The Christian apology [i.e., vindication of Christianity] against non-Christian opponents, and the controversial efforts against Christian errorists, are the two oldest branches of theological science...
Their first object was to soften the temper of the authorities and people towards Christianity and its professors by refuting the charges against them...
Yet the chief service of this literature was to strengthen believers and to advance theological knowledge. It brought the church to a deeper and clearer sense of the peculiar nature of the Christian religion, and prepared her thenceforth to vindicate it before the tribunal of reason and philosophy; whilst Judaism and heathenism proved themselves powerless in the combat, and were driven to the weapons of falsehood and vituperation. The sophisms and mockeries of a Celsus and a Lucian have none but historical interest; the Apologies of Justin and the Apologeticus of Tertullian, rich with indestructible truth and glowing piety, are read with pleasure and edification to this day.
The apologists do not confine themselves to the defensive, but carry the war aggressively into the territory of Judaism and heathenism. They complete their work by positively demonstrating that Christianity is the divine religion, and the only true religion for all mankind.
History of the Christian Church, vol. II, pp. 105—07.
Showing posts with label Tertullian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tertullian. Show all posts
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tertullian on Idolatry and Its Taunt-worthiness
What are the consequences of people's rejection to building their lives on a reverent respect and fear of the Lord? One of the consequences is foolishness, the hatred of all knowledge and wisdom and sound instruction (Prov 1:7, 29). This, because a person can’t despise the One in whom are hidden all the riches of wisdom and knowledge and still retain a solid foundation for life (Col 2:3). Every aspect of the unbeliever’s thoughts, words and deeds is resting squarely on a sand-like foundation (Matt 7:24ff).
Additionally, since as humans created to reflect what we reverence, in our unbelief we wind up taking on the dead, impersonal, and irrational characteristics of whatever object we have given God’s place of ultimacy over to (Ps 115:3—8). This idolatry leads us to futile reasoning and hearts of darkness. Finally, our exchanging the natural relationship we are to have with our God for that which is unnatural, worshipping something in creation (ultimately ourselves), leads us to pervert ALL that is natural. Making the natural unnatural and then proclaiming it “natural,” putting our selves as gods, we throw everything upside down and backwards (Rom 1:18ff). What’s saddest is that, we believe the upside down and backwards world is “just the way things are”—in a word, normal.
What the unbelieving world calls “normal,” Paul describes as a world of people who operate within every domain in the “futility of their minds,” and are “darkened in their understanding...hard-hearted” and “ignorant” (Eph 4:17—18). However, Paul also teaches us that God, in the omnipotent power and divine wisdom of the gospel, has made the world’s wisdom to be seen for the foolishness that it is; and the world’s perceived strength as it is in reality, weakness.
Now, as confessing Christians, we at least mentally assent to and affirm the truth of these biblical assessments of the unbelieving rationale (or should!). Far from Freud’s “psycho-scientific” conclusion that, our primary problems are the result of repressed anxieties of our sexual or patricidal tendencies; or Skinner’s excusing inferences from a person’s antecedent sociological depravations of one kind or another, the biblical diagnosis of our problem is simply idolatry. And idolatry makes one stupid—sin is irrationality in its highest manifestation. Despite the perceptions and delusions of the world, this is the reality and nature of the case.
Nevertheless, how often are we honest (or convicted) enough to tell the truth in this regard? Why aren’t Christians more willing to “answer the fool according to his folly” (Prov 1:5), not merely announcing the biblical diagnosis, but demonstrating it as well? As D. A. Carson often says, we’ll never agree on the solution (i.e., the gospel) until we can first agree on the problem (i.e., idolatry). The gospel is the only alternative to idolatry.
There has been one in our past who was not afraid to do these very things: reduce humanity’s dilemma down to the living true God or idols, and then make a mockery of the latter option. This one’s name was Tertullian.
In chapter I of De Idololatria, Tertullian gives a persuasive exhibition of how every sin, vice and avarice is in principle only a flagrant display of the deeper problem of idolatry. “The principle crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry.” This is the opening line of this work, and the thesis that the rest compellingly proves.
Fraud, even, is rooted in idolatry. Tertullian explains, “The essence of fraud, I take it, is, that any should seize what is another’s, or refuse to another his due; and of course, fraud done toward man is a name of great crime. Well, but idolatry does fraud to God, by refusing to Him, and conferring on others, His honors.” Many similar correspondences are draw in this way. He concludes this chapter. “[S]ince all faults savor opposition to God...doubtless, whoever commits a fault is chargeable with idolatry.”
From a biblical perspective, idolatry is the root of all evil; for Tertullian, it was the same.
We insist that idolatry has not only moral but also intellectual fallout—idolatry = irrationality. Tertullian was quite comfortable to repeatedly point this out to his opponents. It must further be borne in mind that, in the late second and early third centuries, the N. African and Asia Minor Christian communities were experiencing a baptism of blood. Tertullian’s penchant for sardonic tones and heckling taunts were on the pains of death. Today, in the West, we fear challenging our Intelligentsians in the academy, for example, lest our grades suffer; we instead regurgitate their buffoonery back to them on tests and in papers, and in the end, place a measure of offering on the alter of rebellious human Reason. Not Tertullian. There was no compromise at any point; there will always be antithesis between the Church and the Academy, between Jerusalem and Athens.
Last night, Beaner and I read a striking example of his canny for making a mockery out of the judgments of idolaters who despised Christians for nothing more than their name. His point was to illustrate how the Emperor and the Senates’ hatred for Christ and his people had driven them to utter madness. This he does in both Apology II, III and Ad Nationes II. The latter makes the point lucid.
“In this case [of those charged only with being Christians] you actually conduct trials contrary to the usual form of judicial process against criminals; for when culprits are brought up for trial, should they deny the charge, you press them for a confession by tortures. When Christians, however, confess without compulsion, you apply torture to induce them to deny. What great perversity is this, when you stand out against confession, and change the use of torture, compelling the man who frankly acknowledges the charge to evade it, and him who is unwilling, to deny it? You, who preside for the purpose of extorting truth, demand falsehood from us alone, that we declare ourselves not to be what we are...To be sure, you put others on the rack and gibbet, to get them to deny what they have the reputation of being. Now, when they deny (the charge against them), you do not believe them; but on our denial [of Christ and the faith], you instantly believe us!”
“Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there is some hidden power in the case under whose influence you act against the forms [of jurisprudence], against the nature of public justice, even against the laws themselves” (Apol. II).
“Upside down and backwards” are the terms we ascribed to the folly of idolatry earlier, and Tertullian has given us a brilliant illustration of it in the antichrist idolaters of his own day. “O miserable deliverance,--under the necessity of the case, a self-contradiction!...Goodness is of less value that hatred of Christians!” (Apol. II, III).
Although Tertullian had some heterodox slippage, not least with his Montanistic leanings, his taunts and censors against the idolatry and heresy of his day were reminiscent of Paul and in parts Jesus also.
That’s Tertullian. But, what about us today?
Additionally, since as humans created to reflect what we reverence, in our unbelief we wind up taking on the dead, impersonal, and irrational characteristics of whatever object we have given God’s place of ultimacy over to (Ps 115:3—8). This idolatry leads us to futile reasoning and hearts of darkness. Finally, our exchanging the natural relationship we are to have with our God for that which is unnatural, worshipping something in creation (ultimately ourselves), leads us to pervert ALL that is natural. Making the natural unnatural and then proclaiming it “natural,” putting our selves as gods, we throw everything upside down and backwards (Rom 1:18ff). What’s saddest is that, we believe the upside down and backwards world is “just the way things are”—in a word, normal.
What the unbelieving world calls “normal,” Paul describes as a world of people who operate within every domain in the “futility of their minds,” and are “darkened in their understanding...hard-hearted” and “ignorant” (Eph 4:17—18). However, Paul also teaches us that God, in the omnipotent power and divine wisdom of the gospel, has made the world’s wisdom to be seen for the foolishness that it is; and the world’s perceived strength as it is in reality, weakness.
Now, as confessing Christians, we at least mentally assent to and affirm the truth of these biblical assessments of the unbelieving rationale (or should!). Far from Freud’s “psycho-scientific” conclusion that, our primary problems are the result of repressed anxieties of our sexual or patricidal tendencies; or Skinner’s excusing inferences from a person’s antecedent sociological depravations of one kind or another, the biblical diagnosis of our problem is simply idolatry. And idolatry makes one stupid—sin is irrationality in its highest manifestation. Despite the perceptions and delusions of the world, this is the reality and nature of the case.
Nevertheless, how often are we honest (or convicted) enough to tell the truth in this regard? Why aren’t Christians more willing to “answer the fool according to his folly” (Prov 1:5), not merely announcing the biblical diagnosis, but demonstrating it as well? As D. A. Carson often says, we’ll never agree on the solution (i.e., the gospel) until we can first agree on the problem (i.e., idolatry). The gospel is the only alternative to idolatry.
There has been one in our past who was not afraid to do these very things: reduce humanity’s dilemma down to the living true God or idols, and then make a mockery of the latter option. This one’s name was Tertullian.
In chapter I of De Idololatria, Tertullian gives a persuasive exhibition of how every sin, vice and avarice is in principle only a flagrant display of the deeper problem of idolatry. “The principle crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry.” This is the opening line of this work, and the thesis that the rest compellingly proves.
Fraud, even, is rooted in idolatry. Tertullian explains, “The essence of fraud, I take it, is, that any should seize what is another’s, or refuse to another his due; and of course, fraud done toward man is a name of great crime. Well, but idolatry does fraud to God, by refusing to Him, and conferring on others, His honors.” Many similar correspondences are draw in this way. He concludes this chapter. “[S]ince all faults savor opposition to God...doubtless, whoever commits a fault is chargeable with idolatry.”
From a biblical perspective, idolatry is the root of all evil; for Tertullian, it was the same.
We insist that idolatry has not only moral but also intellectual fallout—idolatry = irrationality. Tertullian was quite comfortable to repeatedly point this out to his opponents. It must further be borne in mind that, in the late second and early third centuries, the N. African and Asia Minor Christian communities were experiencing a baptism of blood. Tertullian’s penchant for sardonic tones and heckling taunts were on the pains of death. Today, in the West, we fear challenging our Intelligentsians in the academy, for example, lest our grades suffer; we instead regurgitate their buffoonery back to them on tests and in papers, and in the end, place a measure of offering on the alter of rebellious human Reason. Not Tertullian. There was no compromise at any point; there will always be antithesis between the Church and the Academy, between Jerusalem and Athens.
Last night, Beaner and I read a striking example of his canny for making a mockery out of the judgments of idolaters who despised Christians for nothing more than their name. His point was to illustrate how the Emperor and the Senates’ hatred for Christ and his people had driven them to utter madness. This he does in both Apology II, III and Ad Nationes II. The latter makes the point lucid.
“In this case [of those charged only with being Christians] you actually conduct trials contrary to the usual form of judicial process against criminals; for when culprits are brought up for trial, should they deny the charge, you press them for a confession by tortures. When Christians, however, confess without compulsion, you apply torture to induce them to deny. What great perversity is this, when you stand out against confession, and change the use of torture, compelling the man who frankly acknowledges the charge to evade it, and him who is unwilling, to deny it? You, who preside for the purpose of extorting truth, demand falsehood from us alone, that we declare ourselves not to be what we are...To be sure, you put others on the rack and gibbet, to get them to deny what they have the reputation of being. Now, when they deny (the charge against them), you do not believe them; but on our denial [of Christ and the faith], you instantly believe us!”
“Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there is some hidden power in the case under whose influence you act against the forms [of jurisprudence], against the nature of public justice, even against the laws themselves” (Apol. II).
“Upside down and backwards” are the terms we ascribed to the folly of idolatry earlier, and Tertullian has given us a brilliant illustration of it in the antichrist idolaters of his own day. “O miserable deliverance,--under the necessity of the case, a self-contradiction!...Goodness is of less value that hatred of Christians!” (Apol. II, III).
Although Tertullian had some heterodox slippage, not least with his Montanistic leanings, his taunts and censors against the idolatry and heresy of his day were reminiscent of Paul and in parts Jesus also.
That’s Tertullian. But, what about us today?
Friday, December 25, 2009
Faith Seeking Understanding--Tertullian
Merry Christmas! I pray that you are experiencing the joy and satisfaction of knowing Christ Jesus, God’s supreme Gift.
This week I have been reading some from Tertullian. In On Prescription Against Heretics, I read the famous (or infamous, depending on how one understands it) line, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” (Ch. VII).
Regrettably, this statement and a couple others have earned this great Church Father the modern anathema of a fideist. As D.A. Carson says, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Reading these remarks within their literary context, and especially in the flow of Tertullian’s rhetorical purposes is sufficient to demonstrate that he was not a fideist. A fuller study of Tertullian gives the distinct portrait of a disciple who, through faith, had taken his reason captive to the obedience of Christ, and made that reason work as a slave of Christ and his Kingdom.
I believe that the real problem that most have with Tertullian’s apologetic is that he was not a rationalist (which is a fideism in its own right). We have much to learn from this great Father, who could rightly be considered the first presuppositionalist apologete.
Read this article for a relatively technical treatment of the issue.
This week I have been reading some from Tertullian. In On Prescription Against Heretics, I read the famous (or infamous, depending on how one understands it) line, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” (Ch. VII).
Regrettably, this statement and a couple others have earned this great Church Father the modern anathema of a fideist. As D.A. Carson says, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Reading these remarks within their literary context, and especially in the flow of Tertullian’s rhetorical purposes is sufficient to demonstrate that he was not a fideist. A fuller study of Tertullian gives the distinct portrait of a disciple who, through faith, had taken his reason captive to the obedience of Christ, and made that reason work as a slave of Christ and his Kingdom.
I believe that the real problem that most have with Tertullian’s apologetic is that he was not a rationalist (which is a fideism in its own right). We have much to learn from this great Father, who could rightly be considered the first presuppositionalist apologete.
Read this article for a relatively technical treatment of the issue.
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