In an interesting article Glen Scrivener has warned Christians of the danger of apologetic preaching – or, at least, some forms of apologetic preaching – and has defended his position with some thoughtful, well reasoned comments.
If by “apologetics” a preacher just means “engaging, warm-hearted and well- contextualised evangelism” then I couldn’t care less about the name. Let them pursue “apologetics” to their heart’s content! But if “apologetics” is brought in as another thing alongside engaging, contextualised evangelism then alarm bells start to go off.
What exactly is Glen opposed to? Well, generally he’d avoid offering arguments for God’s existence or the historical ‘likelihood’ of Jesus’ resurrection in a sermon. Now, sermons should not be lectures, and too many preachers are more interested in being academically correct and intellectually respectable than communicating with their audience. However, many preachers feel that it can be useful to make use of such arguments; and we think that they are right to do so.
With that in mind, we’ll address some of Glen’s concerns. But we would like to note that this is a disagreement between friends (family, really); that Glen has been articulate and more than generous in his online discussion; and that there are many points of agreement between Glen and us. (For example – we don’t believe that anyone needs to know an academically rigorous proof before to have a thoroughly rational, well-grounded belief in our saviour!) However, we think that Glen is just anxious to protect crucial doctrines which are not threatened by good apologetics.
So, what are Glen’s arguments against preachers using arguments? First, he believes that Paul warns his readers about some forms of apologetics:
There must be some kinds of apologetic preaching that are futile and illegitimate right? Paul says so. I’ve tried to make it clear that what I’m opposing is a synergistic understanding of revelation and reason. That’s the illegitimate form of “apologetics” that I’m opposing. If, for you, “apologetics” just means “persuasive, thoughful, contextualised evangelism” then that’s brilliant – I have no beef with that. But, once again, 1 Cor 1&2 and Col 2:8 speak against something: what is it?
But Paul simply isn’t condemning any form of apologetic preaching in those texts: the rational defence of the faith is not being discussed. In Colossians 2 Paul warns of “hollow and deceptive philosophy”. However, ancient philosophy was not at all like modern analytic philosophy, which merely seeks to clarify and defend ideas. “Philosophy” had religious connotations in the ancient world (for example, Josephus could describe Pharisaism as a philosophy). Philosophers were not simply interested in speculative, academic knowledge, but offered an alternative to popular religion. They attempted to convert others to their philosophical schools; “salvation” came through a change of thinking. But Paul preached conversion by repentance toward God and faith in Christ.
In Corinthians, Paul is concerned about a form of evangelism (not apologetics!) which used sophistry and flattery to win over followers. He is condemning salesmanship, not argument. As James Beilby points out in Thinking About Christian Apologetics: What It Is and Why We Do It
The point of 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 is that Paul did not want to present the gospel in the language of the trained orator who applied very specific and formal rhetorical skills and devices in order to persuade his audience. Such rhetorical devices were common among both the Jewish rabbis and the Greek philosophers. He didn’t want to win a battle of rhetoric and impress people with his argumentative skills….So there is nothing in this passage that suggests that using thoughtful, logical arguments in the service of defending and commending the faith is inappropriate.
Glen’s second objection is that preachers cannot consistently preach as if the Bible is authoritative and offer evidence for its accuracy.
I think it’s nigh on impossible to preach both that “this is the word of the living God” and “this is unlikely to have been made up…” I can’t believe I have to write such a sentence, but there it is. My insistence on assuming the truth of what we are preaching and preaching in such a way as to convey that authority is a quite modest hope, I’d have thought – especially for the pulpit, where for centuries preachers have considered their authority to be the delegated authority of the risen Christ Himself. But I reckon these convictions rule out quite a few apologetic moves in the pulpit – like spending your sermon talking about documentary evidence for the New Testament or the fact the resurrection fulfills these criteria for historical reliability. Once again the preacher who says “This is the word of the Lord” ought not to be heard to say “and it’s very likely to be true.”
We wouldn’t recommend spending an entire sermon talking about documentary evidence if you want your congregation to retain the will to live. But it’s difficult to see how mentioning evidence which confirms the truth of the scripture somehow undermines the Bible’s authority. The preacher is certainly not taking an inconsistent attitude to the text if he says something like: “I believe that this is the living word of God. You may deny that. But still, you cannot sensibly believe that it is a fraud – or even that it is inaccurate about facts like the empty tomb. So you should recognise that there is good evidence that what I wholeheartedly believe is true.”
We offer evidence so that others will come to share our convictions. We do not for one second cast doubt on the depth of our beliefs if we argue for their truth. I believe that moral values and obligations are objective; I believe that morality is authoritative. Now, do I somehow act inconsistently with my moral convictions if I offer arguments for their objectivity? When Vincent Bugliosi tried Charles Manson and his accomplices for murder, he had no doubt at all of Manson’s guilt. Yet he still offered evidence at trial! If an innocent man offers the court an alibi, is he somehow suggesting that he is not fully convinced of his own innocence? Hardly.
We should note that the New Testament is quite keen for outsiders do a little fact-checking. For example, in Acts 26 Festus is incredulous of Paul’s description of the Messiah: “much learning has made you mad.” Paul does not refer Festus to the gospels self-authenticating power, but calmly refers him to the public record, which Agrippa will presumably have knowledge of.
Acts 26.25b “What I am saying is true and reasonable.26 The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.”
The point is not merely that Paul is asking Festus to do a “fact-check” before he dismisses the gospel. The point is that Luke, within a generation of Jesus ministry, is challenging the reader of Luke-Acts to do exactly the same! He begins the Gospel of Luke with a historian’s prologue, reassuring the reader that he knows how to gather reliable information, and he is happy for his readers to put his skill as an historian to the test. If this form of argument is good enough for Luke and the apostle Paul, it’s good enough for us!
A fourth objection to using evidence in apologetics can be discerned when Scrivener writes that “[t]here is a self authenticating quality to the Word (eternal and written) that means our job is to simply hold out the Word and the Word itself has compelling power to create belief.” However, unless we can spell out what we mean by a “self-authenticating quality” the dangers of subjectivism loom large. Until we offer some apologetic beyond “the bible is true because it says so” the world will think we are subjectivists, relativists – or worse! However, it seems to us some content can be given to the notion that the gospel authenticates itself. When we have an ear to hear the word of God, the explanatory power of the Biblical world view is accompanied with existential and experiential evidence.
The word of God knows our heart and challenges us morally; it offers answers for our spiritual and existential needs; it paints a world-view which makes sense of the world, our lives and our hearts. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit uses the words of scripture to convict us of our sin and to acquaint us with God’s love. Those who have an ear must account for the explanatory power of the Biblical world-view. They must explain why its message both challenges us morally, yet answers our deepest existential needs. They must account for the effect the gospel has on our hearts. This is a treasure trove of evidence; only a fraction would be needed for a justified belief. The Christian need not be able to articulate all of this evidence to have a warranted trust in God’s gospel; they certainly do not need to reproduce it an academically rigorous argument. But it is helpful to be able to share why we believe. Hence, apologetics and apologetic sermons.
Glen’s fifth objection is that sin has ruined human reason. “Our catastrophic fall from the heights of Genesis 1 has meant not only badness but also madness!” However, we need to ask how sin ruined our ability to reason. We can still follow deductive and inductive inferences; so, we can grasp correct procedures and discover many truths. However, as Paul knew when he condemned the clever “demonstrations” of the orators in Corinth, a syllogism is only as good as its premises. A clever debater can use plausible, yet false, premises to lead his audience to an implausible conclusion. Paul wanted to build a better reputation; he also highlights how reason can lead us astray. Our conceptual apparatus can be functioning perfectly; it is our motivations which are faulty.
We can use reason to mislead others; we can also use it to mislead ourselves. If a good argument leads us to an uncomfortable conclusion, we can find a thousand excuses to delay judgement. We can create a multitude of objections to escape the deliverances of good sense and reason. Furthermore, we are often too lazy to pursue the truth; too selfish to accept guidance; too arrogant to believe that others might have insights which we have missed. So here is one area where apologetic preaching can focus its fire. Do not merely present arguments for Christianity, but challenge the indolence and self-indulgence which prevent people from seeking the truth about God; dissect the emotions which make them reluctant to honestly evaluate the gospel; and uncover the sinful attitudes which keep sinners from acknowledging that they have more than enough reason to accept that the gospel is true.
Glen’s sixth objection is more subtle, but potentially more powerful: he wishes to avoid any implication that a sinner can somehow contribute to his own salvation. “Just as you can’t say that salvation is a co-operation between our work and God’s, so you can’t say that knowing God is a co-operation between our wisdom and God’s revelation.” But, whatever one makes of the nature of free-will, everyone who is converted must use their reason during the process of conversion. After all, it takes reason to understand a sermon, or a tract, or a verse of Scripture! So the use of reason cannot be opposed to grace.
Glen, wisely, wants to protect the Church from the heresy that humans can earn their place in heaven. We cannot “work” our way into heaven simply by doing enough good deeds; nor can we earn God’s forgiveness as a wage. Glenn is entirely correct to insist that we cannot “merit” salvation (if we could, the Cross would have been unnecessary); and no-one can deserve forgiveness (that misunderstands what forgiveness means!) Of course, salvation results in a changed character, and as a consequence, that character will perform “good deeds”. But God does the transforming, not us.
Now, we need to be careful at this point. Christians believe that humans are fallen: we cannot behave perfectly, nor can we love God and neighbour as we should. We were made to be perfect and designed to love: hence our need for salvation. But that does not mean that we cannot ever choose to do the right thing! It simply means that our occasional good deeds aren’t good enough to earn salvation if we are corrupt to the core, if we often enjoy being corrupt to the core, and if we know we ought to be good all the time. In other words, Christianity does not teach that no-one ever does anything nice of their own volition; but Christians do believe that good deeds cannot merit salvation!
So, apologetics would not preach ‘works righteousness’ even if believing that “God exists” is a ‘good deed’, because apologists would also have to assert that believing that “God exists” somehow merits forgiveness. But why would anyone think that being convinced by an argument is meritorious? In fact, a person should be embarrassed and humbled by the fact that it took an argument to persuade him of a truth which is as plain as the nose on his face! Indeed, the more reasoning and persuading it requires to get a person to acknowledge that God exists, the more humility that person should feel!
Perhaps Glenn is worried by the heresy of Semi-Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagians believed that humans can initiate belief in God and that God’s grace is a response to that effort. Now, as we have just noted, we only run the danger of believing that God’s grace is a response to our effort if we believe that good deeds merit or earn salvation. And apologists do not believe that humans can initiate belief in God of their own free-will. We need to distinguish between belief in God and the belief that God exists. The latter is, at most, academic knowledge; it is mere assent to a proposition’s truth, and need not bring us any closer to God. After all, the devils believe that God exists; indeed, their theology is probably impeccably orthodox!
But belief in God means trusting God, relying on him, depending on him alone for forgiveness, and getting to know him intimately. That requires God to reach us; it takes the Holy Spirit to challenge us deeply and personally, and to bring us to life. And belief in God cannot be generated by human wisdom or human effort. God must call us to faith.Still, coming to acknowledge that God exists can be a stepping stone in many a person’s journey into the kingdom.
In any case, how does God call us? Presumably, through his word; and it is astonishing how often God’s word reasons with unbelief. For example, Paul opens his chief theological statement, the book of Romans, with a critique of idolatry and polytheism. He makes a similar argument to the Athenians in Acts 17. The ‘world and everything in it’ reflects the power of one creator. There is only one creator for one providential plan governs the world. If everything in this world depends on a creator, then it follows that the creator cannot depend on anything in nature. These arguments would have been familiar to the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of Athens. Epicureans rejected temples and sacrifices; Stoics believed that God permeated all things and therefore was not localised in temples. So Paul argues that paganism cannot withstand the intellectual scrutiny of pagans!
Now, Glen worries that apologists use texts like Romans 1 and Acts 17 too glibly:
On Romans 1 – I’ve never seen an apologetics ministry that actually takes the chapter seriously. All of them quote it and then go on to say that their intricate arguments can help people come to know some kind of god. All the time Romans 1 actually says that “what may be known about God is plain to” everyone “so that men are without excuse.” The whole creation is blasting the truth all the time and humanity manages to suppress it. I don’t think the cosmological argument (which is hardly “plain” to the “man on the street”) is what Paul has in mind.”
But many commentators believe that Paul does have something like the design argument in mind in Romans 1! To give a little historical context, most Gentile intellectuals agreed with the Stoics that there is one divine design in nature. Jews throughout the Greco-Roman world had adapted such arguments to persuade pagans of the rationality of Jewish monotheism. Their arguments were incorporated into Jewish religious literature; later rabbis would even tell stories about how Abraham reasoned back to a first cause, to show his fellow Gentiles that there was really only one true God. So many commentators note that Paul is drawing on Jewish Wisdom literature in Romans 1:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 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.”
The key premise of Paul’s argument against idolatry is that people once knew there was a transcendent creator, but they have exchanged this truth for a lie. This was not a truth which had been revealed to them through scripture or the witness of the apostles; evidence of God’s existence is available in nature, so to speak. Paul is using an argument with a respectable intellectual pedigree, familiar to the philosophers of the day.
In the IVP Bible Background Commentary Craig Keener notes that “Paul’s argument is similar to one in the Wisdom of Solomon, a popular Jewish work widely circulated by this period. His arguments would thus have been easy for his readers to follow.” And Ben Witherington also comments that “underlying the discourse in 1.18-3.20 is not merely Jewish polemics against Gentile vice, but quite specifically the sort of discussion the sort of discussion one finds in Jewish sapiential literature. In particular Paul draws on the Wisdom of Solomon in Romans 1 … to help make his case.” The parallels between Paul’s argument in Romans 1 and Wisdom of Solomon 13 are clear :
1For all people who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works; 2 but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world. 3 If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them. 4 And if peoplewere amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them. 5 For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. 6 Yet these people are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find him. 7 For while they live among his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful. 8 Yet again, not even they are to be excused; 9 for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?
Wisdom 13 argues that humans should have realised that there is a craftsman responsible for the beauty and order of our world. However, people became enamoured with the beauty of the visible elements; so much so that they created ‘gods’ and worshipped the created world through idols: pieces of wood or stone made by human hands. Wisdom of Solomon 14 goes on to connect the rise of idolatry with moral corruption; this is precisely the argument that Paul makes in Romans 1. Of course, Paul is not affirming everything that is written in Wisdom of Solomon; but it is quite clear that Paul agrees with its argument that the world testifies to a Creator. As James Barr writes in Biblical Faith and Natural Theology:
… if it is natural theology to think that God is known through one’s perception of the world, and to think that this knowledge has been available or accessible to all, then Wisdom contains natural theology. But if Wisdom contains natural theology, it becomes much more likely that Romans also contains it. The similarity of the type of argument seems so strong. The community of the chain of thought suggests a common tradition, and makes it more probable that Paul is using this common tradition. The emphasis on the place of idolatry, in relation to the accessible knowledge of the creator God on the one hand, and the descent of humanity into fearful immorality on the other, seems to be particularly strong evidence.”
The book of Acts also remembers Paul using similar arguments when evangelising pagans, most notably in Acts 14 and Acts 17. Again, we must emphasise that this would have been a natural strategy for Paul to pursue, for Keener once more notes that “Jewish people often pointed to pagan philosophical teaching on the supreme God, which Jews felt contradicted the pagan worship of idols.” So, when Paul is confronted by Anatolian farmers in Acts 14 who wish to sacrifice to him, he uses a standard Jewish argument for the irrationality of idolatry: everyone should be rational enough to recognise that only one God rules nature, and that this God alone should be worshipped.
Similarly, when defending himself before the philosophers in the Areopagus in Acts 17, Paul uses the model of Jewish apologists. James Dunn’s Beginning in Jerusalem explains that Paul’s argument in Athens is “wholly consistent and continuous with Jewish self-understanding and apologetic”. Keener concurs that, “defenders of Judaism had worked for centuries to make their faith philosophically respectable and here, as in his letters, Paul draws heavily on his predecessor’s arguments.” For example, Paul quotes a poem which appears in Jewish anthologies of proof texts useful for showing pagans the truth about God. So if Paul reasons in this way with unbelief, we should follow his example and do likewise.
Now, we must be clear that Glen does not want the church to ignore all intellectual objections nor is he recommending a flight from truth into an internal realm of subjectivity. But, as much as we despise subjectivism, if we are not prepared to talk about evidence this is what the world might assume we are preaching – or worse. The world may believe that we are preaching authoritarianism – that the Bible is true because our preachers say so! With this in mind, we conclude with a warning from Douglas Groothius:
Some refuse to give Christianity the time of day because they deem it anti-intellectual—a religion that values ignorance and credulity far above critical intelligence. In a book on how to leave one’s religion behind, Lauren Winnell writes of a young man named Sandy who was in her “religious recovery support group,” who lost his faith in college through an encounter with an anti-intellectual pastor. The young man was experiencing doubts as a result of what he was exposed to in college. Instead of addressing these questions head-on, the pastor kept changing the subject. One day, when pressed by the young man, the pastor replied, “Sandy, it’s about time we call this what it is—sin.” The young man left the church and Christianity, being unwilling to follow “a religion that made thinking a sin.”