformed scholastics (as it had been by their medieval predecessors) as the cognitio insita (implanted knowledge). But, like his successors, Calvin also insists that this type of knowledge is legal rather than evangelical in character. This is crucial especially for Reformed believers today, when this distinction seems to be fading. Everyone knows God, but as Creator, LawGiver, and Judge. “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity [sensus Divinitatis].” Calvin argues that there is a great deal of common ground in creation for agreement on general principles of morality, justice, beauty, and even truth. One does not require special revelation in order to create a reasonably just society, a beautiful work of art, or even a common sense of morality based on the law written on the conscience (2.2.15). Surely, Christians and non-Christians could agree on many issues related to the common good. And, we can infer (given his positive evaluation of many of the advances of philosophy in secular matters) that Calvin would approve of appealing to philosophical arguments in apologetics.

As creatures, believers and unbelievers share common ground even in the possession of general religious instincts. For, even after the fall, religious instincts are intrinsic to human nature. “Indeed, even idolatry is ample proof of this conception” (1.3.1). Calvin asserts that while there are many who deny God’s existence, they cannot be entirely godless because of the imago Dei which they still bear (1.3.2-3). But, in opposition to Cicero’s optimism, Calvin argues that this natural religion degenerates instead of progresses (1.3.3). By “extinguishing the light of nature, [people] deliberately befuddle themselves,” not by denying God’s existence outright, but “in despoiling him of his judgment… , they shut him up idle in heaven” (1.4.2). Nobody is JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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really an atheist; rather, we are all idolaters by nature.

Nonetheless, Calvin retains a remarkably high estimation of creation and this world. It is not merely a preface to redemption, but a glorious revelation in its own right. Yet our own corruption sees damnation in the majesty of God. We end up worshiping the creation and hiding from the Creator. Because of our condition, God’s power, wisdom, and glory inspire fear rather than devotion. If God is powerful, he can destroy us; if he is wise, he can figure us out; if he is glorious and majestic, we can only shrink in his presence instead of praising him. “There are innumerable evidence… ,” to which “astronomy, medicine, and all natural sciences…” attest.

“Indeed, men who have either quaffed or even tasted the liberal arts penetrate with their aid far more deeply into the secrets of the divine wisdom. Yet ignorance of them prevents no one from seeing more than enough of God’s workmanship in his creation to lead him to break forth in admiration of the Artificer” (1.5.2). But, like a jealous inferior who strives to be God himself, humanity exchanges admiration for disgust. Infants nursing at their mothers’ breasts “have tongues so eloquent to preach his glory that there is no need at all of other orators” (1.5.3).

And yet, we speak of fate, chance, and other alternatives to the God who cares for us.

The chief products of natural theology, then, are pantheism and deism; either divinity is pushed into the world or God is pushed out of this world into heaven (1.5.5). Creator and creature become confused or alienated in every religious and speculative philosophical system. Because of our sinfulness, we are “struck blind in such a dazzling theater” (1.5.8). Like Adam and Eve, we run from the presence of God, a presence which ought to console us but cannot because of our sinfulness.

Despite his admiration for the breadth and depth of what can be known apart from special revelation (i.e., Scripture), Calvin believes that the nearer to religion that natural revelation leads one, the more certain it is that one is led not to God, but away from him. The solution is not to attempt to penetrate the divine essence, however. “We ought not to rack our brains about God; but rather we should contemplate him in his works” (1.5.9). Again in opposition to the Platonic disapproval for locating the knowledge of God in the world of

appearances and particulars, Calvin insists that we must turn our concentration to things that can be easily observed with the eyes and pointed out with the finger … not that knowledge which, content with empty speculation, merely flits in the brain, but that which will be sound and fruitful if we duly perceive it, and if it takes root in the heart. … Consequently, we know the most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order, is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of his essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself (1.5.9).

A theology “from below,” Calvin’s approach is concerned with divine self-disclosure in this world, not with human penetration into the divine chamber; it takes for its theater the linear scope of human history rather than the supposedly higher noumenal (i.e., spiritualrational) sphere. Thus, it is also an inductive approach: as one works from the particulars of divine self-disclosure through God’s works, only then can one gain sound theological insight. Again, this knowledge serves a practical rather than merely theoretical goal: “Knowledge of this sort, then, ought not only to arouse us to the worship of God but also to awaken and encourage us to the hope of the future life” (1.5.10).

Although Calvin the humanist has great respect for the philosophers, he cannot help but include them in the mass of superstition: Plato “…vanishes in his round globe” (1.5.11). Against any celebration of mind over matter, Calvin insists that “each man’s mind is like a labyrinth… . But among the philosophers who have tried with reason and learning to penetrate into heaven, how shameful is the diversity!” Their brilliance masks their “fleeting unrealities.” The Stoics introduce their absurdities, Calvin says, without the slightest evidence for their arguments. In sharp contrast to those who would argue that the nearer one approaches religion, the closer he or she is to truth, Calvin is inclined to believe the very opposite. Ultimately, he comes to this pass:

For Calvin, theology is useless

apart from Christology, for apart from Christ there can be no saving knowledge of God.

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“Hence it appears that if men were taught only by nature, they would hold to nothing certain or solid or clear-cut, but would be so tied to confused principles as to worship an unknown god” (1.5.12). Calvin envisions lamps being placed everywhere in creation, offering ample testimony to God’s existence and attributes, but the darkness of the human mind and heart lead not to a beatific vision, but to a bewildering array of competing religious and philosophical speculations.

The Necessity of Special Revelation for Evangelical Knowledge In his sixth chapter, Calvin turns to Scripture. Surely Scripture, special revelation, would lead people to a sound knowledge of God the Creator. Here, “not only does God teach the elect to look upon a god, but also shows himself as the God upon whom they are to look.”5 To be sure, Scripture does not tell us everything in order to satisfy our curiosity. Furthermore, not all things in Scripture are equally plain, but “it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside it.” God’s Word provides a far more complete revelation of God than does creation, since its Artificer actually opens his lips. His works are supplemented by his words (1.6.3).

As with Luther, Calvin finds the inscripturated Word to be the only rock in a whirlpool of subjective opinion. “Hence the Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard” (1.7.1). The Word and the Spirit belong together, and thus Calvin moves to the role of the Spirit’s witness, “stronger than all proof.” Credibility in doctrine depends on our full confidence in God’s Word.

The prophets invoke God’s name for their writings with great care and purpose. Again, the central concern for

Calvin is pastoral; he seeks to care for those whose consciences would vacillate and find no comfort. We must rise above human reasoning, judgments and conjectures and this can only be done when the Holy Spirit joins the Word as its “notary public.” This is no capitulation to fideism in the face of poor arguments, an evasion of the critical questions: True, if we wished to proceed by arguments, we might advance many things that would easily prove—if there is any god in heaven—that the law, the prophets, and the gospel come from him. Indeed, ever so learned men, endowed with the highest judgment, rise in opposition and bring to bear and display all their powers in this debate. Yet, unless they become hardened to a point of hopeless impudence, this confession will be wrested from them: that they see manifest signs of God speaking in Scripture.

From this it is clear that the teaching of Scripture is from heaven. And a little later we shall see that all the books of Sacred Scripture far surpass all other writings (1.7.4).

We have some common ground with unbelievers. In nature, there is some revelation about God. But nature can only tell us that he is a Judge; it does not tell us of his fatherly kindness in the provision of Christ. Nature provides legal knowledge of God, but only Scripture reveals the Gospel, the evangelical knowledge of Christ. MR Dr. Michael Horton, a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE), is the editor of modernREFORMATION and co-pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Placentia, California.

The Democratization of American Christianity Nathan O. Hatch In the prize-winning book on American religious history, Notre Dame professor Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, arguing that during this period American Christianity was democratized. The importance of ministers being sent by a constituted authority was minimized and self-promotion became increasingly important. B-HAT-1, $16.00, paperback JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998

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REVIEW The Evangelical Left: Encountering Postconservative Evangelical Theology

by Millard J. Erickson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997. 157 pp.)

REVIEWED BY JOHN MUETHER Evangelical presses continue to spill ink over postmodernism. Millard J. Erickson, Professor of Theology at Baylor University and Western Seminary in Por tland, provides in this survey an otherwise undistinguished addition to that collection, were it not for one striking feature about it.

Erickson’s focus is on the movement that is calling itself “post-conservative” evangelicalism.

The term was coined by Roger Olson of Bethel College, who defines it as evangelicalism that is “shedding theological conservatism” in the face of the challenge of postmodernism.

Erickson, however, offers little precision in defining the movement and its members. He has in mind a loose affiliation of thinkers such as Olson himself, Stanley Grenz, John Sanders, the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary, and especially, Clark Pinnock. The book might have been improved had Erickson restricted himself to an analysis of Pinnock; his best chapter, on salvation, is almost exclusively devoted to Pinnock. While he claims the movement is larger than one evangelical maverick, the contours of postconservatism elude Erickson’s capacity to describe.

Erickson is equally vague in his defense of what it is that postconservatives seek to challenge. In his introductory chapter, he can do no better than to label it as an “older evangelicalism” or “established evangelicalism,” that had come into its own by the late 1950s, through Fuller Seminary, the Evangelical Theological Society, and Christianity Today. With all these institutions up and running, “it appeared that all was 32

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well with the movement.” Borrowing heavily from Marsden’s history of Fuller Seminary, Erickson recounts the events that would unravel his Camelot. Ockenga refused to leave his Park Street Pulpit to preside over Fuller in residence. Carnell as his successor broadened the theological perspective, and Daniel Fuller returned from Switzerland, provoking the infamous “Black Saturday” that unleashed the doctrine of “limited inerrancy.” Indeed, the reader may be encouraged to wonder, from Erickson’s narrative, whether postconservatism owes its origins to Daniel Fuller’s choice for doctoral study.

The chapters that follow cover the main areas of postconservative mig ration, in theological method and the doctrines of Scripture, God, and salvation.

Each chapter concludes with an evaluation that includes positive contributions of the new approaches (Erickson’s charity is exemplary, even if it is frequently strained), followed by negative comments. In any summary, which Erickson’s book is, the story must be truncated.

He draws attention to some of the major controversies, such as the impassibility of God, postmortem salvation, and annihilationism. But he omits many of the major voices in the debate, and some of the players are awkwardly categorized. (For example, Erickson describes Alistair McGrath as an ex-liberal moving to the right. Ten pages later, McGrath is a “traditional evangelical.”)

I suggested one noteworthy feature of this book, and it is this: one cannot read it without drawing parallels to J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923. Both are short books (less than 200 MODERN REFORMATION

pages), intended for popular audiences. The format of each book is identical. Each begins with a description of a new theological development, continues by analyzing this trend in the categories of traditional dogmatic theology, and concludes with a where-tofrom-here chapter. But there are differences from Machen’s book, and in every way that Erickson is different his approach is inferior. Where Machen’s analysis is direct, Erickson’s is tentative. Throughout, he appears less than confident that he understands the postconservatives, with the recurrence of sentences that begin “It seems…,” “There appears…,” “It is not clear that….”

The differences are most apparent at the end.

Machen’s concluding where-to-from-here chapter is called “The Church,” and rightly so, because Machen could not imagine another way to go. What was once said of Cyprian—regardless of where one begins, one always gets back to the church—could be said for Machen, and the Presbyterian confessionalism that he defended. From his ecclesial vantage point, Machen could predict the trajectory of liberalism. And on the sure footing of the church and its Confession as the guardian of orthodoxy, Machen also offers hope in the end. The church is the refuge from the strife, and “from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive a weary world.”

Erickson, however, in good evangelical fashion, lacks an ecclesial framework. (Not surprisingly, he mentions the church only once, with reference to Catholic sacerdotalism [p. 110]. What he condemns as a Catholic formula—“outside the church, no salvation”— he fails to acknowledge as Reformation formula.) From his vantage point, Erickson is unable to predict the future. The best he can assert is that the coming generation of postconservatives will lack any “nostalgia” for his older evangelicalism. But will the generation that didn’t know the pre-fallen Fuller move to the left or the right? Are these guys evangelical or not? What is an evangelical, after all? Erickson is left scratching his head.

Somewhere, sometime, postconservatives may cross a boundary, but Erickson is unable to draw the line.

John Muether is the Director of the Library of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando and the co-editor of the Nicotine Theological Journal.

⟀ n the science of theology men have tried to arrange all these witnesses in nature and history to the existence and being of God, and to classify them into groups. So it comes about that we sometimes speak of six evidences for the existence of God. In the first place, the world, be it ever so mighty and comprehensive, is never theless continually testifying of itself that it is confined to the for ms of space and time, that it is temporal, accidental, and dependent in character, and that it requires, therefore, an eter nal, essential, independent being as the final cause of all things. This is the cosmological argument.

In the second place, the world in its laws and ordinances, in its unity and harmony, and in the organization of all of its creatures, exhibits a purpose which it would be ridiculous to explain on the basis of chance, and which therefore points to an all-wise and omnipotent being who with an infinite mind has established that purpose, and by his almighty and omnipresent power seeks to achieve it. This is the teleological argument.

In the third place, there is in the consciousness of all men some sense of a supreme being, above whom nothing higher can be conceived, and thought of by all as self-existent. If such a being did not exist, the highest, most perfect, and most inevitable idea would be an illusion, and man would lose his confidence in the validity of his consciousness. This is the ontological argument.

The fourth argument is corollary to the third: man is not merely a rational but also a moral being. He feels in his conscience that he is bound to a law which stands high above him and which requires unconditional obedience from him. Such a law presupposes a holy and righteous law-giver who can preserve and destroy. This is the moral argument.

To these four arguments, two others are usually added, derived from the similarity or correspondence of peoples and of the history of mankind.

— Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 40-41

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GLOSSARY

OF RELEVANT PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS

Most of these glossary entries are founded upon or drawn from one or more of the following sources: Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Oxford, 1994); W. T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (5 volumes; New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1952-1980); and Paul Edwards, editor, Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 volumes; New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967).

APOLOGETICS: The attempt to demonstrate that faith is consistent with reason (or at least not inconsistent with reason). It is the attempt to fulfill the biblical command to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that we have (1 Pet. 3:15).

seen to be implied. (Example: From the premises “All men are mortal,” and “All Greeks are men,” one deduces that “All Greeks are mortal.”) The movement of thought in deduction is usually from premises of greater generality to a conclusion of greater specificity.

A POSTERIORI: Latin for “from what follows”; a method of reaching a conclusion through reasoning from experience and observation.

DISCURSIVE KNOWLEDGE: Knowledge grasped after step-by-step reasoning—from premises to conclusion, from this conclusion to another, and so on.

Contrasted with the all-inclusive vision of the mystic, with the possible operation of God’s intellect, and with the way in which innate ideas are said to be comprehended by the mind.

A PRIORI: Latin for “from before”; that which is known independently of sense perception and thus often held to be indubitable. The doctrine of innate ideas (see entry) is an attempt to account for the alleged existence of a priori knowledge.

DEDUCTION: From the Latin “leading down”; a type of inference that yields necessary conclusions. In deduction, one or more propositions being assumed (“premises”), another proposition (the conclusion) is 34

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DUALISM: A belief in—and often the affirmation of an ultimate tension between—two separate classes of phenomena: spirit and matter. Dualism is often contrasted with, on the one hand, idealism (only mind or spirit), and, on the other hand, materialism (only body or matter). Christians—and Western philosophy MODERN REFORMATION

throughout much of its history—have preferred to speak of the “mind-body problem” (see entry), because both materialism and a Gnostic idealism are unacceptable, and because dualism generally inclines over time to idealism, continually elevating spirit over matter.

EMPIRICISM: The view that holds sense perception (or “experience”) to be the sole source of human knowledge. Empiricism rejects both innate knowledge (innate ideas) and, in its radical form, revelation.

EPISTEMOLOGY: From the Greek terms episteme (knowledge) and logos (theory, account); the study of the origins, nature, and limitations of knowledge—that is, how we know what we know. It is possible to see epistemology as dominated by two rival metaphors: one is that of a building or pyramid, built on foundations; the other is that of a boat, which has no foundation but owes its strength to the stability given by its interlocking parts.

ESSENCE: The “that-about-a-thing-that-makes-itwhat-it-is,” in contrast with those proper ties (“accidents”) that the thing may happen to possess but need not possess in order to be itself. Thus we distinguish between Socrates’ accidental and nonessential properties (e.g. dying by hemlock) and his essential properties (e.g. those traits of character and personality that made him the man he was).

FIDEISM: The view that truth in religion is ultimately based on faith rather than on reasoning or evidence.

Influenced by Kierkegaard’s existentialism and presented most notably this century by the neo-orthodox, recent forms of fideism are attempts to assert that the fundamental tenets of religion cannot be justified by rational argument or by empirical evidence.

IDEALISM: Generally contrasted with realism, any view which holds reality to be fundamentally mental or minddependent (or “spiritual”—see entry for “dualism”).

INDUCTION: From the Latin “leading into”; a type of inference in which the movement of thought is from lesser to greater generality. Thus induction begins, not from premises, but from observed particulars (e.g., A, B, and C all have the property x), and then seeks to establish some generalization about them (e.g., all members of class y, of which A, B, and C are members, probably have property x).

INFERENCE: The movement of thought to a

conclusion or generalization from starting points of premises or particular observations. Inferences are generally categorized as either deductive or inductive.

INNATE IDEAS: Innate ideas are distinguished from ideas that we acquire in the course of experience. Those who hold this view—chief among them Plato— generally allow that some experience may be the occasion of our becoming consciously aware of an innate idea, but they argue that the idea itself can never be found in experience (e.g., absolute equality or an equilateral triangle); instead, it is inborn.

INTUITION: Direct and immediate knowledge, to be contrasted with discursive knowledge (see entry).

MATERIALISM: The view that reality is exclusively composed of matter, and that mind (or spirit) lacks reality.

METAPHYSICS: Originally a title for those books of Aristotle’s which came after the Physics, the term refers to any inquiry which raises questions about reality that lie outside of those capable of being addressed by the methods of science.

MIND-BODY PROBLEM: First, this problem concerns the question of whether a valid distinction can be made between the mind and the body. Second, if such a distinction is made, one asks to what each term corresponds. Third, one asks what the relationship is between mind and body. (See “dualism.”)

MIRACLE: An act of God contrary to the usual (providential) course of nature. (Radical empiricism denies the possibility of miracles, and argues that the term is merely the subjective response of an individual surprised and/or perplexed by an otherwise natural phenomenon.)

NATURALISM: The view that ultimately nothing resists explanation by the methods characteristic of the natural sciences. A naturalist will deny, for example, the mind-body problem, because it leaves the mental side of things outside the grasp of biology or physics.

NATURAL REVELATION: Doctrines concerning God which are attainable by natural processes of reasoning, as opposed to those that require special revelation. (Atheists and agnostics deny that there are any such doctrines, as do some modern Protestant theologians, such as Karl Barth.)

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NOMINALISM: The view that only particulars are real, and that universals (see entry) are only the observable likenesses among the particulars of sense experience.

PARTICULAR: A single thing, in contrast with a universal, or an aggregate of related things.

RATIONALISM: Generally contrasted with empiricism, a view that magnifies the role played by unaided reason in the acquisition and justification of knowledge. A preference for reason over sense perception, and an insistence upon deduction and logical consistency.

REALISM: Generally contrasted with idealism, realism holds that the objects of our knowledge are not minddependent, but are independently existing entities. In other words, a realist holds that a tree falling in the forest makes a noise even if no one is there to hear it.

REVEALED THEOLOGY: Distinguished from natural theology, revealed theology is concerned with doctrines that are not known or understood by unaided reason, but can be known or understood only through the special dispensation of a divine revelation (e.g., through the Incarnation or through the transmission of biblical knowledge).

SCIENTISM: The belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry. The classic statement of scientism is Rutherford’s statement that “there is physics

and there is stamp-collecting.” (Not surprisingly, Rutherford was a physicist.)

SKEPTICISM: A position that denies the possibility of knowledge. As with relativism, it is possible either to have total skepticism or to limit one’s skepticism to certain fields.

TELEOLOGY: From the Greek telos (goal, end) and logos (theory, account); the view that affirms the reality of purpose and holds the universe either to be consciously designed (the Christian view), or to be the working out of partly conscious, partly unconscious purposes that are immanent in developing organisms (Aristotle’s view).

UNIVERSAL: That which is capable of being asserted about many. “Man” is a universal because it is predicable of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and all other individual men. The main problem with universals concerns their ontological status. Are they: 1) separate entities distinct from the particulars of which they are predicable; 2) real but not separable; or 3) not real at all, but merely the names of likenesses shared by certain particulars (see “nominalism”)?

WARRANT: That which, added to true belief, yields knowledge. At the heart of epistemology, warrant is concer ned with the qualification for accepting something as true. The term is especially identified with and central to the work of Alvin Plantinga (cf. A. Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, [New York: Oxford, 1993]).

THE LATEST SEMINAR FROM THE ALLIANCE OF CONFESSING EVANGELICALS COVERING THE TOPIC OF REFORMATION THEOLOGY Bethesda, MD, March 21, 1998 • James Boice & R.C. Sproul The church in sixteenth-century Europe needed a reformation. Martin Luther precipitated what we call the Reformation with his famous declaration, “Here I stand!” Might the evangelical church of today be equally in need of a reformation?

Many evangelical leaders say yes. Evangelicals today are becoming increasingly worldly, having an unhealthy dependence on modern idols, such as politics, sociology, marketing and psychology to effect change in individuals and society. The church growth movement relies more on pragmatism and consumerism than on preaching the Word of God. This new seminar series shows that truth is recovered only when the Bible has its rightful place as the supreme authority in the life of every Christian and every church, and it calls churches to return to the authority of the Bible and to apply it faithfully in their worship, ministry, policies, life and evangelism.

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MODERN REFORMATION

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ENDNOTES IN THIS ISSUE… 1 Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie (Princeton, 1941), 231.

THE INCARNATE CHRIST—John Warwick Montgomery 1 J. W. Montgomery, “Luther’s Hermeneutic vs. The New Hermeneutic,” in his In Defense of Martin Luther (Milwaukee, 1970), 40-85.

2 J. Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard (St. Louis, 1950), 22. The Genesis commentary references are found in WA, XLII, 291-92, 374.

3 E. M. Plass, What Luther Says (St. Louis, 1959), III, 1618.

4 WA, XVIII, 618.

5 Luther’s comments on Gal. 1:3 and 3:15. Cf. Luther’s Tischreden assertion that he found Cicero’s teleological argument for God’s existence very moving.

6 WA, XVI, 447.

7 B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason (Oxford, 1962); and R. H. Fischer, “A Reasonable Luther,” in Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of Roland H. Bainton, ed. F. H. Littell (Richmond, 1962), 30-45.

8 Gerrish, 72-73. (The reference to “looking after cows” is added in Roher’s MS.) 9 WA, XXV, 240 (a comment on Is. 37:30).

10 So Regin Prenter interprets Luther in Spiritus Creator (Copenhagen, 1946; second edition), especially chapters 2 and 3. Ratio and lex are presented as “belonging together”; faith is “in contrast to all sensus” (i.e., to all “experience which relies on that which can be observed in the visible world”); God’s revelation in flesh as the Christ “is placed in absolute opposition to our human sensus and ratio”; “theological epistemology” consists of the transformation sensus by the Creator Spirit.

11 WA, XXXVIII, 102 (“Defense against Duke George,” 1533).

12 Fischer, 39.

13 Expressed in his Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, in the section dealing with “Protestantism.” Cf. K. Penzel, “Ernst Troeltsch on Luther,” in Interpreters of Luther: Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Pauck, edited by J. Pelikan (Philadelphia, 1968), 275-303.

14 G. W. Forell, Faith Active in Love (Minneapolis, 1959), 121, 149.

15 WA, XL, Part 1 (published in 1535 and 1538), 79.

16 WA, XXXVI, 61 (Sermon of 6 Jan. 1532, on Micah 5:1).

continued from page 40 1963-64. Gropius, who had moved from Germany to teach there, thought that the modern person had been emancipated from place and his buildings expressed this.

These apartments for married students, stacked one on top of another, were neatly designed within but for one student, at least, less of a home than a “storage box.”

No one should have to live high in the air, he said, because it cut one’s connections to place since one hovered above everything. He also noticed that no one in the high rise had social relations with anyone else, except a few mothers who had small children. The result was a “hollowed out” feeling.

Why the complete break with the past stylistically?

Because that, too, is part of modern experience. Picasso, in his declining years, sought to mutilate the past by copying the great masters, doing to them what a forged currency does to the real thing. The pioneers of modern architecture did not mutilate the past but contemptuously disregarded it.

In Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, the principal character is Howard Roak, an atheistic architect, who is the uncompromising center of his own world. He not 38

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17

Moreover, since he was especially confronted by the traditional Romanist on the right and the fanatic Schwarmer on the left, both of whom appealed to extra-biblical miracles in their midst, Luther preferred to fight on the common ground of the Word, emphasizing the truth—which must never be forgotten apologetically in our contingent world!—that those who want to discount the clear evidence of God’s miraculous dealings can always find some way (improbable though it may be) of doing so.

18 See J. W. Montgomery, “Inspiration and Inerrancy: A New Departure,” in his Crisis in Lutheran Theology, I (Grand Rapids, 1967), 15-44.

19 See J. W. Montgomery, “The Theologian’s Craft,” Concordia Theological Monthly, XXXVII (February, 1966), 67-98; reprinted in his Suicide of Christian Theology (Minneapolis, 1970), Part III, chapter 2.

20 In opposition to the Reformed position of “finitum non capax infiniti,” this is the Lutheran doctrine that the finite humanity of Christ was capable of comprehending, or receiving, the infinity of God. 21 See J. W. Montgomery, “Cross Constellation, and Crucible,” in his In Defense of Martin Luther (Milwaukee, 1970), 87-94.

22 Ibid., 94-113.

23 W. Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, I, translated by Hansen (St. Louis, 1962), 57. (The English translation is preceded by revealing commendatory introductions by J. Pelikan and ALC theologian Robert C. Schultz.)

UNBELIEVERS AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD: BIBLICAL WARRANT FOR A PRESUPOSITOINAL APOLOGETIC—Kenneth Scott Oliphint 1 Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), 37.

LEGAL RATHER THAN EVANGELICAL KNOWLEDGE: CALVIN ON THE LIMITS OF NATURAL THEOLOGY—Michael S. Horton 1 Discourse on Method.

2 1.2.1, emphasis added.

3 In Heideggerian terms, the concern is not with Sein (Being) in itself, but with Dasein, a way of being-in-the-world. Even Tillich’s phrase, “ultimate concern,” shorn of its existentialism, provides a legitimate cognitive grip for this practical aim of theology.

4 1.2.2, emphasis added.

5 1.6.1, emphasis added.

only defies all convention but he disregards everything except the center of his world which is himself.

Here are the specters of modern experience: a world emptied of God, truth, and meaning; one in which so many wander around as perpetual migrants finding neither permanent lodging in a family nor connections to place; a time now severed from the past; a time in which we are now our own reality and, indeed, the only reality which there is.

Modern experience was thus given a voice in modern architecture. In its style, there often was a kind of beauty—bleak, cold, mechanical, and impersonal though it was. It was the beauty of a cold wind blowing in a lonely place. So it was no great surprise that the experiment failed, for nihilism is easy to affirm but impossible to live. And though Michael Jones does not understand this, Luther’s gospel is profoundly pertinent to our cold, lonely world—be it modern or postmodern.

Dr. David F. Wells, a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, is the Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

MODERN REFORMATION

WHITE HORSE INN RADIO BROADCAST FEATURING HOSTS MICHAEL HORTON, KIM RIDDLEBARGER, & ROD ROSENBLADT Arizona Phoenix KPXQ 960 AM, Sun. 9 pm California Lake Tahoe KNIS 91.9 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon Los Angeles KKLA 99.5 FM, Sun. 9 pm Mammoth KNIS 89.9 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon Modesto KCIV 99.9 FM, Sun. 9 pm Palmdale KAVC 105.5 FM, Sun. 9 pm Riverside KKLA 1240 AM, Sun. 9 pm Salinas KKMC 800 AM, Sun. 3 pm San Diego KPRZ 1210 AM, Sun. 9 pm San Francisco KFAX 1100 AM, Sun 3 pm Ventura KDAR 98.3 FM, Sun. 9 pm Colorado Colorado Springs KGFT 100.7 FM, Sun. 10 pm Denver KRKS 94.7 FM, Sun. 10 pm District of Columbia Washington, DC WAVA 105.1 FM, Sun. 9 pm & 12 Mid. Georgia Augusta WFAM 1050 AM, Sun. 8 pm Idaho Boise KBXL 94.1 FM, Sun. 10 pm Illinois Chicago WYLL 106.7 FM, Sun. 11 pm Kansas Wichita KSGL 900 AM, Sun. 8 pm Maryland Baltimore WAVA 1230 AM, Sun. at 9 pm & Mid. Massachusetts Boston WEZE 590 AM, Sun. 2 pm & 12 Mid. Michigan Grand Rapids WFUR 102.9 FM/1570 AM, Sun. 9 pm Missouri St. Louis KFUO 850 AM , Sat. 11:05 am & Sun. 7 pm Montana Billings KCSP 100.9 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon Nebraska McCook KNGN 1360 AM, Sat. 1 & 6 pm Nevada Reno/Carson City KNIS 91.3 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon New York New York WMCA 570 AM, Sun. 12 Mid & Mon. 11 pm North Carolina Asheville WSKY 1230 AM, Sun. 8 pm Pennsylvania Philadelphia WFIL 560 AM, Sun. 6 pm & 12 Mid Pittsburgh WORD 101.5 FM, Sun. 6 & 12 Mid Tennessee Chattanooga WLMR 1450 AM, Sun. 9 pm Texas Austin KIXL 970 AM, Sun. 11 pm Dallas KWRD 94.9 AM, Sun. 11 pm Houston KKHT 106.9 FM, Sun. 11 pm Jacksonville KBJS 90.3 FM, Sun. 11 pm San Antonio KDRY 1100 AM, Sun. 9:30 pm Virginia Norfolk WPMH 1010 AM, Sun. 9 pm Washington Collville KCVL 1240 AM, Sun. 9 pm Seattle KGNW 820 AM, Sun. 9 pm Wyoming Casper KCSP 90.3 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon

The White Horse Inn is a weekly radio program produced by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Each week the hosts talk about important theological topics from both the Lutheran and Reformed perspectives.

Dr. Michael S. Horton is the author/editor of ten books, including, Beyond Culture Wars, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. Dr. Kim Riddlebarger is co-pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Placentia, California. Dr. Rod Rosenbladt is a Professor of Theology and Christian Apologetics at Concordia University in Irvine, California.

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Included in this series is a roundtable discussion with R.C. Sproul, Robert Godfrey, Rod Rosenbladt and Michael Horton on the differences between the various apologetic methods.

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Included in this series will be roundtable discussions with Alliance council members such as James Boice, R.C. Sproul, Robert Godfrey and others on this very important and timely discussion.

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ON MY MIND

By David F. Wells

Luther Baiting and Modern Nomads ichael Jones needs to be forgiven for a few things. We haven’t heard the kind of Luther baiting in which he engages for at least a century. In his Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior (1993) his argument goes like this: the intellectual forms in which modernity expresses itself— rationalism, humanism, secularism—are all rooted in, and driven by, unruly sexual desire. And Luther exemplifies this par excellence. When he could no longer keep his vows of celibacy, he found an escape hatch by inventing the doctrine of the will’s inability. By this reckoning, he was now powerless to resist his sexual impulses and so he no longer tried. Thus, flaming desire “pulled the Refor mation train,” the “Playboy Philosophy” of that time being expressed in the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.”

If Jones had not borrowed all of this thinking from two, turn-of-the century, discredited sources, it might have been a bit more startling. And the basic thesis is silly. Of course it is true that the other intellectuals Jones writes about—Margaret Mead, Anthony Blunt, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Kinsey—lived or promoted wayward, promiscuous lives. But the most obvious explanation is that in their own private worlds they had no reason not to. Modern people no longer feel any need to rationalize their sexual behavior in new philosophies which would permit such behavior. They no longer have to hide. It is modernity that produces promiscuity; promiscuity has done little to produce modernity. Jones has the cart before the horse.

Unfortunately, he has carried this flawed thesis into Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture as Sexual Ideology (1995).

You therefore need to get past his fixation on sex to appreciate what he has done here. He writes about modern architecture as a metaphor of modern life and he has done so with considerable insight, in the process skewering some of the most vaunted names in modern design like Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. But he is on target with his critique.

The modern idiom in architecture, hatched in Ger many in the 1920s but soon to become the “International Style,” was not simply a matter of design but actually gave voice to a philosophy. Its signature was

M

40

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the flat roof, non-loading bearing walls, space divided as little as possible within, the distinction between interior and exterior visually eliminated by an expansive use of glass and, perhaps most characteristically, the high-rise apartment building. This was a style which embodied what modern life has come to mean but it celebrated what, it is now clear, has been so destructive. By 1953, Gropius exulted, it had conquered the “civilized” world.

He was right. From Moscow to Cracow to Chicago, the same buildings, the same graffiti, the same uniformity, the same sadness.

Why the flat roof when so many of them leak?

Because it became a way of expressing anti-transcendence.

The peaked roof, like the church steeple, comes to nothing as the crossed lines intersect before heaven and there is something quite appropriate about that. The church steeple, in particular, points above and beyond itself but the flat roof is uniform in its defiance of the heavens.

Why the open space? Gropius, who pioneered this style, saw the day coming when modern people would be nomads, unattached to place or family, and he designed his buildings to express this. Before this time, home was a house; after it, by deliberate intent, it became for so many the apartment, box stacked on box, in what was actually a grand experiment in social engineering. The sense of privacy, of being secluded from the harshness of the world, of being able to walk in a garden, were deliberately sacrificed. These stacked boxes, Gropius claimed, were “a direct embodiment of the needs of the age.” They were, in fact, a direct embodiment of his philosophical ideas. He was the one responsible for the projects on Chicago’s South Side, a nightmare creation which not only rapidly deteriorated but also degraded those condemned to live there. His vision of the modern person, loosed from structure and convention, was not, in these projects, a pretty sight. The apartments soon filled up with unrelated women, men who came and went, and children whose exact lineage was obscure. Gropius, of course, was not responsible for this experiment in failed parenthood, but in a perverse way he designed to give voice to these new arrangements.

So it was at Harvard in the Peabody Terrace built in continued on page 38 MODERN REFORMATION