Worldviews: the Proper Place of Evidences

When offering Christian and creationist evidences, we must be sure that we make clear that these facts must be understood within the broader context of the Christian worldview. We must resist the temptation to present the evidences as self-interpreting, as though both Christians and non-Christians will view the facts in terms of the same criteria and standards of “proof.” Take the lynchpin of the faith, e.g., the resurrection of Jesus. Both the Christian and the non-Christian have the same historical data before them. The Christian interprets these data through the lens of Scripture, concluding that Jesus is therefore the Messiah, warranting the obedience and faith of all peoples. The non-Christian, however, views the same data through the lens of his naturalistic presuppositions, concluding that, since we live in a random world of chance, weird things do happen, if indeed Jesus of Nazareth came back from the dead! 

                                                      

Therefore, without the context of the sweeping redemptive-historical framework of Scripture as the interpretive grid, Jesus resurrection—the crux of the Christian faith—is a fluke of nature at best and unintelligible at worst. So it is with all evidentially based arguments. We should avoid attempting to treat evidences as neutral facts open to anyone’s interpretation, and then try to move the unbeliever toward truly Christian content and understanding. Rather, we must be unapologetic in our apologetics, showing non-Christians that not only is this or that evidence or fact understandable in terms of Scripture but also every facet of human experience. 

Secondly, then, evidences have their place, but we must be careful to not give them a higher place than is warranted, when considering the conversion of non-Christians. From academic antitheists to agnostic Joe, who works down at the gas station, nearly all unbelievers present their resistance to the gospel and biblical truth as merely the intellectually respectable problem of a lack of evidence for God’s existence, creationism, Christ’s resurrection, etc. The tempting response is to begin pouring out the best information, evidences, and arguments we have; we begin trying to show the unbeliever that there are sufficient facts available to meet his rationalistic demands of proof. 

One glaring problem with this idea is that it presumes that unbelievers simply lack sufficient evidence for obedient belief in the living God, which is itself an assumption of atheism; the idea is perfectly unscriptural, even anti-scriptural. Even the most comprehensive biblical anthropology would never suggest that a person’s unbelief and disobedience is an intellectual problem, as though God has not presented each and every human with sufficient proof of his reality, his nature, etc. (see, e.g., Rom. 1:18ff). Instead, biblically speaking, man’s problem with God is a moral one. “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). Unbelievers are not ignorant of God, but are “haters of God” (Rom. 1:30); he is not doing good by seeking God, since “none seeketh after God” and none doeth good” (Rom. 3:11, 12). So, if we take the biblical view of man, especially fallen man, seriously, we need to be careful to address the unbeliever’s really real problem, his sinful attitude toward Christ, rather than his perceived problem of an alleged want of evidence. The saving gospel, as set forth in the Self-attesting Word, is what the unbeliever lacks, not intellectual satisfaction. He doesn’t need new evidences but a new heart and a new mind.

All of this is easy to discuss in the abstract, but all too often, when I am personally engaged in apologetic and evangelistic conversations, it is easy to slip into the mode of moving forward as though the conclusion of an airtight argument with result in the unbeliever’s immediate concession to the truth and confession of Christ. Even if that were true, it would have the effect of his faith standing in the wisdom of men rather than the power of God, which is his original problem (1 Cor. 2:5; cf. Gen. 3)!  

Three Views on Apologetics

In defending the Christian faith, believers should be aware of the three general approaches to apologetics, and which method is the most consistent with that faith.  The three approaches are the classical, the evidential, and the presuppositional methods.  First, there is the classical method, which operates on a form of rationalism.  Generally speaking, rationalism maintains that, beginning with self-evident truths and applying the laws of logic, the human mind can arrive at epistemic certainty by deduction.  Additionally, the legitimacy of natural theology is assumed; that is, that man can begin with general human experience alone and arrive at an accurate understanding of God, the world, and man’s relation to both.  Moreover, classical apologetics presupposes that the reprobate mind is neutral toward God’s truth, and functions properly independent of God (contra, Jn. 3:19; Rom. 8:7; Eph. 4:17—19).  Classical apologetics, then, appeals to human autonomy as the source of ultimate authority.  Secondly, evidential apologetics, or evidentialism, is similar to the classical view.  However, evidentialism begins with the presupposition of empiricism rather than rationalism.  Empiricism supposes the validity of sense perceptions; and, applying induction and verification, man can arrive at true knowledge.  Similarly too, evidentialism makes its final court of appeal the authority of autonomous human reason.  Lastly, presuppositional apologetics, or presuppositionalism, works on the epistemological presupposition of revelation, that of Christ and the Scriptures.  Because unbelievers suppress the truth of God clearly and authoritatively revealed in the natural world, the Scriptures are required as corrective lenses for reinterpreting natural revelation after God (see Rom. 1:18ff;).  Presuppositionalism does not rely on human wisdom to persuade the unbeliever.  Rather it rests on the foolishness of the cross and the saving, regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, without which no one can believe (1 Cor. 1:18—25; 2:14).  Presuppositionalism makes the self-attesting Word of Christ its final authority, seeking to bring the sinner’s intellect in submission to the Lordship of God in Christ.  Classical and evidential apologetics suggest that human reason is competent to authoritatively judge the veracity of Christ and his Word.  Therefore, of the three approaches to apologetics, presuppositionalism is most consistent with the faith that Christians are defending.    

AVOIDING PRESUPPOSITIONALISM

“Therefore I still contend with you, declares Yahweh, and with you children’s children I will contend. For cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares Yahweh” (Jer 2:9—12).

With these words, Yahweh is wondering at the fact that the nations, who worship non-Gods, are incorrigibly faithful to their non-God idols, while Israel, a spectacle in ‘comparative religions,’ is seemingly predisposed to abandoning the Rock of their refuge and hope, Yahweh. Geerhardus Vos makes the following observation in Biblical Theology:

“Jeremiah complains that Israel is more inclined to change its God than the heathen nations. It is not difficult to explain this. The pagan nations had no desire to change, because their religion was the natural expression of their disposition. Israel persistently struggled to throw off the yoke of Jehovah’s service, because the old pagan nature of Israel felt it as a yoke” (1983, 62).

Are we today decidedly immune from Jeremiah’s marveling? Does our “old pagan nature” cause us to throw of the Lordship of Christ’s rule, while the actual pagans are thoroughly consistent and staunch in their ultimate commitments? Sadly, at times, especially when discussing apologetics, we must answer yes.

The archetypical sin of our first parents in the garden was based on the assumption that humans can reason rightly and interpret reality properly independent of God’s verbal revelation. They believed under the influence of the serpent, that God’s Word was unclear and his knowledge of things was indeterminate, for the whole question was whether or not the judgment of death would actually follow their snatching the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Disregarding the Creator-creature relationship, they decided to conduct an empirical analysis of the claims of the Creator; they held God’s knowledge and creaturely knowledge to be co-equal. Thus, it was believed that, man could reason according to logical laws and empirical observations and come to a true knowledge of God, themselves and their world, all-independent of the Word of God.

This, as we well know, both propositionally and experientially, had disastrous, cosmic, and eternal results. If this were the case when man was in a state of righteousness—in need of God’s revelation for proper reinterpretation of things and that reasoning independent of God’s Word brings ruinous consequences—how much more now, east of Eden, being radically depraved?

Presuppositionalists aptly describe this independence from God, particularly in the area of epistemology, as striving for autonomy. Bahnsen defines the term autonomy thus: “’Autonomy’ refers to being a law unto oneself, so that one’s thinking is independent of any outside authority, including God’s. Autonomous reasoning takes itself philosophically as the final reference and interpretation, the ultimate court of intellectual appeal; it presumes to be self-governing, self-determinative, and self-directing” (Van Til’s Apologetic, 1 fn. 2).

We see, then, that traditional apologists must delineate their apologetic method from their theological conclusions. As far as their theology is biblically faithful and historically orthodox, their apologetical assumptions are inconsistent with their theology. On the one hand, they would affirm that all that’s bound up in Bahnsen’s definition of autonomy could be appropriately ascribed to God alone. In apologetic practice, however, traditional methods afford and even foster the non-Christians in their fallen desire and struggle for autonomy. Traditionalists seek to satisfy the non-Christian’s struggle for autonomy by feeding their insatiable insistence for scientific evidences, philosophical and logical proofs, and demonstrations of the Bible’s ethics that fit their own sinful emotivism. Submitting one’s thinking, in faith, to the Lordship of Christ as the Light that gives us light to see anything aright (Ps 36:9), is, for them, something that comes at the end of the apologetic encounter; this act of repentance is seen strictly as evangelistic and posterior to apologetics.

Herein lays the analogy to Jeremiah’s charge: The adherents of non-Christian systems of thought are more faithful to their epistemological authorities, since these are merely an expressed manifestation of their commitment to their own autonomy. But Christ’s people are quick to exchange their glory—i.e., Christ’s epistemological Lordship—for that which does not profit, the futile, darkened epistemological autonomy of man.

Presuppositionalism doesn’t make any clear distinctions between apologetics and evangelism, for this apologetic is hardly more than a relentless challenge to the non-Christian’s sinful, white-knuckled claim to intellectual autonomy, and seeking to see this taken captive to obey Christ. Furthermore, presuppositionalists are willing confessors of Christ: that their believing obedience to him rests not in some linear, valid line of reason; their submission to Christ is the result of the Holy Spirit graciously regenerating them so that they proudly stand under the gentle-light yoke of Christ’s rule over them, especially their minds. They contend that, since surrender to God and his wisdom is the beginning, not the end, of knowledge (Prov 1:7), and that the unbeliever’s mind is at enmity with God, there must therefore be a frontal assault on the unbeliever’s epistemological autonomy, and at once an appeal to repentance from their idols of a depraved mind. Autonomous reason can never lead one to Christ; it must be recognized for what it really is—the very sin that is in constant rebellion to God and refuses to surrender to the Savior.

With Jeremiah, the presuppositionalist wonders at the traditional apologetic, how it exchanges the glory of Christ’s epistemic Lordship for the unprofitable would-be authority of autonomous human reason. With Tertullian, we agree, “It must...be added, that no solution may be found by any man, but such as is learned from God; and that which is learned of God is the sum and substance of the whole thing” (On the Soul, II). And finally, with the Master himself, who declares that, no one can serve two masters (Matt 6:24).

Presuppositionalism strips human reason of its would-be autonomy; our old nature still struggles (or oftimes surrenders to) for its autonomy. Perhaps this, then, is one of the main reasons for avoiding presuppositional apologetics.

For an example of APPLYING PRESUPPOSITIONALISM click here.

GRASPING PRESUPPOSITIONALISM

Here is a helpful article from Gregory Koukl at "Stand to Reason." The focus of the article is on what’s called the problem of “moral grounding.”

Koukl begins with the classic objection to the faith, the problem of evil. He then uses the problem of moral grounding to indirectly defuse the challenge by pointing out that for the problem of evil to be real, evil must be real and so a violation of a real good. He then states the obvious, that relativists can’t raise the objection from evil honestly, since real and objective evil can’t exist in a relativistic framework.

At this point, Koukl presents a question.

“The grounding question is: Given that there is real evil and good, as well, why is the world the way it is? What properly accounts for this moral feature of the world?”

Granted, Koukl is a rationalist, epistemologically speaking. However, even a green-winged presuppositionalist will recognize the transcendental nature of the question Koukl sets forth. He goes on to argue that morality is deontological; that is, morals have an obligatory nature. Morals are not descriptive but prescriptive; they don’t tell us how things are but how they ought to be. Morals have an ought-ness about them.

Finally, Koukl demonstrates that obligation assumes personality. Obligation is something that exists between persons. Although I need to prune my Azaleas for spring, I don’t feel any obligation to them to do it for them. They are impersonal entities and impersonals don’t prescribe what persons ought to do. Morals therefore could only have their “grounding” in a personal moral-maker to whom we are obligated.

Koukl is quite apt with illustrations, and doesn’t let us down in this article. The illustration serves to show the a priority of morality, thus concluding that morals have their “grounding” in the personal, moral-maker God of Christian theism.

While this is a good article, I’m not commending it for what it’s worth in and of itself. I’d have you read the article and then consider the auxiliary application I’m going to suggest.

Yesterday I posted Robert Reymond’s attempt at defining the presuppositional apologetic method. Today I thought I’d use Koukl’s article as a springboard to helping those unacquainted with presuppositionalism grasp it better.

Christians who are the slightest bit self-conscious in their apologetic practice are generally accustom to denying unbelievers any grounding for morality, since only Yahweh, the holy Law-Giver, alone has the authority to tell us what is right and wrong. This is nothing especially new; Koukl is sort of playing Capt. Obvious in this way.

A helpful step in grasping what distinguishes presuppositionalism from traditional methods is that the presuppositional apologete extends this denial of “grounding” from the unbeliever to every sphere of human experience, especially the area of epistemology.

Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know, the methods and extent of our knowing, et cetera. My favorite definition is (roughly stated) “When asked how you know what you know, then take away the option of answering, ‘I just do,’ and what is left is epistemology.”

The presuppositional challenge to unbelief is that unless the God of Christian theism is presupposed at the beginning, knowledge of anything is impossible. Christ, the Word of God, endowing light and speaking with absolute and Self-attesting authority alone provides the necessary “grounding” for the integration and unity of knowledge necessary for human knowledge to happen at all. It is an epistemological axiom that unless everything is known by Someone, nothing can be known by anyone. Exhaustive knowledge must reside Somewhere in order for any knowledge to reside elsewhere. (I capitalize “Someone” and “Somewhere” in the preceding sentences because in Whomever or Wherever all knowledge resides, that one or place deserves this respect!)

The traditional apologetic method Evangelicals are so used to ironically operates on a Roman Catholic understanding of anthropology and the fall of man. The traditional apologetic operates on the assumption that the fall had little or no effect on man’s reasoning ability; sin is a moral rather than epistemological issue, or so it’s presumed. This, however, cannot stand against either the biblical data, human experience, or historic Protestant theology. That the fall was primarily an epistemological laps is sufficient to prove the Romish doctrine wrong.

Tomorrow I’ll post what I believe is a positive vindication of these claims. In the mean time, ponder this analogy. Presuppositionalism is (in part) just an extension of Koukl’s argument in his “moral grounding” article. Presuppositionalism argues that God speaking in the Word of God is the transcendentally necessary ontological “grounding” for knowledge. We argue that human reason, the laws of logic, induction, et cetera depend upon humans being created in God’s image; the biblical God, who is the comprehensively rational One. Moreover, since the all the world reflects his glory, majesty and “eternal power and Godhead,” the world has a rational structure which corresponds with not only God’s Mind, but man’s as well. Therefore, God is the necessary ontological “grounding” of epistemology, from the impossibility of all contrary epistemological options.

This illustration, from the moral argument to the epistemological argument, may help some grasp the distinctives of a presuppositional apologetic.

One Problem with Popular Apologetics

“Today we are going to enter the courtroom of your mind, and on trial is the Bible. In the next twenty minutes, I’d like to present a case for the authenticity of the Scriptures. And at the end, I’ll ask you for a verdict: ‘Is it worth trusting?’ ‘Is it believable?’ Well, court is now is session...”

These were Chip Ingram’s opening remarks Monday morning on his hugely popular radio program, Living on the Edge.

This is part of an apologetic series that Ingram’s doing on the program. Ingram’s comments immediately evoked a particular passage of Scripture when I heard them. That was Gen 3:1, “Hath God said...?”

Should the very question that brought about humanity’s rebellion against God be the means through which people are saved from their rebellion?!?

I understand the well-meant crux of the Ingram’s evidentialist’s reasoning. He fears the charge of circular reason or question begging if he were to, in keeping with the tone and message of the Bible itself, simply appeal to the Self-attesting and absolute nature of God’s Word.

But Ingram has not saved himself at this point. He cannot avoid appealing to some authority in making his case. If one were to ask him what might suffice as a proper criterion for judging the truth claims of the Bible, he would suggest logic. However, the next question is, of course, “Why do you believe logic is the proper means of evaluation?” What could be his response? “Well, it’s only logical to do so.”

In making this move, though, Ingram has fallen prey to the very logical problem he was hoping to elude. Once the chaff is winnowed from the arguments, all appeals to other criteria a reducible to the intellectually anathemized, “The Bible is true, because it’s God word; it’s God’s word because it says so.” For a succinct statement of this problem check out Steve’s summary here. Or you can see the same point in a larger context here.

Here are some other questions that Ingram’s evidential method begs:

Does human reason function properly independent of an attitude of submission to God?

Is unregenerate man’s problem with God’s Word intellectual or moral in nature?

Is human reason unscathed by sin?

This is to name only a few.

The Bible’s answer to these is an emphatic NO!

“Let God be true though every one were a liar!” (Rom 3:4).

Any thoughts?