exploring-mars-hill-march-april-1998

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EFORMATION VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2

Exploring Mars Hill: Common Ground in Apologetics

Exploring Mars Hill: COMMON GROUND IN APOLOGETICS

FEATURES 5 Can We Still Believe in the Resurrection?

Michael S. Horton Everything in the Christian faith depends on this historical event. But doesn’t our age believe that things like that simply do not happen?

17 How Can Jesus Be the Only Way? Page 17

Philip G. Ryken Though Christianity offers Jesus to everyone, it is yet exclusive in maintaining that Jesus is the only way to God. How can we believe this in a pluralistic age?

24 “For the Sake of the Gospel:” Paul’s Apologetic Speeches Kim Riddlebarger Paul has one Gospel to proclaim, whether it is to Jews and God-fearing Gentiles or to pagan Gentiles. We might call his method “proclamation-defense.”

32 Reversing the Sandman Effect: Cultural Apologetics Today William Edgar Our apologetics must go deeper than purely ideational apologetics—because people are more than merely minds.

35 Where Do We Start?: A Conversation about Apologetics Page 32

DEPARTMENTS 2 3 15 23

In This Issue…

Letters Quotes In Print

W. Robert Godfrey, R. C. Sproul, and Rod Rosenbladt join MR for a lively round table discussion about different approaches to apologetics.

Cover Illustration: Matthew W. White, oil pencil on mylar

41 42 47 48

Summary of Positions Review Endnotes On My Mind

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INTHIS ISSUE…

By Michael S. Horton

Apologetics icking up where we left off in our last issue, we continue our consideration of apologetics. In that issue, we defined apologetics as the attempt to demonstrate that the Christian faith is consistent with—or at least not inconsistent with— reason. Put another way, it is the attempt to fulfill the command of 1 Peter to “be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you...”

We spent a good deal of space discussing natural theology: What has philosophy to do with theology? How much can be known about God apart from special revelation?

Since God doesn’t disclose the story of the redemptive work of Christ to us in some grand sunset, but instead in the foolishness of the preached Word, what are our natural points of contact with the created but not redeemed people to whom we are trying to give a reason?

Because the children of the Reformation—and indeed the churchmen prior to the Reformation as well—have disagreed considerably about these questions, we devoted the last issue to a definition of some important concepts related to apologetics. In addition to exploring a few general philosophical terms, we featured articles by advocates of a number of the different apologetic schools: classical apologetics, evidentialism, presuppositionalism, and reformed epistemology.

In this issue, we move beyond the debates amongst ourselves to debates with unbelievers; that is, to a look at the context in which apologetics occurs. We can legitimately move on to the actual task of apologetics—and move on together—even though we have not ironed out all of our differences. This is because these issues need not be divisive in the same ways that theological issues are divisive. These debates are not about whether we speak to non-Christians; they are about our philosophical starting points when we speak to non-Christians.

We begin with a consideration of the Resurrection, recalling Paul’s words: “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14). Providentially, some contemporary developments in philosophy and science appear to be hospitable to belief in the miraculous generally and the Resurrection particularly. Culturally, though, the exclusivity of Christianity continues to be a stumbling block. Yet, lest we think our time is more unusual than it is, Phil Ryken reminds us that the exclusive claims of Christianity have always been made in pluralistic contexts. Kim Riddlebarger explores Paul’s apologetic approach in some of the pluralistic settings detailed in the Book of Acts.

Bill Edgar then wisely cautions us to remember that our neighbors are not just “ideas with legs.” In other words, the people we are seeking to persuade are not merely minds; rather, they are whole people who live in particular places and are influenced by particular cultural factors. Finally, Drs. Sproul, Godfrey, and Rosenbladt join us for an enjoyable conversation about the need not to let our disagreements about means keep us from recognizing the common end we have in view here: the defense of the faith. As we said last issue, it is our hope that this issue will aid you in the explanation of the hope, the Savior of the World and the King of Kings, Israel’s Messiah and Rome’s Logos.

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A publication of Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals Editor-in-Chief Dr. Michael S. Horton Assistant Editor Benjamin E. Sasse Production Editor Irene H. Hetherington Copy Editors Ann Henderson Hart Deborah Barackman Layout and Design Lori A. Cook Proofreader Alyson S. Platt Alliance Council Dr. John H. Armstrong The Rev. Alistair Begg Dr. James M. Boice Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Dr. John D. Hannah Dr. Michael S. Horton Mrs. Rosemary Jensen Dr. J. A. O. Preus Dr. R. C. Sproul Dr. Gene E. Veith, Jr. Contributing Scholars Dr. D. A. Carson Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson Dr. D. G. Hart Dr. Carl F. H. Henry Dr. Arthur A. Just Dr. Robert Kolb Dr. Tremper Longman III The Rev. Donald Matzat Dr. John W. Montgomery Mr. John Muether Dr. Richard A. Muller Mr. Kenneth A. Myers Dr. Tom J. Nettles Dr. Roger Nicole Dr. Leonard R. Payton Dr. Lawrence R. Rast Dr. Kim Riddlebarger Mr. Rick Ritchie Dr. Rod Rosenbladt Dr. David P. Scaer Ms. Rachel S. Stahle Dr. David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 1998 All rights reserved.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: ALLIANCE OF CONFESSING EVANGELICALS 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 • ModernRef@aol.com

Subscription information: US 1 YR $22 2 YR $40 Canada 1 YR $25 2 YR $45 Europe 1 YR $34 2 YR $62

LETTERS In addition to editing Books and Culture, I have been the book review editor of Christianity Today beginning with the August 1994 issue. Thus I read John Muether’s “Review of Christianity Today’s Book Reviews” in the September/October 1997 issue of MR with special interest—and growing astonishment, for the magazine Muether describes, while similar in some respects to the magazine I have worked on, is also noticeably different.

I was at first baffled by this discrepancy. One possible solution was suggested by a book I recently read, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes— and Its Implications, by David Deutsch (Oxford University Press, 1997). Perhaps Muether dwells in a parallel universe—let’s call it Muetherland—closely resembling the one I know but also different in crucial respects. So, for example, in Muetherland, “Professors Olson and Grenz have become the chief theological reviewers for CT in this decade.” In the CT I know, Stan Grenz has not reviewed a book since 1993, while Roger Olson is only one of several respected reviewers whom we have called on frequently on matters theological (see, for example, Donald Bloesch’s contributions over the last several years).

In Muetherland, it is accurate to speak of “the disappearance of theology from [CT’s] review section,” and to add that “Academic theology is a hard sell in an age of Max Lucado and Chuck Swindoll”—with the clear implication that CT has devoted far more review attention to Lucado and Swindoll and their ilk than to academic theology. In the CT review section over which I preside, theology has never disappeared, as a cursory glance at the index of books reviewed will attest … . We rarely review books in the Lucado/Swindoll vein, but we devote substantial attention not only to academic theology, but also to important work in biblical studies and church history.

In Muetherland, “Nothing has been a more constant feature in Christianity Today than what Martin Marty called its ‘overworked C. S. Lewis wind-up doll.’

Scarcely has the magazine let any work of Lewisiana go unreviewed in its pages.” In the CT I know, in the fouryear period from January 1994 through December 1997, there has been only a single review devoted to Lewis. Is it necessary to add that many items of Lewisiana were published in that span?

In Muetherland, “some things have not changed in Christianity Today. There has always been a strong emphasis on missionary biographies … and primers on

evangelism.” Now I happen to have a strong personal interest in missionary biographies—my grandmother was a missionary to China, where my mother lived as a girl—and this summer we published an excellent review of two memoirs by MKs. But how many missionary biographies have we reviewed in the last four years? And which are the “primers on evangelism” that Muether has in mind? And what does he mean by “a strong emphasis”?

And so it goes. But tempting as it is to explain these anomalies by recourse to the theory of parallel universes, I’m afraid it is all too clear that Muether inhabits the same old universe in which you and I live. So consumed is he by a desire to drive home his thesis about the decline of CT that he is determined not to let mere facts stand in his way. Thus he not only misrepresents the current coverage of books in CT but also makes a hash of the history of the magazine, skipping from decade to decade with abandon, and presenting a wildly inaccurate account of the early era of CT. As a matter of fact, during the Henry era, the often superb coverage of books included many lead reviews outside the areas of biblical studies, systematic theology, and church history… .

What on earth is all this about? I have never met John Muether, but if we sat down over a cup of coffee I am sure we would discover significant areas of both agreement and disagreement about God and man and the coverage of books in CT. Why muddy the waters with this sort of rubbish?

Finally, I must say that bad as Muether’s article is, it is far from being the worst thing in your September/October issue. That honor goes to David Wells … . “To gauge how far Christianity Today has sold its soul to the world of commerce,” Wells writes, “you need only ask whether there are any convictions which now remain. Is there anything for which the editors would take a stand even if that meant losing some readers? It is not clear that there is.” Of course, the editors of CT are specific people, myself included, so David Wells is saying that Harold Myra, David Neff, Mickey Maudlin, Tim Morgan, Wendy Zoba, Richard Kauffman, Kevin D. Miller, and John Wilson have no convictions for which we would stand up even at the cost of losing readers.

— John Wilson Book Review Editor Christianity Today MARCH/APRIL 1998

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MUETHER RESPONDS I am tempted to share Mr. Wilson’s suspicions that we occupy different universes. For one, no reader of my review article would draw his “clear implication” that CT is devoted to Lucado and Swindoll. To the contrary, I cited them partially to acquit CT reviews amid antiintellectual trends in Christian publishing. Moreover, I do not despise missionary biographies; I used them as one example of how CT reviews have not changed. And if Wilson has a quibble on the reference to C. S. Lewis, he best take it up with Martin Marty, whom I quoted (that is, if Carol Stream and Hyde Park are in the same universe).

I would remind Mr. Wilson that the burden of the review was not to show specific decline on his watch. In surveying four decades, my analysis was necessarily impressionistic but neither reckless nor inaccurate.

Certainly it was not intended to suggest that CT is now incapable of good reviews. It would be particularly ungracious for me to leave one unmentioned—its favorable review of the history of the Or thodox Presbyterian Church that I co-authored (CT, Feb. 5, 1996, pp. 37-39). If Wilson and I ever sit down for that cup of coffee, I’ll be sure to thank him.

Thanks so much for your September/October 1997 issue, another fine edition of modernREFORMATION. It confirmed in my mind the reasons that I dropped my Christianity Today subscription several years ago. I was always frustrated that they would try to ride the proverbial fence on most issues.

Keep up the good work. I especially enjoyed David Wells’ editorials last year. (It would be great if you had space to include more book reviews.)

— Steve Barthelemy Turkey For the first time I was so glad my copy of modernREFORMATION came in a sealed envelope. My friends at the Post Office may have wondered just what type of smut the preacher in town was receiving. I had to lay the copy face down on my office desk for fear our secretary may think I have come out of the closet.

When I took the magazine home I placed it in a file folder so that my kids would not see and then question what their dad was reading.

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You guys really messed up with the cover. Did you all receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts? I hope you will not play the “blame game” and accept the responsibility for your mistake. Likewise I trust you will feel guilty and ashamed about the nakedness you exposed. You own me an apology.

— Pastor Chip Faulkner Fort Cobb, Oklahoma EDITORS’ RESPONSE We make many mistakes in this magazine, and the November/December guilt issue was not an exception.

However, we do not believe that the choice of cover art for the issue should be numbered among these errors.

The image showed a representative man in a posture of weakness and despair before a backdrop of a lonely and horrifying forest. The picture wonderfully illustrated shame, and helped us ask the question: “Do we any longer connect our subjective feelings of guilt with the objective reality of our guilt?”

The focus of the image is the man’s hand in the center of the space, but letting the viewer understand that the man is naked was a necessary part of the point. Yet care was taken lest any of his private anatomy be revealed. Most importantly, it was eminently clear that the photo was neither sexual nor titillating. Rather, it was illustrative of a real human question.

Let us hear from you! modernREFORMATION: Letters to the Editor 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Fax: (215) 735-5133 ModernRef@aol.com www.remembrancer.com/ace

MODERN REFORMATION

Can We Still Believe in the Resurrection?

MICHAEL S. HORTON

“On the third day he rose from the dead.”

Etched in my memory from childhood are those lines from a familiar Easter hymn in evangelical circles, “He Lives”: “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.” In spite of the warmth that such sentiment offers, it hardly fits the bill sketched out by the Apostle Peter: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet. 3:15). Many ideas can be, and often are, embraced by the heart that are simply wrong. Santa Claus and the tooth fairy may be harmless childhood myths, but when we are making claims about eternal matters, emotionally useful fantasies will not suffice. Eventually, we g row up, and if our understanding of the Christian truth-claims does not mature as well, we are likely to be blown about by the trendy gusts of whim.

In an informal survey of evangelical Christians recently, nearly everyone agreed with the statement, “It is more important for me to give my personal testimony than to explain the doctrines and claims of Christianity.”

This is remarkable, especially since not even the New Testament eye witnesses of Christ’s saving acts wrote much about their own experiences and feelings. “What Jesus Means To Me” or “How Jesus Changed My Life” are simply not the most notable headlines of these biblical accounts. “That which was from the beginning,” says John, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life”— this is the Christian’s confidence. “That life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3).

It is much easier to adopt the Enlightenment view championed by Immanuel Kant in which the phenomenal (earthly and observable) and noumenal (heavenly and unknowable) realms are utterly separated.

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Questions of reason and science are based on facts, while religious claims are a matter of “faith.” And yet, faith is defined in Scripture as requiring confidence in the events to which eye witness testimony is given. Faith is not a synonym for nonsense, nor does it belong to a non-rational, non-historical, non-intellectual realm of blind leaps and sheer acts of will. Because God became flesh, the noumenal became phenomenal! Far from separating faith from the rigorous questions that belong to reason and history, Christianity makes public claims that must stand the test of any other. In fact, the burden of proof rests on the Christian to make the case for the biblical faith, with the Resur rection as its cornerstone. That is not to say that our faith is founded on reason, for only when reason receives the light of revelation is it capable of guiding us into such marvelous truth. It is one thing to say that the Resurrection can stand up to the questions, but what about the doubts?

We will now address this matter, for everything else in the Christian faith depends on this historical event.

forged a powerful school of modern theologians who wanted to “get behind” the historical claims of the Scriptures to discover the real idea. In other words, regardless of whether it happened in real history, what did the claim, “Jesus rose from the dead,” actually create in the early Christian’s experience? While the Resurrection is not a historical event like the Battle of the Bulge, Bultmann would say, the idea or experience behind that claim is what is important: Has Jesus risen in my heart? Have I experienced the “Christ-event,” the encounter with the Spirit of Christ here and now?

It’s the present moment, the crisis event in which Christ meets me now in my experience, that counts, not whether the apostles were reporting factual history. This sentiment is common not only among liberal theologians, but also in evangelical circles when individual experience is made central: “You ask me how I know he lives?

He lives within my heart.”

But before we deal with the question of whether it is possible for biblical claims such as the Resurrection to have any meaning unless they happened as reported, it is important to ask why such “creative” readings of fairly plain reports attract so many. Of course, there is the practical consideration: One need not risk the harsh criticism often directed at such bold declarations of miraculous activity, and yet can enjoy a spiritually edifying experience that is somehow triggered by these claims. In other words, one can be an intelligent, late twentieth-century man or woman and yet give attention to the “things of the heart.” A well-balanced modern, dogmatically secular and yet romantic and sentimental, wants to experience “the magic of believing” while not really believing in particulars, at least in things that “simply do not happen.” And at last we come to the real hurdle for the modern mind: such things as a resurrection simply do not happen. They can be written off entirely because we have already judged that they are impossible.

Of course, there is no rationale for this position. A rationalist or empiricist, for instance, would (according to his or her own principles) have to be able to test the premise, “Resurrections do not happen,” in order to conclude that the Resurrection of Christ is a farce. And in the whole history of rationalism, no philosopher has

This sentiment is common not only among liberal theologians, but also in evangelical circles when individual experience is made central: “You ask me how I know he lives?

He lives within my heart.”

The Resurrection Event as a Claim to Public Truth To tackle the question of the Resurrection as a legitimate truth-claim, we must first determine the motive in asking the question. It is not difficult these days to find a theologian who will deny the Resurrection, stating that it is simply irreconcilable with the enlightened modern mind. You can even read books from major moder n theologians who make such assertions without the slightest attempt at defending the position with arguments. It is enough to say that the supernatural worldview is untenable, case closed.

Existential theologian Rudolf Bultmann appropriated the German distinction between Historie and Geschichte, the former referring to actual historical events while the latter concerns the “salvation history.”

This, of course, makes sense if one buys Kant’s division between the phenomenal (observable) and noumenal (spiritual) realms. Implicit in this distinction, of course, is the notion that there can be a form of history that is not historical! What does it mean to say that certain things that happened in the past never really happened?

Either they did or they didn’t. But Bultmann and others 6

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been able to offer a compelling argument for such a premise. Surely the empiricists would be able to contribute some aid at this point. After all, they are the folks who deal with laboratory experiments and test theories. And yet, David Hume, the empiricist who dealt most with this subject, simply concluded (assumed) that miracles do not happen. This is quite an astonishing conclusion for a man whose life was devoted to ridding philosophy of a priori (before evaluating the evidence) judgments of a case. Resting on “the universal experience of humanity,” empiricists like Hume simply concluded that resurrections were out of keeping with the normal experience of ordinary men and women. Of course, that presupposes flawed premises.

First, it assumes that David Hume is omniscient, knowing every experience or combination of experiences to have surfaced in the history of the human species. It is similar to dogmatically asserting, “There is no intelligent life except on our planet,” in spite of the fact that we do not have exhaustive knowledge of the universe. Of course, there was a time when the common man believed that the world was flat. Only a fool would have questioned such an obvious deliverance of sense experience. But other observations overthrew this assumption and now we can hardly imagine what it would be like to experience the world as flat. What accounts for this in our case? We’ve seen too many photographs of our planet from space. Universal human experience is, therefore, dependent on the conditions of one’s own time and place. What if the revelation of God in Christ, par ticularly the Resurrection, is, like those photographs, the new information that overthrows our previous assumptions, making it impossible for us not to believe in the phenomenon of a bodily resurrection? How can Hume say that these miracles simply do not happen unless he has access to the experience of every creature in all times and places? After all, there are plenty of people who would pit their experience against Hume’s, siding confidently with a belief in the miraculous. Some, to be sure, will be superstitious and credulous, but if “universal experience” is the test of truth, Hume has tremendous problems rendering as universal his own experience as a secular philosopher. His experience indeed was representative of only a handful of his likeminded colleagues.

To the second assumption, that the miraculous contradicts people’s ordinary experience, what could be more obvious? If a miracle were an ordinary phenomenon, why would one even distinguish it as a miracle at all? It is true that miracles do not ordinarily happen. However, it is one thing to say that they do not happen in normal circumstances and quite another thing to say that they cannot happen. Empirical observation is sufficient to

conclude the former, but not the latter. What experiment has yet been conducted that has proved such a sweeping claim? These are not arguments, of course, but the unsupported assertions of the modern mind.

Bultmann expresses this dogmatism against worldviews which incorporate the miraculous. He suggests that it is impossible for people who use electric appliances and listen to the radio to believe in events described in Scripture. One need not offer devastating criticisms of Christianity and its historical claims, therefore, since everyone has concluded that the existence of radios and microwave ovens somehow relates to the impossibility of believing in a resurrection from the dead. In logic, it is called a non sequitur—that is, a conclusion that does not follow from its premises.

Today, Bishop John Spong targets the Resurrection and related beliefs with similarly bizarre assertions about space travel: We would never in our day of space travel and knowledge of the vastness of the universe try to assert that the God experienced in Jesus has been reunited with the God who was presumed to dwell just beyond the sky by telling the story of the cosmic ascension… .We today do not think in natural/supernatural categories. God is not for us a human parent figure. We do not see human life as created good and then as fallen into sin. Human life is evolving, not always in a straight line, but evolving nonetheless into higher and higher levels of consciousness. We do not need the divine rescuer who battles the demonic forces of a fallen world in the name of the creator God … . That worldview has passed away… .1 So what is the essence of the gospel according to Spong?

“In the words of the popular commercial, it is a call to be all that one can be.”2 Following David Hume in his blind dogmatism against the miraculous, modern thinkers seem to think that such assertions are selfevident: “Miracles do not happen, because this is not the sort of universe where those things happen.” Rarely is such circular reasoning stated so explicitly, but this is often where even the best minds end up. Yet they cite the same flaw in their opponents as an example of unthinking fundamentalism. With Bultmann the Resurrection is reduced to pious myth, not because someone found the bones of a first-century Palestinian rabbi buried in the tomb many regard as having belonged to Jesus. Rather, the reigning view of knowledge has been that it is a straight line of progress from ignorance to enlightenment. Ages of faith are really ages of superstition, we are told, and we have long MARCH/APRIL 1998

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since learned that things once attributed to supernatural forces actually have perfectly natural explanations. Of course, much of that thinking is true. Magic and superstition have, in many important cases, given way to better explanations through advances in medicine, physics, and other disciplines. We owe a debt of gratitude to those—many of them Christians—who preferred a vaccine to attributing everything to evil spirits. We often forget that many Christian scientists pioneered modern medicine, and that their aversion to idolatry and superstition has led precisely to those advances for which secular ideology seeks to take credit.

But to say, therefore, that there can be no miraculous events at all is to say that one has knowledge of every event in world history.

Though not himself an evangelical, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger has exposed the fallacious logic of these positions. First, he says, there is a hidden double standard: The past can be relativized simply by explaining the misconceptions of the ancient worldview. “The present, however, remains strangely immune from relativization,” Berger writes. “In other words, the New Testament writers are seen as afflicted with a false consciousness rooted in their time, but the contemporary analyst takes the consciousness of his time as an unmixed intellectual blessing. The electricity-and-radio-users are placed intellectually above the Apostle Paul.”3 As Berger points out, this reasoning is useful descriptively, but is hardly an argument against the miraculous. It is helpful to know why modern people find it difficult to believe in the supernatural, but once we have a better grasp of those sociological factors, we still do not have a compelling reason not to believe in the supernatural! (It might help my doctor to learn that I have an irrational fear of needles, but that does not make such fear less irrational.) “We may agree, say, that contemporary consciousness is incapable of conceiving of either angels or demons,” says Berger. “We are still left with the question of whether, possibly, both angels and demons go on existing despite this incapacity of our contemporaries to conceive of them.”4 Thus, Berger suggests that we begin to “relativize” our own context.

In other words, perhaps the biblical worldview— violently opposed to superstition but frankly supernatural—is the sane outlook after all and we moderns are the ones who have the irrational worldview.

Given the fact that centuries of rationalist and empiricist skepticism have not been able to offer a single compelling argument against miracles in general, or the Resurrection of Christ in particular, why should we continue to give our blind allegiance to insupportable modern dogmas?

In questioning the modern worldview we will find that we are not alone. Happily, this modern dogmatism 8

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that simply asserts naturalism is itself passing into history. Even the events about which we do have some knowledge—even g reat knowledge—often hold unanswered questions.

Thomas Kuhn, in his ground-breaking study of scientific revolutions, argued that the modern notion of science as a progressive advance of knowledge is outdated.5 Instead, he says, each major scientific theory goes through various phases. As a theory is advanced that makes sense of the observations of a wide range of scientists, old paradigms are either adjusted or discarded and the new major theory creates a new paradigm. In other words, the history of science is not a gradual amassing of factual data, but a constant and somewhat chaotic series of paradigm revolutions.

While Kuhn’s interpretation is not universally accepted, it is difficult to find philosophers of science (or other philosophers) these days who embrace the outlook exhibited by Bultmann, Spong, and a great many theologians who still operate with these modern notions of knowledge based on modern science.

Postmodern philosophers of science are therefore much more open to regarding science itself as a tradition, a community of discourse, in which members of various disciplines work on their specific projects and occasionally articulate an “explanation” that seems to make the most sense of data across these sub-disciplines.

With this approach, there is no such thing as an uninterpreted “fact” or an unbiased observation.

By even suggesting, as Spong does (parroting Bultmann), that the “modern consciousness” somehow prohibits a particular religious claim, the advocate of modernity betrays that his presuppositions are not only guiding, but determining, his investigation. In fact, it is not an investigation at all, but an appeal to power: the force of the “modern consciousness” itself becomes a dogma that commands unquestioning allegiance. It is not an argument, but a presupposition. So much for the triumph over blind authoritarianism and dogmatism!

One does not have to be convinced by it, since it is expected that every rational person would accept it on authority. We simply assume, often without knowing that we are assuming, that science has a right to dictate as a supreme authority. Awed by the practical achievements of science (technology, medicine, natural sciences), we do not even realize that we are treating all statements that claim scientific authority as worthy to be believed even if there is no evidence! Moder n dogmatists have shown that it is as possible to have blind faith in science’s authority as it is to have blind faith in the church’s authority.

But in the postmodern scientific approach, the knower and the world are engaged in a conversation, not a monologue. It is not that the knower is necessarily MODERN REFORMATION

imposing his or her presuppositions on the world that is observed (the fanciful notion of rationalists, idealists, and postmodern relativists), nor that the world is simply being described objectively (the view of modern science, at least of the positivists).

But if science is not simply a description of reality in terms of “brute facts,” shorn of any interpretive framework and uprooted from any prior assumptions, what keeps this kind of thinking from degenerating into relativism?

Among other things, it is the point made by Kuhn and others that one piece of data can overthrow a paradigm. To be sure, the scientist comes to the lab each day with pet hypotheses that are themselves somehow shaped by a constellation of other beliefs, many of them unquestioned.

Nevertheless, one day somebody notices some anomaly, something that does not fit the picture.

In spite of presuppositional biases, he or she is forced to acknowledge this new datum as a contradiction of previous research, even if that research is his or her own. A new theory is often required to make sense of this major interruption, a theory that may have been rejected long ago as entirely implausible.

Often, scientists have stumbled onto a major discovery while they were actually looking for something else. Like Columbus, who discovered the Americas accidentally while he was trying for a route to India, many advances are serendipitous.

Nevertheless, that new discovery or observation—though never divorced from the beliefs and assumptions of the discoverer—has the power to overturn the scientist’s most cherished beliefs.

What does all of this mean? First, it means that science in particular and knowledge in general are no longer viewed as a straight line of progress from ignorance to enlightenment. Although we have amassed a lot more data and have at our disposal sophisticated instruments of observation that previous generations lacked, it is still possible for a theory advanced by an obscure Greek philosopher or Arab mystic to account for the data better than more recent explanations.

Second, it means that the scientist or philosopher no

longer has a “bird’s eye view” from which to look down objectively on all this data. Everyone, including the most careful physicist, pursues his or her work with presuppositions and expectations of what he or she will find. These presuppositions may blind them to important data that contradict their hypotheses, but every so often a piece of data comes along that brings down the house of cards: not only cherished hypotheses, but reigning theories. The result is a paradigm shift, a revolution in the way we understand reality.

In religion, paradigm shifts occur also. The Reformation is often referred to by historians as a “Copernican Revolution,” because the recovery of an accurate working text of the New Testament by Renaissance philologists led to a massive reevaluation of the meaning of salvation.

That revolution in the Church led to sweeping changes in every discipline and contributed significantly to the rise of moder n science itself. But the religious event I want to relate to these arguments from postmodern philosophers of science has to do with a more fundamental revolution: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the nineteenth century, a legal scholar by the name of Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853), a founder of the Harvard Law School, set out to disprove the Resurrection claim. A denizen of the “modern consciousness,” Greenleaf was certain that simple, sustained attention to the claims of the New Testament, with regard to both the internal witness of the Gospels and the external testimony of secular historians would finally put to rest the lingering Christian beliefs. He came to his task to refute the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a lawyer, he was impressed with the idea of pursuing his project along the lines of legal inquiry. After all, the Bible makes public claims and the best test of such claims is to try them in court. He would show the obvious examples of collusion of the writers that typically mark attempts at creating a powerful lie, and he would demonstrate the implausibility of the reports and their inherent contradictions.

If Jesus was not raised, how are

we to understand this man?

If in his own self-understanding his Resurrection was central to his whole identity as Messiah, is there any possibility of reconstructing a Jesus worth worshipping in the absence of such a miracle?

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As Greenleaf went deeper into his investigation, he grew increasingly uneasy. Thinking that further investigation would yield more evidence against the Resurrection, he only found it working in the opposite direction. Finally, the distinguished legal professor concluded the very antithesis of his intention: Jesus Christ did, in fact, rise from the dead. It was not the most satisfactory conclusion in view of his “modern consciousness,” but as a lawyer, he could not see how any alternative, either suggested throughout history or contemplated by himself, yielded an explanation of the evidence that came anywhere near that of the New Testament claim.

Here is an actual case of Kuhn’s paradigm shift taking place. 6 It is perhaps the case that Greenleaf would have claimed “neutrality” and “unbiased, unprejudiced investigation” for himself if, in fact, the case had yielded different results.

(That, after all, is what modern men and women have been conditioned to believe about their knowledge.)

And yet, by his own admission, Greenleaf went into this investigation with the intention of discrediting the very hypothesis that he ended up concluding was true “beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Therefore, we should have no difficulty admitting that we all have presuppositions and that no one simply “observes,” “investigates,” or “knows.” We are always looking for something and it is often the case that we will “find” just about anything we want—but not always.

And this is one of those “not always” cases. The Resurrection is among those rare stories that can overthrow our most cherished opinions. Unlike any other historical occurrence, this event is the most significant revolution or “paradigm shift” imaginable.

First, it verifies the reliability of the entire canon of Scripture. Second, it establishes Jesus Christ as the Lord of history, who has won the right to interpret its past, present, and future. Third, it establishes the certainty of salvation for believers and of judgment for unbelievers. Fourth, it establishes the supernatural character of the Church and its witness to God’s saving events as public truth. Let us look at some of the 10

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evidence for the Resurrection, both internal (i.e., biblical) and external (i.e., secular sources).

Internal Evidence for the Resurrection As Yale theologian Hans Frei insisted, the Resurrection is such a central part of the Bible’s narrative plot that the whole story rises or falls with it.

He is thus led to conclude, “To consign the resurrection to the category of myth is a typical species of modern laziness …”.7 As with the Incarnation, so too with the Resurrection: it is impossible to take anything in the Bible seriously if its central plot is dismantled. For the eye witnesses do not make claims about their own experience or ideas illustrated by these claims, but insist upon the Resurrection the way a witness gives testimony in a court of law. According to the story itself, the Resur rection happened and if it did not happen, there is nothing bigger or better behind it! Of course, the Apostle Paul made the same point far more succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15: And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead … . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men (1 Cor. 15:14-19).

Notice how much Paul hangs on this claim to a historical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it proves false, Christian preaching and faith are useless, its apostolic eyewitnesses have intentionally misled countless people on this momentous subject, and—most important—we are still in the mess in which we found ourselves before this happy delusion, still in our sins. Whether one believes its claims or not, this is Christianity and apart from the Resurrection it is something else altogether. If Christianity is embraced merely for what it provides in this life, it is not the case, says Paul, that we should shrug MODERN REFORMATION

our shoulders and say, “I’m glad it helps people.” That’s because the apostles never made its validity consist in its therapeutic value. If it fails to make good on its claims, it fails to make good on everything. There is no consolation prize, says the apostle, for those who embrace “Christianity” without a Resurrection.

The notion of resurrection in general and the Messiah’s in par ticular is not a New Testament invention. Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant,” after his atoning death, “will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted” (Is. 52:13). Throughout his earthly ministry our Lord pointed to his death, burial, and resurrection. After the Transfiguration, Jesus told his disciples, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men.

They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life” (Matt. 17:22-23). When the Jews demanded a miraculous sign, Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” As John observes, “But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:19-22). In another report in which the Pharisees demand a miraculous sign, Jesus offers only “the sign of the prophet Jonah.” He said, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40-41).

Clearly, either Jesus was remarkably self-deluded or he really believed that he was going to die and rise again.

There is no via media on this point. As C. S. Lewis argued, Jesus either is or is not who he said he is and what he claims to be. And if he is not, then he is not to be regarded as possessing any authority whatsoever, especially when it comes to questions of ultimate truth, meaning, morality, and the like! If Jesus did not fulfill the mission that he clearly understood to define his whole purpose, he is not a good moral example we should wish our children to emulate. If he was not raised, we can conclude only that he did not come to demonstrate God’s universal love, or to exhibit moral virtue and inspire us to lead lives of self-sacrifice, but to make absurd claims for himself. According to the Scriptures, Jesus did demonstrate God’s love and he did model self-sacrifice for us, but far more is claimed and therefore far more is at stake.

Jesus did not view his mission as that of bringing universal peace and understanding (Matt. 10:34), nor did he come to reassure everybody that they were acceptable to God even if they come to that God through different paths (John 8:24, 44). In fact, he said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be...” (v. 28).

Audaciously, he said that anyone who believed in him

would live forever (v. 51). If Jesus was not raised, how are we to understand this man? If in his own selfunderstanding his Resurrection was central to his whole identity as Messiah, is there any possibility of reconstructing a Jesus worth worshipping in the absence of such a miracle?

Therefore, our Lord’s own self-consciousness is the first plank in a defense of the internal witness to the Resurrection. No modern theologian could know the inner life of Jesus other than Jesus himself, so if he or she trusts the biblical record enough to accept the “enlightened moral principles” of the Sermon on the Mount or the commandment to love one’s neighbor, he or she must also accept the self-descriptions Jesus offers in the same texts.

But that begs the question, “Can we trust the Gospel accounts?” Perhaps Jesus got it right, but how do we know that the authors of the New Testament did the same? Can we be sure that the ascriptions of Deity, miracles, an atoning death and Resurrection are not later editorial additions that exaggerated the claims of Jesus himself ? To do this, first of all, not only the New Testament writers would be called into question, but the Old Testament writers as well. As we have seen, the Bible is a single story and as early as Genesis 3 it anticipates a Messiah who will defeat the curse of sin, death, tyranny, and hell. The Psalmist’s Messiah is the Son who must be embraced in order to avoid judgment (Ps. 2). Isaiah’s Servant is Yahweh himself and “though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied” (Is. 53:10-11). Ezekiel’s Shepherd-to-Come is no less than the Creator and Redeemer-God. It is not only the claims of New Testament disciples, but the expectations of Old Testament prophets that must be rejected if the Resurrection is discarded.

Second, the Gospel accounts are not late editions, as recent scholarship is beginning to concede. While the theory of the Gospels as second-generation exaggerations may have propelled the liberal movements of yesteryear (and the “Jesus Seminar” of contemporary infamy), the consensus among New Testament scholars is that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke originate no later than A.D. 85 and possibly as early as 50. Even the arguments for the later date (A.D. 85) rest entirely on the assumption that Jesus could not have predicted the fall of Jer usalem (i.e., an anti-super naturalist presupposition), which occur red in the year 70.

Matthew criticizes the powerful party of the Sadducees (they denied the resurrection of the dead), but this sect was barely known by A.D. 70 and soon passed out of existence altogether. Many scholars now believe that Matthew’s Gospel is based on Mark’s, and that would MARCH/APRIL 1998

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obviously date Mark’s Gospel well within the range of thirty years after the Resurrection itself.

A popular theory among liberals, advanced also by Bultmann, is that the Apostle Paul is the culprit for the exaggerations. It was his many attributions of Deity to the risen Christ that created what amounted to a Jesuscult that was far from the original vision of even Christ himself. And yet, recent scholarship has concluded that Paul’s letters are the earliest New Testament writings!

Since Paul was martyred under Nero and the Roman emperor died in A.D. 68, the dating of these letters cannot reflect a secondgeneration exaggeration of the actual events.

Fur ther more, Paul invites skeptics to interview some of those five hundred who saw the risen Jesus, “of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:6).

So we are left with the early dating of the New Testament documents. There simply wasn’t time to invent the sort of sophisticated Christology that we find in the New Testament, and Paul can hardly be viewed as the one who turned the “simple teacher” into a God-Man if (a) the Old Testament anticipates a God-Man, and (b) Paul’s letters are actually the earliest New Testament documents. But there remains another internal obstacle: the consistency of the reporting in the Gospels. John Spong spells out and defends the conventional account of the discrepancies:

since he himself clearly tells us that he was not an eyewitness of the earthly ministry of Christ, but that the risen Lord appeared to him on the Damascus Road?

Paul could only report as an eye witness the things he himself saw. We would actually view Paul with greater suspicion if he did attempt to give reports of events as if he were an eye witness when we know he was not present.

But doesn’t there seem to be a problem when each Gospel lists different people at the tomb? Mark has Mary Magdalene, Mary (mother of Jesus), and Salome; Luke has Mary Magdalene, Mary (mother of James), Joanna, and other women; Matthew has Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, while John has Mary Magdalene.

To be sure, there are differences among these accounts, but differences are not necessarily contradictions. So let’s take a closer look.

If this were a report concerning any other public event, we would probably conclude that every name mentioned in all the accounts together must have been present at the tomb. An incomplete report does not a false or contradictory report make. More than that, it is quite possible that there were many others besides who are not named. What we do not find here is a contradiction. In other words, Matthew does not say, as Spong unscrupulously slips into the account, that no one other than Mary was at the tomb. In fact, she runs to tell the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and it is quite plausible to imagine John reporting this incredible discovery at an earlier point, before the whole company had arrived on the scene. Spong himself refers to Mary Magdalene’s second visit to the tomb. In reporting on a public event, especially one of such significance, it is essential to take into account the dynamic flow of activity. One would hardly expect such an event to be neat and tidy. In fact, our suspicions would be raised if the reports were neat and tidy. There is nothing that Spong has here described that would be taken as contradictory by a journalist in a similar situation.

But there is more, says Spong:

How can such a rag-tag band… suddenly transform itself into a committee for the propaganda concerning false claims for which they will be martyred?

Who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week? Paul said nothing about anyone going. Mark said that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome went (Chap.

16). Luke said that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and some other women went (24:10). Matthew said Mary Magdalene and the other Mary only went (1:28). John said that Mary Magdalene alone went (20:11) … .8 It is remarkable to see how quickly one who embraces liberal assumptions employs the very methods he attributes scathingly to “fundamentalists.” Ignoring the character of event-reporting, Spong expects a rigid correspondence between the accounts. First, “Paul said nothing about anyone going [to the tomb],” Spong states.

But who would expect Paul to do anything of the kind, 12

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What did the women find at the tomb? [Mark] said that the women found a young man dressed in white garments who gave the resurrection message. Luke said it was two men clothed in dazzling apparel. Matthew said it was nothing less than an “angel of the Lord” who descended MODERN REFORMATION

in an earthquake, put the armed guard to sleep, rolled back the stone, and gave the resurrection message. John began with no messenger at all, but on Mary Magdalene’s second visit she confronted two angels, although they were speechless. Finally she confronted Jesus himself, whom she mistook for the gardener. From Jesus she received the resurrection message. Did the women see the risen Lord in the garden at dawn on the first day of the week? Mark and Luke said no. Matthew said yes. John said yes also, but he insisted that it was a little bit later. Where did the risen Christ appear to the disciples?9 Let us first reduce the discrepancies by beginning with the least difficult. As with the explanation for the different list of names of people at the tomb, one might easily suggest that “a man dressed in white garments” (Mark), “two men clothed in dazzling apparel” (Luke), “an angel of the Lord” (Matthew), and “two angels” (John), have a common explanation. If one eye witness sees one person and another eye witness sees two, what is our usual explanation? That someone is lying?

Perhaps, but that is not usually our immediate conclusion. If, for instance, an eye witness spots a gunman aiming for a human target, does that render the testimony of another eye witness invalid if he sees two gunmen? If anything, such discrepancies only serve to strengthen the event-character of such testimony. In other words, discrepancies militate against collusion. If the disciples were to have gathered together in an effort to circulate a resurrection-story that never really happened, we would expect them to give painstaking attention to the elimination of every possible difference in their reports. One would have the impression from such a project that everyone saw the same thing from precisely the same spot, but that impression is precisely what is missing from these accounts. They have the ring of typical eye witness reports of actual events.

Thus, the testimony concerning the herald of Christ’s Resur rection at the tomb is not at all contradictory. Luke and John report two men, while Mark and Matthew refer to one. If there were two, that would obviously not rule out the one to whom Mark and Matthew referred. Furthermore, if these men were angelic beings (Matthew and John), we would hardly be surprised to find them described as wearing “white garments” (Mark) or “dazzling apparel” (Luke). There are differences, but not a single example of what Spong judges a “sea of contradictions.”10 We find a host of other internal evidences, only a few of which we can mention here. First, we notice throughout the Gospels that the writers hardly paint themselves and each other with effusive majesty. Not only

do they confess their sinfulness, but report it as well. By their own admission filled with grief, ignorant of what lay ahead in spite of the Lord’s many references to these events, the disciples could not even stay awake with Jesus in prayer. When he was arrested, they fled. Peter’s pathetic denial of Christ is described in heart-breaking detail and the small band of disciples still following Jesus by the time he returns to Jerusalem for his crucifixion becomes weak, faithless, and utterly impotent in the face of it all.

The question therefore follows: How can such a rag-tag band that has been so cowardly in the face of danger suddenly transform itself into a committee for the propaganda concerning false claims for which they will be martyred? They were already despairing and in the process of grieving for their Lord, so what made them change their tune so radically? Emory University’s Luke Timothy Johnson put it this way: “A resuscitation is excellent news for the patient and family. But it is not ‘good news’ that affects everyone else. It does not begin a religion. It does not transform the lives of others across the ages. It is not what is being claimed by the first Christians.”11 That which Johnson says concerning resuscitation theories is equally valid for all other alternative explanations for the Resurrection. Whatever happened, it had to account for the fact that cowards became martyrs, Peter even insisting on being crucified upside-down because he was not worthy to die as Jesus had. Although he denied the Resurrection, liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack wrote, The firm confidence of the disciples in Jesus was rooted in the belief that He did not abide in death, but was raised by God. That Christ was risen was, in virtue of what they had experienced in Him, certain only after they had seen Him, just as sure as the fact of His death, and became the main article of their preaching about Him.12 Could the disciples have been deluded? Perhaps their grief had led to a mass hysteria and the “Resurrection” was the only way out of it all. But is it really plausible to believe that literally hundreds of eye witnesses were suffering from the same condition? And did masses of converts multiply because they experienced the same mass neurosis? Furthermore, the question is still left unanswered: Where was the body? Mass hysteria cannot move corpses from one place to another, and the body was guarded by Jewish and Roman soldiers.

External Evidence for the Resurrection We will conclude with extrabiblical support for the Resurrection. The late first-century Jewish historian Josephus recorded the following words that continue to haunt modern readers: MARCH/APRIL 1998

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Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews, and also many of the Greeks.

This man was the Christ. And when Pilate had condemned him to the cross, upon his impeachment by the principal man among us, those who had loved from the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive on the third day, the divine prophets having spoken these and thousands of other wonderful things about him. And even now, the race of Christians, so named from him, has not died out.13 Although many have sought to refute the claim that Josephus is this passage’s author, it is included in the standard Loeb edition of his works. Hardly interested in impressing the Christians, the audience for Josephus’ Antiquities was the Roman court, and Josephus is hardly sympathetic to the Christians themselves in this work.

Much more could be said about the Jewish and Roman soldiers who had fled their post. Whatever it was that scattered them that first Easter morning, it was a greater source of fear than the certain execution appointed for Roman soldiers who deserted their posts.

We could describe in great detail, from Roman military histories, the discipline of first-century Roman soldiers and the stone and the way in which it was sealed to further guard its contents. Are we really to believe that this same band of cowardly men and several women terrified the soldiers, broke the seal, removed the immense stone, and carried the region’s most carefully watched body to a remote location? And what did they gain from this? How did they benefit from such an incredible theft? They were sent to their deaths—not for stealing a body, for no one even charged them with this, but for raising a seditious conspiracy against imperial power. Surely they could have come up with a better charge and all they would have had to have produced was the body of Jesus. Instead, these early martyrs are charged with causing civil unrest. Just this sort of claim is made by the Roman historian and government official Tacitus in the year 64. Nero, he says, justly punished the Christians for the fire of Rome, although it was in fact Nero’s own doing: The one from whom this name originated, Christ, had been executed during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. For a time this pernicious superstition was suppressed, but it broke out again, not only in Judea where this evil thing began, but even in the city itself where everything atrocious and shameful from all 14

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quarters flows together and finds adherents [Rome]. To begin with, those who openly confessed were arrested, and then a vast multitude was convicted on the basis of their disclosures, not so much on the charge of arson as for their hatred of the human race. Their execution was made into a game: they were covered with the skins of wild animals and torn to pieces by dogs.

They were hung on crosses. They were burned, wrapped in flammable material and set on fire as darkness fell, to illuminate the night.14 Gaius Pliny, Governor in Asia Minor, composed the following report to Emperor Trajan: They [the Christians] … sing a hymn to Christ as to a god… . The matter seems to me worthy of consultation, especially because of the large number of those imperiled. For many of all ages, of every rank, and of both sexes are already in danger, and many more will come into danger. The contagion of this superstition has spread not only in the cities, but even to the villages and to the country districts. Yet I still feel it is possible to check it and set it right.15 Quite apart from the biblical witnesses, therefore, hostile witnesses (Jews and Romans) who had everything to gain by fashioning credible alternatives to the Resurrection claim were at a complete loss. They refer to the historical reality of Christ’s death and burial and even when they, for obvious reasons, refuse to accept the Resurrection, they fail to offer either Christ’s body or alternative explanations for the empty tomb or for the sudden tumult created by the Resurrection claim throughout the empire.

On the temple steps during the Feast of Pentecost, following Christ’s Ascension, Peter boldly proclaimed the Resurrection and among the international community of Jews and Jewish converts gathered for the Feast the new Israel’s identity was shaped. As news spread, men and women from well-educated classes as well as slaves—Jews and Gentiles—embraced a hope that they knew could seal their death, assured that by holding it to the end that very death would itself be conquered. MR

Dr. Michael Horton, a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE), is a research fellow at Yale Divinity School and co-pastor of Christ Reformed Church (CRC) in Placentia, California.

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QUOTES “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 is in you, with meekness and fear… .” — 1 Peter 3:15 All the essentials of Hinduism would, I think, remain unimpaired if you subtracted the miraculous, and the same is almost true of Mohammedanism. But you cannot do that with Christianity. It is precisely the story of a great Miracle. A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian.

— C. S. Lewis, Miracles, 68 Has the invisible ever been made visible, and if so, where? The inescapable necessity of thinking in picture language derived from the world of space and time leaves us with exactly the same question—has the invisible ever been made visible, and if so, where? And the only answer is the Christian answer—the invisible God has entered into our visible world … . Here is the only solution to the question of God, the question which underlies every thought which enters into the mind of man.

— Julius Schniewind, in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. by H. W. Bartsch, trans. by R. H. Fuller, 50 The most celebrated event in the New Testament is the resurrection of Christ.

The resurrection enjoys this place of honor because it verifies Christ’s victory over sin and death (Rom. 1:4). Certainly no event since the world began has been so fully proved by the concur rent testimonies of so many people.

Therefore, if we entertain a view of history that excludes the resurrection of Christ, we do more than repudiate Biblical history. We repudiate the very possibility of history, for other past events have less evidence in their favor.

— Edward John Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology, 90

Paul’s reasoned defense of the Resurrection (I Cor. 15, which Bultmann dismissed as an exercise in natural theology) stands as a clear example of apostolic appeals to reason and to empirical data to support a truth claim.

At Mars Hill the apostle cites the resurrection as “proof ” of Christ’s identity… . By divine example and divine command apologetics is a mandate God gives to His people. If God Himself provides evidence for what He declares to be truth it is calumnious to repudiate the value of evidence. If God commands us to do the work of apologetics it is disobedience to refuse the task.

— R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics, 20 [Karl Barth] will often and rightly say that textually the resurrection happened to, is a predicate of, Jesus, not to the disciples, and he will go on to say that there is no reason to think something nonhistorical just because it is in principle not accessible to scientific historical inquiry. In what sense, then, is the resurrection, like the crucifixion, historical? To consign the resurrection to the category of myth is a typical species of modern laziness or a typically lazy modernism.

— Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. by G. Hunsinger and W. C. Placher, 90-91 Beginning a conversation does not require suspending all our previous beliefs or agreeing to appeal only to premises that would be accepted by any “sane” person. Indeed, genuinely suspending all one’s own beliefs— trying to wipe the slate clean—seems itself a recipe for insanity.

— William C. Placher, Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation, 106

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If you can accept the miracle that God became man, then all of these difficulties are as nothing. For then it is impossible for me to say what form the record of such an event should take… . What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought—If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man.

He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. And we must content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are as it were in a hell, where we can only dream, and are as it were cut off from heaven by a roof. But if I am to be really saved— then I need cer tainty—not wisdom, dreams, speculation—and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my hear t, my soul needs, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul, with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that must be saved, not my abstract mind.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, cited in Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, Norman Malcolm, 13, 17 [Science] is not the result of neutrally assembling facts and then in Baconian fashion arriving at inductive generalizations. We all, in the practice of science, are guided by fundamental visions of life and reality.

Theoretical reason is not autonomous. Thus two people who are guided by different visions may both practice science competently but wind up with differing results which science, by itself, is incapable of adjudicating.

— Nicholas Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, ed. by Plantinga and Wolterstorff, 8

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.

— Martin Luther, Sermon of 6 Jan. 1532, on Micah 5:1, Luther’s Works, XXXVI, 61 A Christian will find empirically confirmed even the fact that Jesus Christ is the “axis” of history because the end of history has already appeared in him. He will trust that the course of history will further strengthen his conviction. And there will be a day when the empirical confirmation of the Christian knowledge of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of history will be acknowledged by all men, either joyfully or against their will. It already has validity for all men, however; the validity of the mission of the church depends on this.

— Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, trans. by G. H. Kehm, Volume 2, 74

FOUNDATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH James Montgomery Boice Any serious study of the Bible will benefit from this thorough and readable overview of Christianity’s major doctrines.

Understand God’s nature, how he reveals himself, sin and the Fall, and how Christ redeems us. Dr. Boice will lead you through the work of the Holy Spirit in justification and sanctification. And he sums up with the work of the Church and the meaning of history. Hardback, $30.00. To order call (800) 956-2644.

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MODERN REFORMATION

How Can Jesus Be the Only Way? DR. PHILIP G. RYKEN

One writer who objects to the uniqueness of Christianity is Alan Watts. Once a minister in the Anglican church, Watts has now written more than twenty books trying to combine all the religions of the world into one universal faith. Over time he has found Christianity strangely resistant to being incorporated into a global religion. In the end he has had to leave it behind. As he writes in the preface to Beyond Theology: There is not a scrap of evidence that the Christian hierarchy was ever aware of itself as one among several lines of transmission for a universal tradition. Christians … did not take

at all kindly to ideas that even begin to question the unique and supreme position of the historical Jesus … .

Christianity is a contentious faith which requires an all-ornothing commitment to Jesus as the one and only incarnation of the Son of God… . My previous discussions did not take proper account of that whole aspect of Christianity which is uncompromising, or nery, militant, rigorous, imperious and invincibly self-righteous.

They did not give sufficient weight to the church’s disagreeable insistence on the reality of a totally malignant spirit of cosmic evil, on everlasting damnation and on the absolute distinction between Creator and creature.

These thor ny and objectionable facets of Christianity cannot be shrugged off as temporary distortions or errors.1 Watts is right. Christianity is the one piece of luggage which refuses to fit into his theological trunk. It requires an all-or-nothing commitment to Jesus.

Steven Burch, pen and ink

The problem with Christians is that they insist they have the only way to salvation.

Sometimes they talk about being “bor n again.” Sometimes they tell you to “believe in Jesus.” It all boils down to the same thing: Christians think they worship the only true God. But how can Jesus be the only way?

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Authentic, biblical Christianity has always been an exclusive religion. Just to be safe, the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus added an image of Jesus Christ to the other gods he worshipped in his private chapel.2 The Romans could not understand why Christians refused to reciprocate. If the emperor could worship Christ, why couldn’t Christians worship the emperor? The Romans wished Christians would place their God beside all the other gods in the pantheon. But Christians insisted that in order to worship Christ at all they had to worship Christ alone. And they were willing to stand up for their conviction by playing Christians and lions at the Coliseum.

Jesus Christ refuses to have any colleagues. This is why Christianity has always seemed like such a scandalous religion (from the Greek skandal, meaning “that which gives offense or arouses opposition”). Insisting that Jesus is the only way is an especially unpopular stance in a culture based on freedom of choice. If you can go to the school of your choice, root for the team of your choice, watch the cable channel of your choice, and eat the yogurt of your choice, why can’t you pray to the god of your choice? Why can’t religion be like the Mall of America?

It is a fair question. If Christians are going to insist that their religion is true and that all other religions are false, they have some explaining to do.

Three Kinds of Pluralism Donald A. Carson explains the uniqueness of Christianity in a book called The Gagging of God. Carson identifies three forms of pluralism.3 The first he calls empirical pluralism, by which he means we live in a diverse society. America is a country of many languages, ethnicities, religions, and worldviews. It is more accurate to speak of American cultures than American culture.

Christianity is losing its force as the dominant religious viewpoint in America. This is because more Americans than ever before claim to be atheists or agnostics. Furthermore, immigrants bring their native religions with them. Beyond these factors, the West has a new fascination with the religions of the East. Islam is among the fastest growing religions in America.

Christianity is also losing its cultural force because more people are making up their religion as they go along. In Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah tells us about an interview with a young nurse who describes her religion as “Sheilaism”: “I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.” 4 The radical privatization of religion means that America is more religiously diverse than ever. When religious diversity is added to ethnic and linguistic diversity, the result is empirical pluralism, one of the facts of our existence.

A second kind of pluralism Carson terms cherished 18

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pluralism. Cherished pluralism goes beyond the fact of pluralism to its value. To cherish pluralism is to appreciate it, welcome it, approve of it. It says that pluralism exists, and it’s a good thing, too. “It has become a commonplace to say that we live in a pluralist society—not merely a society which is in fact plural in the variety of cultures, religions and lifestyles which it embraces, but pluralist in the sense that this plurality is celebrated as things to be approved and cherished.”5 Swami Chindanansa of the Divine Life Society would agree. He teaches that “[t]here are many effective, equally valid religions. They are to be equally reverenced, equally recognized, and equally loved and cherished—not merely tolerated.”6 One of the best examples of cherished religious pluralism comes from the mind of that great American philosopher and theologian, Marilyn Monroe. She once was asked if she believed in God. With a flirtatious grin she said, “I just believe in everything—a little bit.”7 This is the Monroe Doctrine, the view that it is good to believe a little bit of everything. It is perhaps the most popular doctrine of postmoder n times. Many Americans are eclectic in their beliefs with little concern for logical consistency. They believe in the existence of God, being nice to animals, a woman’s right to choose, their own basic goodness, the necessity of sexual gratification, and being loyal to friends. But this hodgepodge of conviction is not organized into a coherent worldview, nor can it be.

A third kind of pluralism is philosophical pluralism.

Empirical pluralism is a fact. Cherished pluralism values that fact. Philosophical pluralism demands it. It refuses to allow any single religion or worldview to claim that it alone is true. It insists that all religions and worldviews be seen as equally valid. According to Carson, philosophical pluralism holds that “any notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong. The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism. No religion has the right to pronounce itself right or true, and the others false.”8 To put it another way, your worldview is just your opinion.

In 1993 a shrine to philosophical pluralism was built on the campus of Vanderbilt University. The All Faith Chapel was dedicated by Hindus, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, the Baha’i, and the Orthodox Christian Fellowship. No religious symbolism is incorporated into the design of the chapel. However, storage cabinets are provided to accommodate the accoutrements of various worship traditions. Jewish students go to the cupboard and get out a menorah.

Muslim students pull out a prayer mat and some copies of the Quran. Christians get out a cross and some Bibles, and so forth.

MODERN REFORMATION

At the dedication of the All Faith Chapel, University Chaplain Beverly Asbury said, “This place is for all faiths. Its dedication consists of many acts and of one. There is diversity in our unity, and there is unity in our diversity as we dedicate this space and add to its light, each in the way of a distinctive tradition.”9 That is philosophical pluralism at its most self-contradictory: diversity in unity and unity in diversity.

One of the implications of philosophical pluralism is that it does not matter which religion you choose.

Truth is relative. Since all worldviews are equally valid, choose whatever is right for you. As President Eisenhower famously said, the American system of government makes no sense “unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it is.”10 The philosophy of pluralism is also portrayed in the 1975 film Man Friday, based on Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719).

In the film the man Friday represents pure religious pluralism.

“Worship any way you like,” he says, “as long as you mean it. God won’t mind.”11

as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15). Joshua’s people did not make their choice out of ignorance: they were familiar with all the religious options. Later, the prophet Elijah gave the Israelites the same choice: “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). The people of God in the Old Testament needed constant reminders of God’s uniqueness because they were surrounded by foreign gods and goddesses.

The same was true throughout the New Testament.

The global village is not a new address for Christianity. The first Christians lived in cosmopolitan cities like Antioch, Corinth, and Rome, at the crossroads of multicultural exchange. This means they were surrounded by other worldviews.

They were not Christians because they had never heard of anything else. Rather, they were converts to Christianity from other religions. When they said, “Jesus is the only way,” they knew what the other ways were: Judaism, easter n mystery religions, Roman imperial cults, and various schools of Greek philosophy.

A good example of the clash between Christianity and other worldviews comes from the book of Acts.

Acts tells that Paul visited Athens and entered into a dispute with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (Acts 17:18). Philosophers like nothing better than a good argument, so they invited Paul to a meeting of the Areopagus, the philosophical society that met on Mars Hill overlooking the city of Athens. It was the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world. As the historian who wrote the book of Acts wryly observed, “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (v. 21).

Paul had seen all the pagan altars and statues, so he began his seminar by acknowledging how religious the Greeks were: “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found

If you can go to the

school of your choice, root for the team of your choice, watch the cable channel of your choice and eat the yogurt of your choice, why can’t you pray to the god of your choice?

Christianity and Tolerance What does Christianity say about pluralism? It depends on what kind of pluralism is meant.

Christianity recognizes empirical pluralism and tolerates cherished pluralism, but rejects philosophical pluralism.

First, Christianity recognizes the fact of empirical pluralism. Christians recognize the ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity of modern culture. Pluralism is not a startling new discovery for Christianity. The diverse religions of the world do not pose a new challenge. On the contrary, Christians have always had to argue for the truth of Christianity over against other religions.

The Bible was written in a pluralistic context. All through the Old Testament the God of Israel insisted that his people turn away from idols to worship him alone. Joshua gave the children of Israel a choice: “If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But

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an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD’” (vv. 22-23a). Paul then explained Christianity to the philosophers. He did not say, “Here, let me tell you about another god to add to your pantheon.”

Instead, he insisted, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else” (vv. 24-25). Paul argued that the true and living God supersedes all other gods. He went so far as to say that to make representations of the divine being in gold or silver or stone is an act of sheer ignorance (vv. 29-30).

Throughout his defense Paul presented Christianity against the background of empirical pluralism, as Christians have had to do ever since.

In some cases Christians are willing to cherish pluralism. They certainly cherish ethnic diversity. On a recent Sunday morning Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia welcomed a number of new members into its congregation.

The new members came from the AfricanAmerican, Hispanic, and Caucasian communities of Philadelphia. They also included Chinese, Japanese, and Indians. Christians not only permit such diversity, they cherish it because God cherishes it. God is not color-blind; he is colorful.

At his throne he welcomes worshipers from every nation, tribe, people and language (Rev. 7:9).

What about religious pluralism? Although Christians do not cherish religious pluralism, they must tolerate it. Christianity insists on tolerance. By tolerance I mean allowing other people to hold and defend their own religious convictions. I do not mean that everyone has to agree with everyone else. That would not be tolerance because the word itself assumes disagreement. Tolerance does not mean I must endorse your worldview. If you are not a Christian I do not endorse it. In the context of a friendship I will even try to talk you out of it. But as a Christian I will defend your right to believe what you believe. Christianity is not a coercive religion. One of the reasons that religious tolerance is written into the United States Constitution is because Christians insisted on it. Christianity respects

human freedom and teaches that faith in God is a gift of God’s Spirit (Eph. 2:8-9).

Everyone knows that some Christians are intolerant.

The English essayist Jonathan Swift bitterly observed, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”12 There are plenty of examples of Christian intolerance from history. The Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng concludes that “blind zeal for truth in all periods and in all churches and religions has ruthlessly injured, burned, destroyed and murdered.” 13 Intolerant Christianity cannot be defended, for Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:44-45a).

One is reminded of historian

Christianity and Truth True Christianity preserves a powerful combination that is found nowhere else: tolerance and truth.

Some religions and most political philosophies claim to have the truth but are ruthlessly intolerant of those who disagree. They offer truth without tolerance.

Philosophical pluralism, on the other hand, provides a pound of tolerance without an ounce of truth. It is perfectly happy allowing people to believe whatever they want (even things that are mutually contradictory) as long as no one steps on anyone else’s worldview.

Philosophical pluralism simultaneously idolizes tolerance and negates truth.

Christians reject the demand of philosophical pluralism because they seek both tolerance and truth.

Thus, philosophical pluralism is where worldviews collide. When Christianity is treated as only one among many equally true and valid religions, Christians start to become (as Alan Watts put it) “uncompromising, ornery, militant and rigorous.” The reason Christians become so ornery is that philosophical pluralism forces them to leave four essential beliefs behind.

1. The first is the belief that the truth is one.

Christians reject philosophical pluralism because they believe in Truth.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and Jane Fonda once had an exchange which illustrates how Christians understand the unity of truth:

Edward Gibbon’s comment that in the last days of Rome “all religions were regarded by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the politicians as equally useful.”

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MODERN REFORMATION

Archbishop: “Jesus is the Son of God, you know.”

Fonda: “Maybe he is for you, but he’s not for me.”

Archbishop: “Well, either he is or he isn’t.”14 Jane Fonda evidently believes in philosophical pluralism.

What is true for you may not be true for her, and vice versa. As a Christian, the Archbishop of Canterbury insisted that truth cannot contradict itself. Either Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world, or he is not. It is either one or the other; it cannot be both.

To believe that two contradictory religions are both true is like saying “2+2=4, or 5, or 37, or whatever you like.” To believe all religions simultaneously is to become hopelessly self-contradictory. One simply cannot accept the Hindu belief that there are some 300,000 gods and accept the Muslim belief that there is only one god at the same time. Nor can one embrace either Hinduism or Islam and Buddhism because Buddhism does not believe in God at all. Or consider religious opinions about the afterlife. Shintoism says there is no afterlife, just the here and now, so make the most of it. Buddhists seek Nirvana, the complete absence of desire. On the other hand, Christianity teaches that heaven is a place where all pure desires are satisfied in the face of Jesus Christ (Rev. 22:4). Well, which is it? They cannot all be true.

Although people are allowed to hold their own opinions, they cannot make up their own truth. It cannot be done with religion any more than it can be done with mathematics. To insist that all religions are equally true is another way to say that all religions are equally false. Theologian Harold O. J. Brown has observed that pluralism “purports to respect all ideas and opinions, but in the last analysis ends by denying that any idea or any conviction has validity.” One is reminded of historian Edward Gibbon’s comment that in the last days of Rome “all religions were regarded by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the politicians as equally useful.”15 Gibbon’s remark may be an accurate generalization but it cannot be applied to Roman Christians. They, at least, maintained that Truth is one.

2. A second belief Christians refuse to abandon is that Jesus is the only Savior. The reason Christians make this claim is because Jesus himself made it. In John’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved” (John 10:9). On another occasion he said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). These statements are exclusive. Jesus claims to be the gate, the way, the truth, the life. One must go through Jesus to be saved. There is no other gate, way, truth, life or salvation. No one has access to God except through Jesus.

Yet, “For God so loved the world that he gave his

one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is Christianity at its narrowest … and its broadest. On the one hand, Christianity is the narrowest, most exclusive of religions because it insists that Jesus is the only way to God. You have to believe in him to get eternal life. On the other hand, Christianity is the most inclusive of religions because it offers Jesus to everyone. Out of his great love God sent his only Son Jesus into the world. Anyone who believes in Jesus will live forever with God. There are no racial, social or economic criteria which prevent anyone from joining God’s family. Christianity is both universal and exclusive. “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Tim. 2:5-6). Although Jesus is the only way to God, he is available to everyone.

3. Assume for a moment that the Bible is right in that Jesus is the only way to God. Why did God do it that way? Why did he decide that believing in Jesus is the only way to be saved? The way to the answer is to see that human beings have only one basic problem: sin.

Sin is no longer a popular concept. It sounds oldfashioned, out-of-date. Moral failures are treated as honest mistakes, or psychological disorders, or pathological diseases—anything but the sins they actually are. A sin is anything which violates the moral law of the universe. Any time we do what God tells us not to do, or fail to do what God commands us to do, we commit a sin. And every time we sin we are guilty and deserve divine judgment.

Christianity teaches that all the problems of the world spring not only from acts of sin, but from the sinful condition—in other words, from the human heart.

All of humanity’s economic, social, racial, military, and educational problems lie in the soul. They all come from the hatred, greed, or rebellion of the human heart.

G. K. Chesterton—an English essayist, novelist, and biographer from the early par t of the twentieth century—pointed out that sin is one doctrine which can be empirically proven from human history. Every generation confirms the wickedness of human beings.

The story of humanity is a story of technological, medical, and artistic progress, but moral failure. If anything, things are getting worse, for the twentieth century has been the bloodiest in history.

Or what about you? You can prove the reality of sin from your own heart. Have you ever taken a serious look at what is inside you? Have you done one thing today entirely for the benefit of another human being, without any thought of your advantage? Isn’t it true that your whole approach to life is essentially selfish, that you spend most of your time thinking about your own food, clothes, music, work, and entertainment?

The problem with humanity is sin. Anyone who MARCH/APRIL 1998

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takes a long, hard, honest look will discover that he or she is part of the problem. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah put it like this: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Is. 53:6). In the remote areas of Scotland, where farmers do not bother to fence their land, sheep roam wherever they please. It takes a team of sheep dogs to shepherd them back to the fold. Like so many sheep, human beings wander over the hills of immorality.

The mortal failure of the religions of the world— Christianity excepted—is that they do not take sin seriously enough. Other religions teach that people can become better on their own. Somehow, someway, they can work their own way back to God. People can observe the eight fold path which leads to nirvana, or follow the five pillars of Islam, or become one with the universe, or offer good deeds to be accepted before God. Yet Christianity insists that everyone is a sinner through and through. Paul puts it like this: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

4. Thank God there is a solution. Christianity insists it is the only solution: a perfect payment for sin. Sin has to be paid for because God is too holy to overlook it.

Something needs to be done about sin, which is what Jesus was doing on the cross.

The records show that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Roman soldiers outside Jerusalem in around A.D. 30. The Bible teaches that when Jesus was crucified he paid the penalty for sin. He offered a perfect sacrifice: his life for the lives of his people. It was a perfect sacrifice because Jesus lived a sinless life. It was infinitely perfect because Jesus is God as well as man. Because God is just, there had to be a payment for sin. Because God is love, he was willing to make the payment in the person of his own Son. To quote Isaiah in full: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:6). The sins of anyone who believes that Jesus died on the cross for him have been fully paid for.

The proof that God the Father accepted Jesus’ sacrifice as full payment for sin is that he raised Jesus from the dead. Every Sunday Christians remember that three days after Jesus died he was brought back to life.

That resurrection was and is the proof that Jesus really is the Son of God. When Jesus was raised from the dead he conquered death once and for all.

The historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is persuasive. The Bible records multiple eyewitness accounts of the resurrection. Dozens, even hundreds of people saw Jesus after he rose from the dead (cf. 1 Cor. 15:5-8). They not only saw him, they spoke with him and touched him. In this case, the eyewitness accounts are especially compelling because 22

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the first of them comes from a woman, Mary Magdalene (John 20:10-18). The last thing a first century Jew would do to perpetrate a hoax would be to depend on the testimony of a woman. Women were not even allowed to testify in a court of law. But Mary’s testimony is accepted in the Bible because she was the first person to see Jesus after he rose from the dead.

One more thing confirms that Jesus has solved humanity’s only problem. The followers of Jesus were willing to die for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead. If the resurrection was a hoax they would have recanted when they were tortured to death. But they didn’t. They were so convinced Jesus was the Son of God that they were willing to die for their beliefs. They took their faith with them to the grave. In the face of persecution and death they continued to testify that Jesus died for their sins and rose again from the dead.

If those disciples were right, they bear witness to the most important event in history. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has been raised from the dead and the deepest problem of humanity has been solved. Sin has been paid for and death has been overcome. If you believe in him your sins will be forgiven and you will live forever with God. Jesus Christ is the only way because he has solved your only problem. MR A graduate of Wheaton College, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and Oxford University, Dr. Ryken is Associate Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Center City Philadelphia.

A unique opportunity to learn to defend historic biblical faith in an increasingly secular age devoid of a solid basis for human rights

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INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF APOLOGETICS, EVANGELISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS S TRASBOURG, F RANCE JULY 7–18, 1998

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John Warwick Montgomery, Michael Horton, Craig Parton, and Rod Rosenbladt, Professors in Residence Tel: (805) 682-3020 E-mail: Parton1@Juno.com

MODERN REFORMATION

IN PRINT Miracles C. S. Lewis C.S. Lewis trains his impeccable logic on the question of miracles, setting up a philosphical framework for the proposition that supernatural events can happen in this world. Focusing his inquiry on the feasability of miracles in general, rather than on anecdotal evidence of specific miracles, Lewis builds a compelling argument for the acceptance of divine intervention.

B-LE-22 Paperback $7.00 Explaining Your Faith Alister McGrath With a little preparation, any believer can confidently answer questions about God. It is not difficult to answer when seeking hearts want to know more about your beliefs. Explaining Your Faith is a guide to friendly, relaxed apologetics.

B-MCG-4 Paperback $10.00 Know Why You Believe Paul Little Know Why You Believe will help you carefully examine the claims of your Christian faith and be more sure of yourself as you share your faith with others. Little guides readers through the answers to questions such as: How do I know there’s a God? Are miracles really possible?

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Mind on Fire From the works of Blaise Pascal Edited by Dr. James M. Houston Mind on Fire is an easy-toread translation of the classic Pensées

by Blaise Pascal. Here the remarkable seventeenth-century mathematician, physicist, and religious thinker presents his uncompromising defense of the Christian faith — a rigorous refutation of the myth that to become a Christian is to commit intellectual suicide.

Dr. James Houston has arranged Pascal’s seemingly random meditations into a logical progression of thought — the first time ever that an editor has carried out Pascal’s original intention for his Pensées. Also included are selections from Pascal’s Letters to a Provincial, Pascal’s own description of his conversion.

B-CM-5 Paperback $10.00 The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

F.F. Bruce Fact or fabrication?

Christianity is founded upon historical events. If the claims and life of Jesus are mere fabrications, Christianity collapses. Since the New Testament is the primary historical source, its reliability is a crucial issue in any discerning evaluation of Christianity.

The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? presents in readable form the results of modern research and sound historical scholarship.

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“For the Sake of the Gospel”: PAUL’S APOLOGETIC SPEECHES KIM RIDDLEBARGER

classical apologetics debate, it ought to be g reatly encouraged.

The contemporary debate over apologetic methodology, however unpleasant, can be a vital and healthy exercise for it is crucial to have a biblically based and carefully honed apologetic methodology in place before confronting the learned paganism of our age. When this is the goal of an evidentialist-presuppositionalist24

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It is perplexing, however, that the par ties to this in-house debate appear to spend little time studying the Apostle Paul’s apologetic speeches in the Book of Acts. 1 For it is here, in Luke’s record of the everextending reign of the risen and exalted Christ,2 that we are given a clear picture of how the Apostle Paul sought both to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and defend the Christian truth claim. This proclamation was not only in the synagogues of the major cities of Greece and Asia Minor (that is, before Jews and “God-fearing” Gentile proselytes), but also before magistrates and in the marketplaces of those Roman and Greek cities where little or nothing was known of the God of Israel and the inspired texts of the Old Testament.

Analyzing Paul’s various encounters with Jews and Godfearing Gentiles in cities such as Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:1352), Thessalonica and Berea (Acts 17:1-15), with superstitious pagans in Lystra (Acts 14:8-19) and sophisticated Epicurean and Stoic philosophers of the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34), with Gentile rulers such as Felix (Acts 24:10-27), and even before a member of Israel’s ruling family, Herod Agrippa (Acts 26:1-32), can teach us how the Apostle confronted divergent forms of unbelief in specific historical contexts.

MODERN REFORMATION

All Things to All Men for the Sake of the Gospel Throughout the apologetic speeches of Paul, as Luke recounts elements of them for us in Acts, it is apparent that Paul is putting into practice his own stated philosophy of ministry, expressed in some detail in his first Letter to the Corinthian Christians: Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.

To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings (1 Cor. 1:9:19-23 NIV).

It is clear from these comments that Paul had thought very carefully about his unique calling as the Apostle to the Gentiles and his role as a loyal son of Israel. To win his own Jewish brothers and sisters to Christ, Paul became as “one under the law”—though he was free in Christ. To the Gentiles who knew not Moses, the law, or Israel’s God, Paul instead became a man subject only to the law of Christ, so that those who were at one time “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” might be won to Israel’s Messiah (Eph. 2:12).

Let us be careful to note that Paul was no mere pragmatist, adopting in chameleon-like fashion, the ideology of whatever group he happened to be facing at any given moment. Paul was not concerned with demographics or “success” in the modern American sense of church planting. He was concerned with being faithful to the commission given him by Jesus Christ.

As recent Pauline scholarship has pointed out, perhaps it is best that we think of Paul neither exclusively as “systematic theologian,” nor, on the contrary, as a theological “innovator.” Instead we should view Paul as a man called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ, who in turn applied his core beliefs of an unchanging Gospel of free grace to very specific, yet very dynamic situations, which, in turn, became the occasion for a number of the Epistles of Paul which appear in our New Testament canon.3 Throughout the various apologetic speeches in Acts, we see Paul proclaim one Gospel to diverse audiences who stand poles apart from one another in

terms of both their respective intellectual backgrounds and their interpretive “world and life” view. How does the Apostle bridge this wide intellectual gap?

Christ and Him Crucified There are several things that must be pointed out about Paul’s basic theological core convictions. The first thing to consider is that Paul clearly thought in eschatological terms, seeing the course of human history as the unfolding of two successive ages—a present “evil age” (Gal. 1:4) and an “age to come” in which Jesus Christ himself rules (Eph. 1:21). This is the lens through which Paul sees much of the wickedness and unbelief of his own age.4 For Paul, this present age is characterized as the dominion of death which has befallen us under the headship of Adam (Rom. 5:12-19). It is an age of a “worldly wisdom” that does not understand the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 2:6-8). “This age” is characterized by speculative philosophy (1 Cor. 1:20), and is an age in which the arch-enemy of God, Satan, rules by default, having blinded the minds of men to the truth of the things of God (2 Cor. 4:4). To be identified with “this age” is to be tragically bound to death.

The “age to come,” on the other hand, is an age of eternal life in Christ, the second Adam (Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:50 ff.), in which mere flesh and blood are transformed by resurrection life. The age to come is an age in which the eternal has swallowed up the temporal in the eschatological victory of Jesus Christ and the consummation of all things (1 Tim. 6:19; 2 Tim. 4:18).

It is an age characterized by the wisdom of God, revealed in the person and work of his Son. Opposition to Paul’s preaching arises, then, directly from the “wisdom” of the citizens of this age, and such opposition cannot rise any higher than the innate idolatry of the human heart. What men and women learn of God through general revelation can only condemn them, leaving all without excuse before God’s righteous tribunal, since what they do know of God is sinfully suppressed in unrighteousness, having exchanged the truth of God for a lie (Rom. 1:19-25). Apart from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the citizens of “this age” suffer from ignorance of God, the futility of being unable to think God’s thoughts after him, a darkened understanding of revealed things, a profound hardness of heart, and are, therefore, according to Paul, “separated from God” (Eph. 4:17-18). Paul would grant little quarter, I think, to those sentimental American evangelicals who see the consequences of sin in purely moral categories. Sin not only makes us “bad,” it renders us incapable of coming to faith apart from prior g race and spiritual illumination. Human sinfulness renders us unwilling to believe what we know to be true about God and to trust in the saving actions MARCH/APRIL 1998

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of his Son as our only hope of heaven. And above all else, our sin places us under God’s just condemnation.

We are blind, because, fallen in Adam, we would rather gouge out our own spiritual eyes than bow our knees and confess, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” For Paul, sin has grave intellectual ramifications, which are fundamentally and essentially related to our moral depravity.

With this in mind, we now can make sense of a second major category in Paul’s theological core, “the theology of the cross.” We see this in Paul’s repeated comments about the Gospel being “the power of God” unto salvation for all who believe (Rom. 1:16, 1 Cor. 1:18). As the wisdom, not of men, but of God (1 Cor. 1:21), what appeared to be foolishness to Gentiles and a stumbling block to Jews—both citizens of “this age”— the cross actually displays the very epitome of the wisdom of the “age to come.” “We” says Paul, “preach Christ crucified to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks.” For “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Indeed, “Christ has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:23-30). This is why Paul can say to the erring Galatians—many of whom had returned to the works-righteousness principle of this “present evil age” (Gal. 2:16)—that it was the Apostle’s desire never to boast, “except in the cross of Christ” (Gal. 6:14).

Paul’s theology of the cross is central to all his thinking and is the basis for his proclamation of Christ crucified to Jew and Gentile. It also colors all of the historic encounters we find between Paul and unbelievers in the Book of Acts. While desiring to be “all things to all men,” Paul has one Gospel to proclaim, whether it be to “Jews and God-fearers” of the synagogues, the superstitious pagans of Lystra, or the learned pagans of Athens. It is Paul’s theology of the cross which turns these encounters with unbelief into what may be called a pattern of “proclamation-defense.” There is a certain sense in which we cannot understand any of these Lukan reports apart from the content of Paul’s preaching, which, in Luke’s account, is always prior to the defense.

This means that Paul’s apologetic will not be grounded in natural theology or the so-called “classical proofs” for God’s existence. Paul’s apologetic will be firmly grounded both in general revelation through that which God has created, and in the redemptive acts of God in Christ which are, therefore, necessarily grounded in ordinary history. Paul was no devotee of Karl Barth’s artificially imposed categories of historische and Geschichte.

Since redemptive history involves the saving acts of God in time and space, redemptive history is necessarily objective history, a point made clear by the late Princeton theologian Geerhardus Vos.5

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Paul in the Synagogue Throughout the first and second missionary journeys of Acts, Paul begins his efforts in each new city by finding the local synagogue, and then immediately making it the base of his operations.6 As Luke puts it in Acts 17:2, Paul went to the synagogue in Thessalonica, “as was his custom,” and for three successive weeks he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.”

By taking a closer look at this, we can learn a great deal about Paul’s approach to proclamation-defense with those with whom he found common ground in the pages of the Old Testament. Unlike the pagan Gentiles, who did not have and did not know the Old Testament, here, when dealing with Jews and “God-fearing” Gentiles who knew and believed the Old Testament, Paul could go to the synagogue, find a willing audience and then “reason” with them directly from the Scriptures. Paul did this by “explaining” and “proving” that it was necessary for Jesus to suffer unto death and to rise again from the dead, that Jesus was the Messiah promised to Israel throughout the Old Testament.7 In the original language here, we are given a bit more of a clue as to how Paul did this, when Luke tells us that Paul set the Old Testament teaching regarding the Messiah, “side by side” with the account of the historical events of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

Thus, Paul clearly used what we would call the apologetic arguments from fulfilled prophecy and miracle to demonstrate the truth of the Christian faith.

Paul and Barnabas in Lystra Things were markedly different when Paul encountered pagan Gentiles who did not know much, if anything, of the Old Testament and the God of Israel.

We have two accounts of such incidents, the first being that of Paul and Barnabas’ encounter with indigenous paganism recounted in Acts 14:8 ff. According to Luke, the whole incident began with an amazing miracle. “In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, ‘Stand up on your feet!’ At that, the man jumped up and began to walk” (vv. 8-10).

This should sound vaguely familiar if you know the earlier chapters of Acts. Luke is, no doubt, drawing a parallel here between the ministry of Peter and that of Paul. What Peter had done in the Jerusalem temple before watching Israel (Acts 3:1 ff.), Paul is doing here before the Gentiles. The reference to bold preaching supported by signs and wonders occurs not only here, but also in Iconium (Acts 14:1 ff.). In both cases, Paul proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ and God himself MODERN REFORMATION

confirms the content of the preaching by the miraculous signs that follow. The parallels to Peter healing the man crippled from birth and Paul doing the same here in Lystra, serves to put Paul on the same footing as Peter, and the mission to the Gentiles on the same footing with the original work in Jerusalem, especially in the accounts we find in Acts 3-4.8 Thus God confirms the truth of his Word as proclaimed by Paul when the lame man stands up at Paul’s command, jumps around and begins to walk. This serves to confirm the legitimacy of the Gentile mission, a point that will be especially germane in the debate that takes place in the next chapter (Acts 15).

The result of this is recounted by Luke.

the Lyconians. And thus, when Paul healed the lame man, it must have meant that Zeus and Hermes had returned.9 As a result, Paul finds himself face to face with superstitious pagans wanting to worship him!

When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and ear th and sea and everything in them.

In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hear ts with joy. Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them (Acts 14:14-18 NIV).

Paul’s apologetic will be firmly

When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!”

Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.

grounded both in general revelation through that which God has created, and in the redemptive acts of God in Christ which are, therefore, necessarily grounded in ordinary history.

As Luke puts it, the crowds present were so amazed at what had happened, word quickly spread throughout the city that Zeus and Hermes had come to them disguised in human form. The background to this is important.

Some fifty years earlier, a legend began circulating throughout the region of southern Galatia that Zeus and Hermes had wandered through the local hill country disguised as mere mortals seeking lodging. They supposedly stopped at nearly a thousand homes but were not able to find a place to stay and were refused wherever they went. But when a humble peasant took them in, his home was transformed into a glorious temple, and he and his wife were transformed into beautiful oak trees which still stood in the region. Those who refused to take the gods in, instead, saw their homes destroyed and were left destitute. This legend, along with the presence of a temple to Zeus just outside the city, meant that the expectation of the return of the gods to the region for a repeat performance was quite prominent in the minds of

Paul and Barnabas rush headlong into the crowds which had gathered, tearing their clothes, which was an act of pious Jews in the presence of blasphemers. Paul shouted to them, “The gods have not come down in human form,” “we too are only men, human like you!”

Once the miraculous healing gets the Lyconians’ attention, Paul begins to proclaim to them the true and living God and Luke gives us but a very brief summary of Paul’s proclamation-defense. 10 In this case, even though the Lyconians had no Old Testament, the Apostle begins by proclaiming “the good news to them,” but he also attempts to show them the untenable nature of paganism, pointing out the uselessness of idolatry and telling his hearers to turn from “these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.” In this, we see a simple form of the argument from contingency, as created things depend upon a creator. Paul is also very clear that unbelief has serious consequences, for Paul also tells his hearers that the same God who has created all things will not let these false religious practices go on.

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God has clearly demonstrated his common grace to the Lyconians in the fact that the rain falls upon their crops and thereby provides them with food and joy, and the Lyconians are, therefore, without excuse. Here, where the audience is not familiar with the Old Testament, Paul proclaims the “good news” of Christ crucified, but the proclamation is, apparently, soon followed by a direct challenge to those false notions upon which Lyconian paganism was based. The pattern here is clearly “proclamation-defense,” as the good news is proclaimed and pagan assumptions are challenged.

Paul Before the Areopagus In Acts 17:16-34, Luke recounts for us Paul’s visit to Athens during what is now known as the second missionary journey. We have no idea if Paul’s previous travels had brought him to Athens, but we can imagine what was going through his mind as he walked through the city. For though Athens was but a shadow of its former self, it nonetheless represented the high water mark of paganism and the “wisdom of the age.” According to Luke, Paul’s reaction was great distress when he saw that the city was so full of idols.

Once again, Paul finds the local synagogue and “as was his custom,” the Apostle was soon reasoning with Jews and “God-fearers” from the Old Testament, probably following the same methodology that he had used while in Thessalonica— setting the Old Testament prophetic expectation of a coming Messiah “side by side” with the historical events of the life of Christ, and in doing so “proving” that Jesus was the Christ. But while in Athens, Paul also took the opportunity to go into the “Agora” (the marketplace), and the Apostle preached Christ to those who happened to be there.

According to Luke, it was not long before Paul attracted the attention of some of the more influential locals, “a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers,” two of the major schools of philosophy then found among the intelligentsia of Athens. When Paul then proclaims the Gospel to them, the Stoics and Epicureans begin disputing with him, calling him “a babbler,” a word which is literally translated as “seed-picker,” but which came to mean a “charlatan,” or a kind of amateur dabbler. Others among the group saw Paul as a “proclaimer of foreign Gods,” “a propagandist,” for

some kind of unknown foreign religion. And so these philosophers take Paul before the Areopagus. Meeting upon the “Hill of Ares”—hence “Mars Hill” to the Romans—the Areopagus had a long and illustrious history and is often regarded as the birthplace of democracy. By the first century, the Areopagus no longer exercised political authority over the city (as in the case of the magistrates of the other Greek cities), but its authority was limited to passing judgment in matters of religion, philosophy, and ethics. Paul was brought here, not for a trial, nor likely against his will, but instead so that his strange views regarding this novel religion could be evaluated by these experts in Greek religion and philosophy. While Paul is horribly distressed by the idolatry he sees in the city, the Athenians on the other hand are apparently quite amused and intrigued by this novel teaching.

Paul’s approach is naturally similar to that which he took in Acts 14:15-17, though here in Athens, the audience is more sophisticated than were the good citizens of Lystra. These were thinkers who, while aware of all of the latest religious speculations of the day, knew very little, if anything, of the Old Testament or the God of Israel, as would the Jews and “God-fearers” in the synagogue. Standing before the professional philosophers, Paul begins his speech by again appealing to the common ground that he holds with his hearers— the religious nature of humanity. “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.” Paul does not see the religious nature as an end in itself, for he immediately moves on to point these “religious” people to the source of that religious nature and intuition, the true and living God, the Creator of all things. This is precisely the point that Calvin makes in the opening words of the Institutes:

In this, we see a simple form

of the argument from contingency, as created things depend upon a creator.

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Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the MODERN REFORMATION

endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone….

On the other hand, it is evident that man never attains to a true selfknowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.11 If one starts with humanity’s innate religious nature, we are quickly pushed to the existence of God for an explanation. On the contrary, when we start with God’s existence, only then are we able to explain the human predicament. In this case, Paul thought it best to begin by appealing to the religious nature of the Athenians, again finding common ground with his audience.

Next, Paul reminds the Athenians that their own philosophy amounts to practical atheism. For as he was passing through their city, he saw an altar dedicated “to the [or an] unknown god.” The reference to an “unknown God” is very likely a reference to an altar dedicated to a “god” whose original name had been defaced many years before, and which had been forgotten by subsequent generations. The altar may have been repaired and rededicated, “to an unknown god.”

Paul now sets before them “the God who is there”—to use Francis Schaeffer’s phrase. “The ‘god’ who is unknown to you is the very God about whom I will now tell you!”1 Consistent with the records of Paul’s previous encounters with paganism, he now sets forth the God of Israel, the only true God who has made the heavens and the earth and everything in them, without appeal to what we call the classic proofs. God’s existence is not “proven”—it is proclaimed! For Paul, there is no middle man between God and created order, typical of Greek cosmology and its stress upon a “demiurge” who placed himself between matter (evil) and pure Spirit (good). Though Paul doesn’t specifically cite the Old Testament here, the language that he uses is clearly full of Old Testament echoes. Because Paul’s God is the Creator of all, no temple made from human hands, no matter how glorious, can contain him or his glory.

As the “Lord of heaven,” the true and living God proclaimed by Paul is utterly transcendent and eternal, and, therefore, in no way subject to the whims of men.

This leads to Paul’s next point recounted in verse 25, namely, that since his God has created everything, “how could he be dependent upon his creatures?” In fact, it is the other way around. Again, Paul uses a form of the argument from contingency: All created things depend upon a creator.

But the God of Israel is not only the Creator of all things, he is also the Sustainer of all. Thus Paul now

appeals to the providence of God, that is, his fatherly superintendence of the world he has made. Here we find a clear echo from Deuteronomy 32:8: “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”

Thus to the Athenians, Paul declares, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”

But God does this not merely in an exercise of brute power; this ordering of the affairs of the nations is also part of God’s purpose to draw men and women unto himself. It is important to note that Paul does not quote the Hebrew Scriptures directly, though he constantly alludes to them. But at this point in his speech, Paul does quote directly from two Greek poets, Epimenedes and Aratus, demonstrating to his audience that even their own philosophers have offered some correct analyses of human existence, even if, apart from special revelation, they had no solutions to the human dilemma. First, Paul cites from Epimenedes, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” The point is that because God is Creator and Sustainer of all he is never far from his any of creatures. This is virtually the same point that Paul will later make in Romans 1:20: “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 men are without excuse.”

The second Greek poet that Paul cites is Aratus, “As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” Thus Paul is able to point out that some of the Athenians “had realized the folly of trying to represent the divine nature by material images, worship at material altars, or house it in material temples, and had perceived, however dimly, how near God was to those who truly sought him.”12 We are the offspring of God, not because we are part of God, a kind of “little spark off the big flame” so to speak, but we are God’s offspring because we are created in his very own image.

At this point, the Athenians were no doubt perplexed and taken aback by the force of Paul’s arguments, which as Cornelius Van Til has noted, challenged the “entire framework of non-Christian thought.”13 But Paul is not finished. Immediately he calls for repentance. “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.” Thus with the coming of Jesus Christ, the man God has appointed to judge the earth, the period of time when God overlooked such ignorance in his forbearance is now past. The Athenians must repent and turn from MARCH/APRIL 1998

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their false conception of God, and instead embrace the true knowledge of God as found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God has commanded this and there is a coming day of judgment when those who do not obey him will be punished. Paul’s point is simply that since God is Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of all men, he is also the Judge. There is coming a day when he will judge the world in righteousness—an idea quite foreign to Greek thinking.

But the climax of Paul’s apologetic speech occurs when he turns to his great apologetic argument, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The God who created, sustains, and governs all things, enters into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. This same Jesus has died for our sins under Roman justice after being rejected by his own people, and his Resurrection from the dead is “proof ” that God has dealt with human sin once for all, for the wages of sin—death, is overcome in Christ’s Resurrection. Paul, no doubt, appeals to the Areopagus on the basis of his own encounter with the risen Christ while he was on his way to Damascus. For the God who has made the world, in whom we live and move and have our being, became man, died and was buried, and rose again. This is the great apologetic fact for the Christian faith!

The idea of the resurrection of the body was difficult for Paul’s hearers to comprehend. The Greeks almost universally believed in the immorality of the soul, but the concept of the resurrection of the body (viewed as the prison house of the soul) was apparently seen merely as another foreign novelty from this “seedpicker.” A number of the members of the Areopagus sneered at Paul’s demand for repentance. And true to form, a number of those present thought that Paul’s little “chat” was very interesting and would make a great topic for yet more interesting and seemingly endless discussion. But in the sovereign grace of God, several believed, including Damaris and Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus.

Paul’s “Proclamation-Defense” in Acts First and foremost, when we analyze these apologetic speeches in Acts, it is clear that Paul seeks to be all things to all men for the sake of the Gospel, for throughout these encounters with various forms of unbelief, he repeatedly finds common ground with his audience. With those with whom he held the Old Testament in common (Jews and God-fearing Gentiles), he appeals to fulfilled prophecy by setting the Old Testament prophetic expectation side by side with the facts of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. With pagan Gentiles, on the other hand, Paul begins with general revelation, not by “proving” God’s existence, but simply by proclaiming the God of Israel 30

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in language which echoes the Old Testament throughout.

We also see the Apostle challenging whatever underlying pagan assumptions were present. But given Paul’s theological core convictions about the nature of human sinfulness, it is clear that in finding “common ground,” he does not in any sense expect to find so-called “neutral” common ground, as though the Apostle could somehow place both himself and his hearers in a “neutral” frame of mind, without any influence upon the discussion by prior intellectual commitments to faith or various forms of unbelief. For the common ground that Paul does find is in every case necessarily based in God’s self-disclosure, either the “Book of Nature” or in the redemptive acts of God associated with special revelation and ordinary history. Throughout Paul’s encounters with unbelief, it is the non-Christian (Jew, God-fearer, or pagan Gentile) who is confronted with the consequences of knowing God through this selfdisclosure both in general and special revelation, but who instead inevitably suppresses that knowledge in unrighteousness. Thus Paul not only demonstrates his desire to be all things to all men by finding non-neutral common ground with his hearers, but he is repeatedly able to skillfully adjust his own “proclamation-defense” to each specific audience.

A second point that must be made when looking at these speeches is that Paul began with the proclamation of the Gospel, and once challenged, he was deftly able to give an apologetic by “reasoning” and “proving” from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, and by challenging the very presuppositions underlying pagan unbelief. As we have seen in two instances (Lystra and Athens), Paul does this by using a form of the argument from contingency—the creation does indeed depend upon a creator. Neither Greek mythology nor Stoic or Epicurean cosmologies can give a satisfactory explanation of the world in which we live. Paul does not attempt to “prove” God’s existence typical of so-called “classical apologetics”; instead he proclaims Christ crucified, and then attempts to refute his opponents, showing the futility of unbelief. Paul places no confidence in the flesh, rather he believes that the proclamation of Christ crucified is the power of God unto salvation. He does not attempt to get his audience “to make a decision for Jesus”; he simply proclaims the truth, and then attacks the unbelieving assumptions of the opposition.

Third, throughout these speeches, it is clear that the supreme apologetic argument for Paul is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. No doubt this is the case, for it was Saul, the great persecutor of the Church, who became Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. The risen Lord Jesus Christ himself confronted Paul while en route from Jerusalem to Damascus to hunt down and MODERN REFORMATION

arrest Christians. Paul refers to this life-changing event in his apologetic speeches before the good citizens of Jerusalem (Acts 22:2 ff.) and before king Agrippa (Acts 26:9-18). In Pisidian Antioch, Paul concluded his sermon before the synagogue by declaring, “God raised [Jesus] from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people” (Acts 13:30-31). Just as Peter had done in the Pentecost sermon in Acts 2, here Paul also makes appeal to the prophetic significance of our Lord’s Resurrection. “The fact that God raised him from the dead, never to decay is stated in these words… . ‘You will not yet your Holy One see decay.’” There was not only factual evidence for Christ’s Resurrection, there was theological necessity.

In the synagogue in Athens, Paul followed a similar tact, explaining that Jesus had to first suffer and then rise from the dead (Acts 17:3). And while standing before the pagan philosophers of the Areopagus, Paul ends his apologia with the words, God “has given proof of this to all men by raising [Jesus] from the dead.” In another amazing account, Paul spoke of his hope of the resurrection of the dead in the very presence of the assembled Sanhedrin, apparently to provoke an argument between his accusers, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who disagreed among themselves about the resurrection (Acts 23:6 ff.). Before Felix, Paul does much the same thing, proclaiming his hope in a resurrection, and acknowledging that it was this very hope that has brought him before Felix in the first place (Acts 24:15, 21). Even Felix’s successor, Festus, when conferring with King Agrippa, was forced to concede that Paul was incarcerated because of his proclamation “about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive” (Acts 25:19). And last, when Paul makes his defense before Agrippa, his apologetic appeal is to the hope of the resurrection. Thus Paul asks Agrippa, “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”

Paul concludes this defense by declaring, “I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen—that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles.” When Festus interrupted Paul and declared to the Apostle, “you are out of your mind,” Paul’s response is significant: “I am not insane, most excellent Festus… . What I am saying is true and reasonable. The king is familiar with these things… . I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.” “King Agrippa,” Paul asks, “do you believe the prophets? I know you do!” To which Agrippa replies, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to become a Christian?” “Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening today

may become what I am” (Act 26:21 ff.).

Thus it seems that Paul’s “proclamation-defense” is clearly anchored in the death, burial and especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not in the formal proofs of classical apologetics. Neither can we view Paul’s apologetic through the lens of any semi-Pelagian form of evangelical evidential apologetics which sees Christian evidences as merely additional inducements for one to make a “decision” for Jesus. For Paul’s apologetic is perfectly consistent with his theological core and, given human sinfulness and moral depravity typical of this present “evil age,” evidential “facts” by themselves cannot tip the scale from unbelief to faith. For Paul it is the Gospel—the wisdom of the age to come—which is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe, and his use of Christian evidences is to be seen in the context of the content of his proclamation, namely the historical events associated with the dying and rising of Christ. The same man who put no confidence in the flesh, is the man who also “reasoned,” “discoursed,” “persuaded,” and “debated” with his audiences that the content of his preaching was true, because the Lord of Glory rose again from the dead. MR Dr. Riddlebarger is co-pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Placentia, California, and a host of The White Horse Inn radio program.

THE HEIDELBERG CATECHISM One of the most ecumenical of the confessions of the Protestant Churches, the Heidelberg Catechism is a historic symbol of the catholic Christian faith, “reformed according to the Word of God.” This 400th Anniversary Edition is a translation from original German and Latin texts by Allen O. Miller and M. Eugene Osterhaven.

B-RG-4Paperback $5.00 To order call (800) 956-2644.

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Reversing the Sandman Effect: CULTURAL APOLOGETICSTODAY WILLIAM EDGAR

intelligence agent trains his successor in the spiritual warfare of undermining Christian impact. Each memo describes a successful strategy to be emulated. One of them he calls “The Sandman Effect.” According to this tactic, the junior spy must learn to fool Christians into thinking only the mind matters. This puts them to sleep because they have been lulled into thinking that everyone is a thinker and operates on reason alone, when in fact many other influences are at work. The senior agent points out to his student that a literary or philosophical movement often becomes influential not because specific arguments were carefully studied, but because of cultural factors. For example, the power of revolutionary artists and pundits on the Left Bank of Paris between the two World Wars had as much to do with the European cultural mood and the ambiance of the cafés as with the ideas themselves, which were often less than solid. Christian apologetics which is limited to tight philosophical argument is simply ineffective when the climate is forgotten. This is especially true today, when style is ubiquitous and truth is out of fashion.

A perfect example of the need for cultural awareness in apologetics is the enormously complex question of modernity and the postmodern. Thinkers such as Thomas Oden and, to a lesser extent, Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, believe a postmodern culture is more favorable for evangelism than a modern one. 2 Others, like Gene Edward Veith, are loath to find the postmodern so convivial to Christian faith.3 In order to decide, and in fact even to understand the discussion at all, one needs to look at the cultural dimension. The philosophers of the Enlightenment are often blamed for the secularization of the West. It was they who proclaimed a brave new world without God and without law. Modernity is often understood to be the child of the Enlightenment ideology, because it affirmed the 32

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Corey Wilkinson, scratchboard

In his regrettably overlooked book, The Gravedigger File, Os Guinness por trays the subversion of the North American church using a literary method similar to C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.1 In a series of memos a senior

ability of human beings, unaided, to reason their way to a free society. But a deeper look will show that many social, psychological, and cultural factors were also at work in the rise of the modern world. The development of the bureaucratic state, a market economy, science and technology, travel, literacy: all these (and more) cultural factors are a dynamic in the rise of the modern world view. Modernity is a mode of civilization, not just a set of ideas. Postmodernists challenge that mode, believing modernity to be obsolete. After Auschwitz, according to Jean-François Lyotard, moder nity is simply “liquidated.”4 This is not only a philosophical remark.

It is an emotionally packed revolt against what he calls MODERN REFORMATION

the grand récit (the meta-narrative).

What is at stake here is to recognize the combination of ideas with events, culture, social structure, and psychological atmosphere. Neither the modern nor the postmodern modes are a matter of ideas alone. The old saying, “ideas have consequences,” is only part of the story. “Cultures have ideas” is also true. It is a matter of “reasons of the heart,” or presuppositions, which indeed have an intellectual component, but are richer and deeper than the mind alone. If one limits the horizon to ideas, it might be easy enough to conclude that we are in a postmodern era, and that the Gospel has fallen on hard times, because no one cares much about truth anymore. But if one takes the cultural dimension into account then it would not appear so clear that modernity has left us.

Despite the pressure from literary theory and from some pockets of popular culture to the contrary, we are still rooted in moder nity, with its tr ust in science, technology, bureaucracy, the market, and so on. In fact, it is the case that much of what the postmodern claims cannot stand unless modernity is still with us. Of course, the Gospel is not necessarily a better friend of modernity than it is of the postmodern. At the same time, the Gospel is critical of the roots of modernity, and is able to see the claims of the postmodern for what they are. When our Lord challenged Nicodemus, the rich young ruler, the Samaritan woman, and so many others, he was confirming this notion that we are not just ideas with legs. We are a dispositional complex being with a religious-moral heart.

Thus cultural apologetics actually goes deeper than purely ideational apologetics, because it begins at the level of presuppositions, of basic commitments. But now, it is important to underscore what is not being said.

Three disclaimers should be made at the outset. 1) It is not that ideas do not matter. Of course they do. But ideas come in a context, and Christians frequently ignore the social and psychological setting for people’s convictions to their peril. The backg round for Guinness’ insight is the work of scholars like Peter Berger, the sociologist of religion, and Owen Chadwick, the social historian. Berger points out that ideas make sense not only because of their intellectual validity but also because of the structures of plausibility in which they occur. What he refers to by this ter m are the institutions and social or cultural entities that reinforce (or undercut) a given notion. In a world of rapid transportation and instant communication it is more difficult to believe in one way of doing things than in a stable, premodern world. In a world affected by the rule of the market it is more difficult to believe in values that have no price tag than in more traditional societies.

Chadwick points out that the reason Europeans

embraced Marx and Darwin in the nineteenth century is as much their resentment against a church that did not provide for their needs (as they perceived it), as the polemics, which were difficult to follow at best.5 2) It should also be pointed out that respecting the context for ideas in no way minimizes the verbal in favor of the nonverbal. Sociologist Jacques Ellul warns against The Humiliation of the Word, in a society that is ruled by images rather than ideas. 6 Though at times he exaggerates the contrast, he correctly alerts us to the tendency in an image-laden culture to make hasty judgments, to reduce thought to information, and to feed on things that stimulate rather than things that edify.

There is a world of difference between recognizing the cultural context of an idea and reducing the idea to context. In Marxian sociology of knowledge, social institutions actually determine doctrines, rather than any other factor. This is not only against common sense but against the biblical teaching on revelation, which though supported by events and images, is primarily the Word of God, to be received thoughtfully.

3) Doing cultural apologetics is not a matter of fun with culture! We are not advocating more theater, more novels, or using stories, though these are all wonderful.

We are advocating learning to judge currents and trends that will inform and enrich our ability to persuade a lost generation. Where do we begin? There are so many different approaches to culture, so many trends and counter-trends in culture studies, sorting out the good from the bad is indeed problematic. After all, the present interest in academic circles in culture studies began with Marxism and the Annales School, both of which aimed at “total history,” which sought to include economics, geography, social structures, but with no overarching or transcendent reference point for deciphering the meaning of events. “Cultural and moral mediations,” as understood by E. P. Thompson, for example, is little more than classical Marxism with a cultural edge.7 Radical thinkers such as Michel Foucault, fascinating though their work can be, tend to reduce culture to technologies of power, located in various types of discourse.8 More recently, the inclusion of anthropological and linguistic data in culture studies by Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, Northop Frye, and others has opened up many new vistas of enquiry, yet each new emphasis often comes with an overall interpretive frame that must give Christians pause.

Cultural apologetics, then, is simply apologetics that recognizes the key factors in the context which contribute to the way people think and behave. Francis Schaeffer did some of his most effective evangelism in art galleries. Seeing the picture is a most persuasive background for discussions of meaning and truth. We willingly confess that culture is God-given, and that even MARCH/APRIL 1998

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in a fallen world culture is a crucial factor to reckon with. So then, what is culture? Culture is a complex reality. It includes intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic developments (the work of the poets, the philosophers, the theologians). It also includes a way of life (holidays, sports, literacy, etc.). And it certainly includes what we often mean by culture proper, the creative arts, or “signifying practices.”9 One important adjunct to these definitions is the notion of popular culture. Here we have a wider application of the above principles, to a larger social group, and includes low-brow tastes and practices. Many researchers are giving their attention to this neglected branch of culture studies. Many tools are at our disposal if we wish to engage in cultural apologetics. Often they have been developed by able but unbelieving scientists. While we benefit a great deal from the cultural turn in recent scholarship, we hold many of the results with a light hand, knowing from whence they come.

Christian apologists have not been altogether somnolent when it comes to recognizing the cultural dimension. A number of sociologists, working with an apologetic intent, have made good use of cultural awareness in helping us understand trends such as secularization, the postmodern condition, pluralism, cybernetics, and so on. Among them are Robert Wuthnow, James Hunter, Os Guinness, Brian Walsh, Richard Keyes, David Wells, and Douglas Groothuis.

Missiology, a close cousin of apologetics, has benefited a good deal from the cultural turn as well. Sherwood Lingenfelter has embraced some of the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas in his approach to transforming culture. Westminster Seminary professor Harvie Conn has shown a high degree of sensitivity to contextual issues in his approach to missions in general, and urban missions in particular. Many theologians are wide awake to the globalization of modern life, and the consequent necessity of developing a theology of other religions, a clear idea of church/state relations, and a sensitivity to the virtues of non-Western expressions of Christian faith.10 Cultural apologetics is more than books and learning. It is also a matter of form. I have been greatly impressed with several contemporary approaches.

Examples can be grouped into three types, though there are many more. 1) Magazines, radio programs, video presentations that aim to engage leaders and trends in our society with the Gospel. Regeneration Quarterly, for example, focuses on so-called Generation-X, and has thoughtful pieces on work habits, modern literature, worship styles, etc. Books and Culture, a subsidiary of Christianity Today, uses a format similar to The New York Review of Books, and reviews a wide variety of recent publications, many of which have a cultural character.

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Ken Myers is the host of Mars Hill Audio, a series of taped interviews and commentary on persons, books, events, and art objects from the surrounding culture. Similar to the National Public Radio format, Myers engages an impressive number of present-day gatekeepers in conversations about everything from advertising to popular music, and always presents implications for faith.

2) Reaching modern universities is a particularly important strategy for cultural apologetics. A number of groups place professors in key positions to teach from a Christian point of view. The International Institute for Christian Studies (IICS) places teachers, most of whom hold the Ph.D., in universities around the world, especially in some of the newly freed countries. Their goal is to reestablish the Christian point of view in universities from Prague to Beijing to Moscow to Nairobi.11 The Veritas Forum has a unique format for outreach to contemporary universities. The group conducts large-scale conferences jointly sponsored by various Christian groups on campus, where Christians are brought in to speak on different disciplines. The Veritas Forum began at Harvard but now has been held at scores of colleges around the country.12 3) Finally, there is a significant place for study centers and informal institutes.

The American Studies Program, a branch of the Coalition for Christian Outreach, brings students to the Washington area for training in putting the Christian worldview to work in politics, literature, etc. The Trinity Forum, hosted by Os Guinness, is an “academy without walls,” which brings in leaders for intensive discussions of curricula specially conceived to help them see their work as a calling. In an Aspen-like format, texts from great literature and profound thinkers are examined in depth and guests are challenged to look at the big picture.

In the end, cultural apologetics aspires to follow the injunction from Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” And to do that, we’ll have to be like the Men of Issachar, “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron. 12:32). This is no time to be lulled by the Sandman. MR Dr. Edgar, professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, is the author of the recently released Reasons of the Heart (Grand Rapids: Baker/Hourglass).

MODERN REFORMATION

Where Do We Start?: A CONVERSATION ABOUT APOLOGETICS WITH W.ROBERT GODFREY,R.C.SPROUL,AND ROD ROSENBLADT MR: Our objective in this conversation is to consider apologetics, which is essentially a defense of the faith as a courtroom attorney would present it. Scripture exhorts us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have to those who ask. Traditionally there have been three basic positions within mainstream evangelicalism— especially in this century—with respect to how we should reach out to non-Christians. Those three positions are represented in this conversation by Dr. Robert Godfrey, President of Westminster Seminary in California, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, Professor at Concordia University in Irvine, California, and Dr. R. C. Sproul, Chairman of Ligonier Ministries. Dr. Godfrey, as our token presuppositionalist, would you open our discussion by outlining presuppositionalism for us?

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

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

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

MR: What do you mean by “epistemological”?

RCS: I mean that, in ter ms of the necessary assumptions for knowledge—such things as the law of

non-contradiction and the law of causality—we have much common ground. We all assume the basic reliability of sense perception; we know too that there are limitations to our objectivity because of the old subject/object problem; and we also all agree that when we are engaged in dialogue in the defense of the faith with the skeptic or the unbeliever, we are not prepared to surrender that which is precious to us and that of which we are convinced.

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

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

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

RR: Basically, the evidentialist is willing to acknowledge that there are certain heuristic presuppositions we all make, and we should acknowledge that we make them.

But, he wants to keep those as minimal as possible and as methodological as possible. The emphasis in evidentialism is to work from the facts to a conclusion, and, as [Anglican moral philosopher Bishop Joseph] Butler (1692-1752) said, it is going to be probabilistic in the way that it is done. We will tend to start with Christ as God and work backwards to God, though if you press an evidentialist and he has to use the classical proofs, he’ll do it. But we tend to argue from fulfilled prophecy and miracle—particularly the resurrection of Christ from the dead—that the soundest conclusion to make from the facts is that Jesus was Christ and God. That does not mean, of course, that a person will become a Christian, but it does mean that he can come to the conclusion, based on facts, that the claims of Christ describe states of affairs which prevailed.

MR: Dr. Godfrey, as a presuppositionalist, what is your g reat concer n about those who are not presuppositionalist in their apologetics?

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WRG: Our general orientation is that we are concerned not to grant a prereligious neutrality to the investigation of evidence. We are committed to the notion that in the apologetic process we must recognize clearly the strong religious convictions and presuppositions that anyone brings to such a discussion—whether they are Christian presuppositions, on the one hand, or non-Christian presuppositions, on the other. We are willing and eager to look at and discuss evidence, but evidence and facts can never be seen as brute facts or uninterpreted facts.

They are always interpreted in the light of certain presuppositions and religious commitments, and to fail to recognize that implies a neutrality in relation to basic religious questions that should not be granted.

MR: Drs. Sproul and Rosenbladt, what about that?

Can an unbeliever come to what are called “brute facts” and just sort of “bump into them,” or are all facts interpreted through a particular presuppositional grid?

RCS: The critique of alternate systems to the fully orbed theism we see in Christianity is part of the great strength of presuppositionalism. Additionally, because presuppositionalism stands so squarely in the reformed tradition, it has a clear commitment to the ideas that God has clearly revealed himself to every human being (as Paul teaches so manifestly in Romans 1), and that the fallen, corrupted man has a mind that has been captured and held captive by sin. We certainly agree with all of our hearts that nobody comes to this question from a perspective of neutrality.

Yet, at the same time, we believe that the arguments [for the existence of God] are objectively compelling.

This does not mean, though, that we think the evidence will convert anybody. As reformed people and as Lutherans, we don’t believe that the evidence converts people. Calvin, for example, said that one of the values of apologetics is to stop the mouths of the obstreperous. Thus, we work at it for pre-evangelistic purposes, because we don’t ask people to crucify their minds. Christ doesn’t ask you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and take a leap of faith into the dark. He calls people out of the dark and into the light—the primary light being the self-revelation of God that we all agree is there.

Additionally, though, I think the most significant value of apologetics is not just pre-evangelism, but the suppor t of the Christian from the avalanche of skepticism and criticism. The devil, the enemy, is saying, “You have to stop being rational, you have to stop being scientific, you have to stop using your mind and your senses and your analytical skills. Just take this leap of faith.” That intimidates Christians, and an intimidated Christian in many ways is a paralyzed one. So, if the enemy can quench the bold proclamation and witness of the believer, he’s made tremendous progress. Thus, one 36

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of the most important levels of apologetics is to be a support system. When we answer the critic, explaining why we believe what we believe, we are also saying to the Christian, “Hey, there is a reason for the hope that is within you, and God has given abundant proofs of the Christ that we serve, and so on.”

MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, does the evidentialist differ on this point? Does the evidentialist think that a person can be swayed into the kingdom by amassing evidence upon evidence? Is there a point at which one additional piece of evidence becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and suddenly the skeptic is born again because there was that one additional piece of evidence?

RR: No, and unfortunately, there are many times when that is the way the evidentialist position is characterized. We will always attribute conversion to the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who are Lutherans use means of grace language here. Those means might be the means the Spirit uses, but it is finally always the supernatural activity of the Spirit through the proclamation of the Gospel, period. God converts.

We will, nonetheless, hold to brute facts. Our parallel will be with science and we will seek to do a minimal amount of analysis of the motives or of the ontology of the fallen mind. Evidentialists believe that somebody can (through arguments from fulfilled prophecy in miracle and particularly to the resurrection) come to the conclusion that Jesus was in fact the promised Christ and that his promises are true because he is God. This does not mean that they will necessarily become Christians. The will is mixed in here, and if the person does become a Christian, then it was God the Holy Spirit who accomplished that.

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

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

MODERN REFORMATION

MR: Dr. Godfrey, does the presuppositionalist deny that the resurrection is a public event? Do Van Tillians say that this is only accessible through the eyes of faith as an historical event, or do Van Tillians use evidences?

Where does all of this talk about evidences fit within Van Tillian thinking?

WRG: The presuppositionalist believes that there is real history, there are real facts, and there is real objectivity, but the Van Tillian is also concerned always to remember in the conversation that the unbeliever, as Romans 1 says, suppresses the truth in unbelief and that therefore one can’t assume that this unbeliever is a perfectly neutral evaluator of these facts. Instead, he comes to evidence with a suppressing attitude towards the truth as it is in Christ. But that is not to say then that the use of evidence becomes irrelevant, because we do still need to answer his assault on the Gospel. We need to answer his honest questions about the Gospel. As such, there are many points, I think, where we would agree with much of the work done by classical or evidentialist apologetics in presenting the evidence that supports the case of Christianity. We don’t see commitment to Christianity as something irrational. There are abundant reasons to be a Christian. The problem is that those reasons are suppressed and warped by the unbeliever, and that always must be kept in mind in the apologetic process.

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

RCS: Certainly that can happen, but I think that argument is overstated. Look, for example, at the reformed tradition. We have a dispute about what is the most consistent, biblical-theological method of apologetics. Is it presuppositional? Is it the classical approach? But we all consider this an intramural debate among ourselves. If it did take up all our time and we weren’t engaged in the actual business of apologetics, that would be a scandal. But take Van Til himself. Nobody was ever more frequently engaged in apologetics than he was. And I spend a whole lot of my waking hours speaking and writing in defense of Christianity from a classical model. And then there are the evidentialists… .

You know, we have not distinguished among the

different kinds of evidentialists, which might be helpful.

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

MR: Those are Arminians.

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

We also agree that empirical evidence is “probabilistic.”

Now that is one of the things that drives the presuppositionalists crazy. They say, “Wait a minute.

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

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

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

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

What is then wrong with starting at the existence of God, instead of at some historical point?

RR: Well, I’m fascinated. I’d be glad to hear Dr. Sproul talk more about the validity of the proofs, which ones, and how. This is certainly fascinating to somebody who has a background in philosophy. But there are also some of us who have a background first in science, and if push comes to shove, especially in this century, and if one is forced to choose between rational consistency and facts, there are certain of us who will choose the facts first, and try to make the system or logical theory fit it later as best we can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it is useful to draw a distinction between this supremacy and the actual human progress of knowledge, of knowing anything. Nobody starts with the Bible because you can’t read a Bible when you’re born, and you can’t even understand it when someone is reading it to you when you’re born. I think the question we are discussing here is not one of supremacy, but rather, “How does a human being progress in knowledge?” We 38

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would argue that the first step in any apologetic has to be self-awareness or self-consciousness.

Much of this goes back to Augustine, because he said that self-awareness and God-awareness are corollaries, they’re reciprocal. He was saying that there is not a great time gap here, the instant you’re aware of yourself as a self, you are aware of yourself as a finite, dependent being. So with self-awareness comes an immediate awareness of God. I think this is the insight that the presuppositionalists more than anything else are trying to honor and to protect. As Calvin said, you can’t know who you are until you first know who God is, because a correct knowledge of who we are is dependent upon the knowledge of the One whose image we are.

But, on the other hand, Calvin says paradoxically, you can’t even know who God is until you are the one who is knowing something. So when we say that we start with self-awareness or self-consciousness, we are not saying that self-consciousness or self-awareness is an autonomous thing. It’s simply a given, an immediate apprehension of consciousness.

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

The Bible does assume the existence of God, but it comes long after God has already demonstrated himself to every human being through what we call general revelation, both empirically in the theater of nature and immediately in the human soul. God has revealed his existence both outside and inside of us. We are saying, “Look! God has revealed himself. Now here’s what makes that revelation morally compelling.” We would all agree that God’s revelation is sufficient to leave every human being without an excuse at the bar of his judgment. Again, we’re just arguing about where we star t, what’s the best strateg y, what’s the best methodology.

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

MODERN REFORMATION

RR: Well, first of all I want to acknowledge that if there is a way to approach this matter through the ontological argument, certainly it must be along the lines that Dr. Sproul just mentioned. This must be said first.

But think back in the New Testament how Jesus set himself before his hearers. Take an example like the paralytic being lowered down through the roof in Mark’s Gospel. The crowds were too thick for his friends to get him there on the cot, so they lowered him down through the roof. Jesus approaches him and his first words are, “Be of good cheer, my son. Your sins are forgiven.” In the back of the room the Pharisees argue amongst themselves and grumble saying, “Who can forgive sins, but God only?” Jesus then asks a question that is many times badly answered in sermons: “Which is easier to say, ‘your sins be forgiven’ or ‘rise, take up your bed and walk’?” The answer to that question is, it is easier to say, “your sins be forgiven.” Why? Because it’s invisible. Then he follows that by saying, “In order that you may know that the Son of Man does have the authority to forgive sins, I say to you, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’”

In other words, it seems to evidentialists more congenial to the New Testament to follow that sort of pattern and to be drawn to conclusions in that kind of a way. What does that mean? Well, it draws us continually outside of ourselves, out to the evidence.

Now, again, if a person does become a Christian, it’s a “no credit thing.” That’s God’s sovereign act through the Gospel—the Spirit acting through the Gospel—but it seems to us that this is more biblically appropriate or fitting than the more philosophically sophisticated ways.

RCS: This is a perfect illustration of where the evidentialist school of thought differs from classical apologetics, in terms of the preferred starting point and procedure. I look at that same text and say, “Okay, the Pharisees are skeptics here. They need some apologetics.

‘Who does this guy think he is? Only God can forgive sins.’ Now, they’ve already been convinced of the reality of God, so the dispute here is not about God’s existence.

The dispute is about the identity of Jesus. And what does Jesus do? He performs a miracle.”

Now what some of my evidentialist brothers tend to think is that the miracles of Jesus prove the existence of God. We think, on the other hand, that the function of miracle is God’s attesting the identity of Jesus. He is authenticating Jesus as his Son, as a supreme agent of revelation. We think this because a miracle can’t even be identified as a miracle until you first establish the existence of a transcendent, supernatural God …

WRG: And the presuppositionalist would point out that although the evidence is certain and clear and compelling, most of those who saw it didn’t believe.

Therefore, as an apologetic strategy, more is needed than simply saying, “This evidence is compelling.” For presuppositionalists, we want to say at the beginning that just as God is clearly known in natural revelation so that those who reject it are without excuse, so too God is clearly known in special revelation and those who reject it are without excuse. When Moses stood at the burning bush he immediately recognized the presence of God in special revelation, and every human being where God specially reveals himself is obligated to recognize and receive that revelation. Now that doesn’t stop the conversation. It doesn’t mean that we cannot press the inconsistencies of unbelieving thought or that we cannot press the abundant evidence God has to himself. But in that whole process that wall of unbelief that we face cannot ever be forgotten.

RR: In regard to Dr. Sproul’s point about the necessity of arguing for a transcendent, supernatural God prior to a particular miracle, everybody who argues empirically must have some sort of rationale about miracles. But evidentialists don’t believe that the answer to this is to begin with the existence of God in order to explain miracle, but again to start from the bottom. Note the persistent difference in our methods between working from the top, down (in the classical model), and from the bottom, up (in evidentialism).

What the evidentialist argues is that—as in scientific observation—all events have a degree of unusualness to them, but it’s going to be analog. It’s going to be continuous. It’s going to be like a rainbow.

It isn’t going to be binary as in a logical proof. Instead, you are going to have degrees of unusualness and those who are trained in science are used to this. You are going to have something that is a true anomaly and it will catch your notice. That is sort of an analogy to miracle—a very minuscule one. Then you work from there to how can you adequately explain this. And the evidentialist says that there are going to be some events that took place in history that you are going to be hard pressed to explain without recourse to a supernatural God who really is there.

RCS: Or by just rejecting them as bad reporting and… .

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

RCS: No I wouldn’t, but …

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

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

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

MR: That’s right. They expect less of us—always trying to live down to people’s expectations. This has been a very helpful discussion. Many people have asked us questions about the differences among the various MARCH/APRIL 1998

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views. It is important for us to reiterate, just for clarification, that these issues are not divisive in the same ways that theological issues are divisive between, for instance, Reformation folk and non-Reformation folk.

This is a discussion within the Reformation fold.

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

RCS: It is so important when we have these discussions to understand what we’re agreeing about and what we’re disagreeing about. I’ve been invited to Westminster Seminary a few times to discuss these matters with the presuppositionalists, and I like to begin by asking this primary question, or this prior question: “What are we concerned about in these debates?”

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

We do share these concerns.

Now let me tell you my concern. I don’t want you guys [presuppositionalists] to give the pagan an excuse morally for rejecting God’s self-revelation by presenting an argument that they can see is circular, and therefore self-defeating. And I don’t want you to give the impression to people that Christianity is a form of gnosticism—that you can’t even have a cognitive knowledge of God apart from conversion. You can’t have a saving knowledge of God apart from conversion.

We all agree on that. But cognitive knowledge we can have apart from conversion.

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

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

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

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, thy king cometh unto thee.

He is the righteous Savior and he shall speak peace unto the heathen.

Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, and he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Come unto him all ye that labor, that are heavy laden, and he will give you rest.

Take his yoke upon you, and learn of him, for he is meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

— from Handel’s Messiah (end of part 1)

MODERN REFORMATION

A SUMMARY OF POSITIONS Classical Apologetics

Evidentialism

Presuppositionalism

Reformed Epistemology

Starting Point:

Reason, especially the classical theistic proofs: deduction

Empirical data, especially the Resurrection: induction

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

Belief in God, like other beliefs (including belief in the existence of others, the reliability of the senses, etc.), is “properly basic.”

That is, one is warranted in believing in God because the “sense of God” is common to everyone.

Main Emphasis:

Sound reason will lead to the truth

Sound investigation will lead to the truth

Acceptance of the authority of Scripture will lead to the truth

Proper function (viz., of one’s sense of God) will lead to the truth

The Chief Goal of Apologetics:

To establish the reasonableness of theism

To establish the reasonableness of Christianity

To establish the sovereignty of God over human autonomy

To expose the captivity of demands for evidence as unwitting capitulations to modernity

The Chief Philosophical Influences:

Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas: Rationalism

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

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

Anselm, Calvin, Kuyper, Bavinck, contemporary critics of “classical foundationalism” (e.g., A. Plantinga, N. Wolterstorff, W. Alston): Post-Foundationalism

Arguments Drawn From:

Philosophy

History/Science

Scripture

Philosophy

Typical Criticisms

By Rival Schools:

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

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

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

Sense of the divine is insufficient as it is neither an argument for Christianity (says the evidentialist), nor for the Scriptures (says the presuppositionalist).

Points of agreement among all four schools:

• Arguments are useful, but are not themselves salvific • There is common ground of some sort between believers and unbelievers, but not neutral ground • Sin has so darkened the mind and heart that we all, by nature, suppress the truth • There is a place for reason, evidences, and Scripture in apologetics • Only by the proclamation of Christ in the Gospel does one actually come to faith

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REVIEW

by Rick Ritchie A REVIEW OF A. N. WILSON’S PAUL: THE MIND OF THE APOSTLE: A CASE-STUDY IN READING CHRISTIANITY’S CRITICS We should begin by acknowledging that this review is not a typical review. Instead, it uses one book, A. N. Wilson’s Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (New York: Norton, 1997), as a point of entry into an entire class of atheistic literature. Treating such literature as a class, especially in an issue of MR devoted to the challenges of apologetics, is helpful because reading atheistic literature can be corrosive of faith even when a good, hard answer is at hand to counter unbelief at every point. Why? Because a skeptical stance can be picked up over time even when each skeptical argument is found wanting. I wish to question an overall direction of emphasis more than particular factual points. I question not primarily our author’s theories, but his stance. While hard apologetics are definitely necessary, there is a place for soft apologetics as well. In reviewing this book, I aim to analyze Wilson’s apparently well-educated and civilized but actually almost cultic skepticism.

Re-creating the Past To invent and write the biographies of new Jesuses is a well-known publishing ploy. This tactic has been around for so long that it was recognized as old in the 1950s. One of the most famous Jesus makeovers was done by theologian Rudolf Bultmann, the man who “demythologized the gospels.” But if a heresy is successfully defeated, or dies from lack of interest, it can easily confront the public as an exciting new teaching years later. During the past decade, a generation has risen which has never heard of the old attempts at reinventing Jesus. The early undertakings had the advantage of scholarship. The ideas promoted were speculative, but those who espoused them were very well educated scholars, knowledgeable in their field. Today, it is more common for such tries to be made by amateurs.

An author with no background can rehash an old theory with less evidence than was given the first time around and be hailed as a courageous trailblazer whose 42

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scholarship may topple the foundations of Christianity.

A new twist comes with the publication of Wilson’s book about the origins of Christianity. A. N. Wilson, who allegedly lost his faith while writing a biography of C. S. Lewis, of all things, is a learned author whose book is worth the time regardless of what the reader makes of his conclusions. Ordinarily, it is the less informed on the subject who make the great leaps, but in this case we have a man who comes to unusual conclusions in spite of great learning. In some ways, this book reveals more about the mind of an apostate than, as the title suggests, about the mind of an apostle.

The aspect of this book that makes it such an enjoyable adventure is that the persons being reinvented are, for the most part, not Jesus. When it is characters other than Jesus who are being reinvented, pious readers will find themselves far more willing to take the imaginative ride. They will not accept the conclusions, but the act of re-imagining Saint Paul seems less perverse than reimagining Jesus, even when we know we are only playing an intellectual game.

Nero’s my Hero The first character Wilson discusses is the Roman tyrant Nero. His attempts to rehabilitate Nero are bizarre, to say the least. I have little question concer ning his historical infor mation. What I question is Wilson’s stance toward his subject.

Having rejected Christianity, he seems to want not only to debunk any traditional Christian understanding of the early years, but also to invite us to speculate in an anti-Christian direction where the evidence is by his own admission thin. One good example is where he treats Nero’s claim that the Christians began the fire of Rome.

While it would be ridiculous to believe Nero’s own propaganda, and difficult to find any Christian motive for destroying the houses of thousands of poor people, it would seem equally rash to dismiss the idea that the Christians were innocently responsible… . Who knows? An accidental fire might well have started in the hutment of some early Christian MODERN REFORMATION

zealot baking bread or sizzling kebabs. The rumour passes from mouth to mouth. “It was in that Greek’s shop, the fire started—or in that Cilician’s—or that Jew’s.”1 What evidence does Wilson have for such a conjecture?

Only the word of a totalitarian dictator. If recent history is any indication of the truth-value of unsubstantiated claims by totalitarian dictators, this is bad reasoning.

I use this example to show Wilson’s stance toward his subject. Now, why is such a stance necessary? This is where the question of religion’s meaning gets sticky, for I think that Wilson learned these ways of thinking from religious environments. They are the worst elements of religion, and the sad thing is, they are often the last elements that people leave behind them when they reject a religion. These ways of thinking ought to be jettisoned and the faith retained. Wilson is throwing the baby out of the bathwater, and retaining the dirty bathwater.

The so-called “dirty bathwater” is a cultic attitude toward outsiders, where your every thought about an individual is determined by how he relates to your group or with what group he is affiliated. This “in-group” mentality is a burden which many are happy to abandon, but old habits are difficult to break. You can leave your cult only to carry the same narrow cultic attitude into your newly discovered free-thinkers’ paradise.

When I read much of early Christian literature, I know that I am reading of a world in which I would not feel comfortable as a Christian. I don’t mean that I would be afraid of the persecuting authorities. I would be afraid of most of my fellow believers. They were so strange! Yet as much as these people puzzle me, I am uncomfortable when I read Wilson painting them all as zealots. The emperor is presented as a multifaceted character who on the one hand murdered most of his family, yet on the other was a good administrator, and had loved Homer in his youth. But we are not allowed to imagine a sane Christian in the early years. What makes me uncomfortable about this is that it implies that the only authentic Christian is a crackpot Christian.

If you don’t want to be a crackpot, don’t be a Christian.

This conclusion seems a bit cultic.

It is one thing to question the objective truth claims of another faith. While it may not endear you to the group whose faith you question, it is not inherently hostile. It is another thing to speak of a kind of collective insanity endemic to a group. I know of many faiths whose belief systems I find to be psychotic (that is, disconnected from reality to the extent truly believed). Yet I do not suspect most of the individual members to be psychotic. They are members for a variety of reasons. As a Christian I think it is dangerous to their souls to remain members, but I do not see their

membership to be a sure sign of a deep personality flaw.

A couple of years ago I read a book arguing a case against Christianity. The author had just recently left a large fundamentalist church and become an atheist. This writer claimed that after becoming a freethinker himself, he could now relate only to freethinkers. (He also spoke of the benefits of modern civilization which the religious will miss. I wondered whether this meant that my pharmacist would refuse to sell me a new ointment because I was a Christian.) Over time, I have concluded that this is probably not a usual freethinker’s stance toward the religious. It is the old closed-fundamentalistfortress-stance-against-outsiders turned into a new closed-freethinker-fortress-stance-against-outsiders.

Atheism is hardly a cult, but in an ex-fundamentalist’s hands, it might well be turned into one.

I do not know if Wilson became an atheist when he left Christianity, or retained some type of generic theism. I only wish that he had been able to shed the cultic mentality when he had shed Christianity. It may not have done his soul any good, but it would have made him a more congenial writer.

I make all of these comments with an awareness that in another sense, Wilson is an even-handed writer—in fact, he has about the most even-handed bibliography of any writer I have ever read. I know of no other author who will quote from both Rudolf Bultmann and F. F. Bruce, considering them both trustworthy authorities.

My guess is that he learned of Bruce during his Christian days and saw how careful the scholarship was.

Then, when he began to doubt Christianity, Bultmann’s arguments became plausible to him. Whatever the reason, it is interesting to read an account of Christianity woven from such differing materials. I would like to see more work written with this bibliographical breadth. I hope, however, that it does not require apostasy from evangelical Christianity to bring it about.

St. Paul, Traveler and Roman Traitor Wilson’s imaginative re-creation of the life and significance of Paul is the core of the book, and worth the effort of slogging through thickets of bigotry and speculation. The following paragraph is an example of the gems which make the book worthy of reading: The fact that the Gentile world adopted Christianity is owing almost solely to one man: Paul of Tarsus. Without Paul, it is highly unlikely that Christianity would ever have broken away from Judaism. Only a moment’s reflexion tells us what a different world it would have been. The whole Jewish inheritance, which is woven inseparably into the Christian religion, MARCH/APRIL 1998

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would never have been available to the Gentile imagination. The stories which, until our generation, were told to almost every child in the Wester n world, would have been the exclusive preserve of the Jews: Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, Daniel in the Lion’s Den. The concept of moral law as a divinely-given set of precepts, spoken by the Almighty to Moses on Sinai, underpinned, at least until the eighteenth century, the ethical, political, and social fabric of Western statecraft. God himself is, for Wester n Man, the God of Israel. If metaphysicians for the first two millennia after Christ have drawn on non-Jewish traditions— above all on those of Plato and Aristotle—for talking about God, it is nonetheless to the Hebraic tradition, of a God who created the world of matter and who is involved with his creation, that Western philosophers have always returned. And this is the inheritance which Paul opened up to the Gentile world.2 While believers will disagree with Wilson’s assumption that Christianity was an ingenious invention of St. Paul and not the invention of God himself, this paragraph yet underscores St. Paul’s importance to world history.

While Christianity is not St. Paul’s invention, it remains true that without him there would probably not have been a Gentile Christendom as we know it. We can imagine God inspiring someone else to carry out the same mission, but if we simply look at world history as we know it minus St. Paul, we see glaring omissions. No conversion of Constantine, no Cr usades, no Christianization of Europe, no Protestant Reformation, no Pilgrim migration to the New World. The world becomes unimaginable. Would another religion or philosophy have swept from the Mediterranean to Wester n and Nor ther n Europe, or would Norse mythology have become the Mediterranean rage? Or would something new have been introduced in the vacuum? We will never know.

In addition to the historian’s awareness of the contingency of history, Wilson has the novelist’s concrete imagination allowing him to see alternative histories. For the sake of writing quality, I wish more historians had tried their hands at writing novels. But there are dangers. Such a background does seem to foster a taste for speculation. After all, an alternative history makes interesting reading in its own right even apart from any factual grounds.

The problems with such speculation are evident in Wilson’s work. He does not treat the facts as an historian. He uses them as ingredients for a novel. His book is not a novel, but his presentation of the world he 44

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finds in the facts is a novelist’s world. This is not the same as an historian’s world, even in those places where he has the facts right. The irony is that Wilson regards the Gospels, which we take to be histories, as theological novels. There is a saying that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I think in this case, to a novelist, every literary work appears to be a novel, and every fact appears to be a potential ingredient for a novel.

Despite the dangers, I still wish other historians had the concrete imaginative abilities of A. N. Wilson.

These gifts make for better reading, and also allow the reader to build an imaginative arena in which to examine the facts. There is a small class of analytical people who can debunk shoddy historical theories using the laws of evidence. But imagination can be used by a greater number of people to detect flimsy historical cases. The cab driver, with a streetwise common sense, and a little imagination, can think up an alter native way of explaining the given historical data that a tightly rulebound nineteenth-century German historian might miss in his wooden application of the laws of evidence.

Imagination has its own inherent dangers with which we are all familiar. There will always be those who cannot distinguish what they have imagined from what they have experienced. Yet in addition to being the refuge of the flighty mind, the imagination can also be the tool of the skeptic. It allows the debunking of an enshrined academic theory whose only support has been that nobody could imagine things otherwise.

How to Read the Literature of Unbelief Most Christians seem to fall into one of two categories. The first group shuns the writings of unbelievers. They feel that if they take up their works and read, they might lose the faith they cherish. The second group reads broadly and assumes that there is no danger. Perhaps they never change their beliefs no matter what they read. I would advocate a third approach.

The third approach is cautious engagement. This is a stance not only to books, but to movies and music as well.

I believe there is no perspective that is categorically off limits. I know, however, that there may be a limit to how much I can process in a given time. Unbelief consists not just in particular arguments, but in an overall skeptical frame of mind. As noted earlier, this frame of mind can be learned even when the arguments are found wanting. I need to beware of spending too much time exercising my mind in skeptical tracks. If I found the arguments of unbelief ultimately convincing, it would be another story.

But so long as Christianity is compelling, I must take the scriptural view of humanity seriously and realize that I am not an impartial reader. The Old Adam within me is ready and willing to remain in a skeptical frame of mind until I draw my last breath. I need to realize that my faith MODERN REFORMATION

may need some rejuvenation after reading an unbeliever, even if his arguments were all visibly faulty.

The two classes of readers I mentioned will interpret these observations in two different ways. The first group will think I am risking the loss of my salvation, and see no benefit to be gained from putting myself in jeopardy. The second group will wonder at my caution. Will truth not be best served if all positions are allowed a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas? I have answers to both groups.

To the first, I think that there is something to be gained by knowing the unbelieving mind. To be sure, we all have the Old Adam in us, so a general skepticism takes no effort to learn. But which of us really knows what the world looks like through pagan eyes? We never will know what makes their worldview plausible or attractive unless we learn to think their thoughts after them.

The apologetic task requires more than just finding flaws in the arguments of unbelief.

One of the nonChristian positions I have worked hardest to understand is Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. I developed my apologetic not by ransacking her books for er rors to throw at her followers, but by identifying deeply with the position and then arguing myself back out of it. After doing so, I could see why some Christian responses to her work were so unconvincing.

They would find real flaws in the position, but not damning flaws. They did not strike at the center of what makes the position compelling; they were not the sort of flaws that would lead a follower to abandon a position.

It is much like the non-Christian who tries to overthrow Christianity by coming up with an alleged contradiction somewhere in the Bible. I don’t know of any Christians who believe the Bible because they read it from cover to cover and could reconcile everything.

Most who could offer an account of their faith would say they believe because of the case for the Resurrection of Christ, or because the Christian worldview as a whole accounts for our moral experience. Given this, we accept the authority of Scripture because it is God’s word and

God cannot lie. This does not mean we know how to reconcile everything. But given the nature of our faith, an alleged contradiction points to a shortcoming in us, not the text. A non-Christian who cannot see how Christianity coheres for a Christian will always argue on the wrong grounds. So does a Christian who cannot see the non-Christian position from the inside.

To the second group, I say this. My belief that there is a danger involved in reading unbelief is no abstract theory; it is a conviction based upon experience. I have, for the sake of becoming a better apologist, allowed myself to identify so deeply with positions opposed to Christianity that I have found myself for weeks thinking more like an agnostic than a Christian. What has put me there is not an argument, but a process of identification. The same is true for my return to thinking like a Christian. It is usually the imaginative writings of C. S. Lewis that bring my mind back to its home.

But after my journey into the far countries, my travel knowledge serves me in good stead.

I have had it reported that after talking to an unbeliever with a group of Christians around, the unbeliever said that I was the only one of the group that could really get inside his head. I take this as a g reat compliment.

Mind you, I was defending Christianity.

What makes our defense more effective is that the unbeliever can see that we know what it is like to see things the way he sees them. This makes it more plausible that he may come to see things the way we see them.

I would recommend Wilson’s book as a primer on the skeptical mind. Some of his habits of mind (his method of finding alternative ways of imagining events) are worth adopting. Others, such as his closed mentality towards those with whom he disagrees, can be seen as unattractive traits which if we have, we might wish to drop so as not to come across as he does. But let the Christian reader take notice. Only read the work if you are willing to do the difficult work of rejuvenating your Christian habits of mind, should the work take you out of them. This is not intellectual dishonesty; it is firmness of conviction. We are Christians because

Most Christians seem to

fall into one of two categories.

The first group shuns the writings of unbelievers.

The second group reads broadly and assumes that there is no danger.

I would advocate a third approach: cautious engagement.

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46

Christianity is true. We would not wish to believe if it were not. But when we believe something, we must stick to it through those times when it does not seem true for a while. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, one cannot be a good Christian, or even a good atheist, unless one holds onto one’s convictions with some obstinacy. As an atheist and later as a Christian, Lewis found that there were days when the other position seemed to appear more true. But if he had flip-flopped every time the case looked different, he would have been neither atheist

nor Christian. He would simply have been a flake. The by-product of such a discipline is that, though we may have periods where we feel like we are going to “go under,” the long-range result is a growing conviction that the ship of faith will not capsize.

continued from page 48 enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun” and, indeed, such a person “will not much remember the days of life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart” (5:20; cf., 3:12, 22; 8:15; 9:7).

It is not that the Church has entirely forgotten her own spiritual poverty, or that she has lost sight of what actually makes someone rich in the eyes of God. The problem is that this understanding coexists with a way of looking at life which is downright secular. This may even begin in Church itself where those who (tell it not in Gath) are really sinners are actually treated as consumers and the Gospel is marketed to them as a product. But that is not all. Our habits as consumers may also lead us to think of people as products because the only importance they have is the function they fulfill in our lives. And it is odd how we can profess our belief that the real riches are spiritual and then remain inconsolable until we have the most advanced music system in our home and we become intolerant of even the slightest inconveniences or discomforts in our Church. Once, I am inclined to think, we might have asked ourselves whether we needed the latest and the best, the softest and the easiest, but today this internal debate has subsided (cf., Ec. 4:8; 5:10-11). Things that once were matters of debate are now matters of right.

The possession of those things is of far less importance than what people think those things will do for them.

Is it not odd, too, how perceived wealth or poverty, or professional standing, shapes who is viewed as important in the Church, who is or is not considered for boards and positions of leadership? The words of James 2:1-7 trip off our lips lightly enough but I am not so sure that we are as innocent today of “partiality” as we imagine: we are just unaware of how we operate with standards of importance which we learned from our affluent and secular society rather than from the Bible.

Thus does the Kingdom of the Commodity edge out the Kingdom of God. As I strolled the beach that day, I could not help but juxtapose all of this with what is taking place in so many

countries around the world. In Latin America, there are places where a majority of the population has to subsist on only five hundred calories a day, where all the water is contaminated, possessions are almost nonexistent, illiteracy abounds, danger festers, and where a life lived for thirty years is seen as having run its full course.

Indeed, in Peru over half the children die before the age of five. In Manila, I saw those who had no place to live who had built shacks on stilts on the city’s enormous dump. It is called Smoky Mountain because it fumes with the most noxious odors and oozes revolting liquids.

And I could not help but juxtapose our circumstances of ease and comfort, our uncontrolled appetites for consumption, with the thought of those Christians who daily live with nothing except persecution and oppression. I saw “the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter” (Ec. 4:1). Worse yet, it is estimated that every day over four hundred Christians worldwide are slaughtered for their faith. Every day.

I do not believe that the Northern nations should divest themselves of their capital in order to lift the more impoverished nations of the South, or that the terribly unequal distribution of goods around the world is the curse capitalism has brought. There have always been inequities and, whatever else it has done, capitalism has been an engine of abundance. But can the Church not consider the other half of the world, the wretched of the earth, if only as a means of understanding her own chronic self-indulgence? Can she not consider that there are those who literally have nothing who are nevertheless rich in God’s sight, and should she not also consider the possibility that there may be those who have everything but are spiritually impoverished? In so many of the impoverished countries of the world Christian faith is spreading like a wild fire, but today in America it seems to be only a spark.

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Rick Ritchie, a contributing author to Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), is a graduate of GordonConwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

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

MODERN REFORMATION

ENDNOTES CAN WE STILL BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION?— Michael S. Horton 1 Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), 236.

2 Ibid., 242.

3 Peter Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 46.

4 Ibid., 47.

5 Thomas Kuhn, The Structures of Scientific Revolutions, second ed. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970).

6 With specific reference to the application of Kuhn’s view of science to religion, see Michael C. Banner, The Justification of Science and the Rationality of Religious Belief (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990).

7 Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992), 91.

8 Spong, op. cit., 217-18.

9 Ibid., 218-19.

10 Ibid., 222, 217-18.

11 Quoted in Newsweek, April 8, 1996, 68.

12 Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity?, trans. by Thomas B. Saunders (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), chapter 2.

13 Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (London: Elwyn & Sons, 1936), 18.3.3.

14 Tacitus, Annals, XV.44.

15 Eberhard Arnold, The Early Christians after the Death of the Apostles (Rifton, NY: Plough Publishing House, 1970), 64-5.

HOW CAN JESUS BE THE ONLY WAY?—Philip G. Ryken 1 Alan Watts, Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship (New York: Random House, 1973).

2 Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), 255.

3 D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 13-22.

4 Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 232-33.

5 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 1.

6 Swami Chindanansa, “Authentic Religion,” paper given at the Parliament of World Religions, Chicago, 1993.

7 In James H. Smylie, “Church Growth and Decline in Historical Perspective,” American Presbyterians, 73:3 (Fall, 1995).

8 Carson, 19.

9 First Things (Nov. 1993), 54.

10 Schlossberg, op. cit., 251.

11 Philip Zaleski, “The Strange Shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe,” First Things (May 1995), 41.

12 Quoted in Erwin W. Lutzer, Christ Among Other Gods (Chicago: Moody, 1994), 80.

13 Hans Küng, “What Is the True Religion?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 56 (Sept. 1986), 4.

14 On Dick Cavett, in C. Stephen Evans, The Quest for Faith: Pointers to God (Leicester, England: InterVarsity, 1986), 125.

15 Lutzer, op. cit., 46.

“FOR THE SAKE OF THE GOSPEL”—Kim Riddlebarger Cornelius Van Til’s little booklet Paul at Athens, (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1978) is a notable exception. Two of the books by the major parties to this debate make little, if any, mention of these speeches: R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984); and John M. Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1994). It would seem to me that the apostolic pattern of proclamationapologia would be a major issue of contention. Instead the apologetic speeches are barely given mention.

2 According to John Calvin, the theme of Acts is “the beginning of the reign of Christ, and, as it were, the renewal of the world is being depicted here.”

See John Calvin, The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 17.

1

3

I am thinking of the “contingency-coherence” model set out by J. Christian Beker, in Paul the Apostle (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), especially 23-36.

4 Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1949), 20 ff.

5 Geerhardus Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, ed., Richard Gaffin (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 18-19.

6 See, for example, Acts 13:5, 14 ff.; 14:1 ff.; 17:2, 10, 17; 18:4, 19 etc.

7 For the use of these terms by Luke, see Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 468-69.

8 Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, Vol. 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) 177.

9 This is effectively summarized in Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” 435 10 See F. F. Bruce, The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 36 ff.

11 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.i.1-2.

12 F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, NICNT, Revised ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 338.

13 Van Til, Paul at Athens, 18.

“FOR THE SAKE OF THE GOSPEL”—Kim Riddlebarger Francis Schaeffer

1

REVERSING THE SANDMAN EFFECT: CULTURAL APOLOGETICS TODAY—William Edgar 1 Os Guinness, The Gravedigger File (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983).

2 Thomas C. Oden, After Modernity...What?: Agenda for Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990). J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995).

3 Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994).

4 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 18.

5 Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 48f., 161f.

6 Jacques Ellul, La parole humiliée (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 232.

7 See Ellen Kay Trimberger, “E. P. Thompson: Understanding the Process of History,” in Visions and Method in Historical Sociology, ed. Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), ad loc.

8 See Patricia O’Brien, “Michel Foucault’s History of Culture,” in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 25-46.

9 For a helpful discussion of the meaning of culture, see Raymond Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana, 1983), 87.

10 See Don A. Pitman, Ruben L. F. Habito & Terry C. Muck, eds., Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges for the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

11 Educational Services International and other Christian groups have similar goals. Individuals are sometimes called to a more itinerant style.

James Sire, former editor of InterVarsity Press, also travels all over the world, lecturing to students in major universities on subjects like postmodernism, reasons for faith, calling, etc.

12 The book Finding God at Harvard, Kelly Monroe, ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996) gives a good idea of the variety and depth of the speakers who are invited to the Veritas Forum. The Forum also has a web page [URL:http://www.veritas.org/] with helpful links to other apologetic sites.

A REVIEW OF A. N. WILSON’S PAUL: THE MIND OF THE APOSTLE—Rick Ritchie 1 A. N. Wilson, Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (New York: Norton, 1997), 4.

2 Wilson, 14.

MARCH/APRIL 1998

47

ON MY MIND

By David F. Wells

The Rich and the Wretched ver a beautiful, sunny weekend recently I was a speaker at a gathering on the Florida coast. I had left Boston in the midst of an ice storm so this brief respite was especially welcome. The weather, however, was not the only contrast. For a few days I found myself in an area known for its extraordinary affluence and its resident celebrities. As I walked along the beach and passed million dollar homes, I found myself pondering Solomon’s discussions about wealth which I had been reading recently.

Not many people have written more bleakly about life than did Solomon in Ecclesiastes. Indeed, in places he sounds more like a postmodern nihilist than the ancient he was. He was not bereft of belief but he does cut away almost everything in which we moderns find some hope and meaning. History, he says, offers no clues to the meaning of life; pleasures are fleeting and forgotten; death visits us all and wipes away our personal story; and, what I was reflecting upon that day, affluence offers no more hope for meaning than anything else.

That’s a shocker, is it not?

In one sense, the rich and famous are not different from anyone else, I thought to myself as I walked that beach. They have a house; so do I. They eat three meals a day; so do I. They get dressed each day; so do I. They go on vacations; so do I. They drive a car; so do I. The difference is simply that they pay more to have and do these things. (And, of course, they have a view.) But these surface similarities conceal the big difference: it is what affluence means in our culture. Possessions are one of the silent ways in which we moderns announce our status and importance and perhaps it has ever been thus (cf., Psalm 49). In our new secular order, though, possessions take on a saving role that Christ once had: to have is to be and to have not is to be damned. It is not the Good for which we care; it is the goods for which we crave. We have enthroned the Commodity.

Wealth and achievement thus become salvific and those on society’s affluent margins are lost.

At the time of the Revolution we did away with importance which was inherited by birth. It was not long, however, before a new aristocracy arose. It was money that now defined this “aristocracy,” not

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bloodlines. Those who have most, or who produce most, are most important. Those who have least are those who are most marginalized.

This transition from the old aristocracy to the new is not without its complexities, however. The artificial importance carried by one’s bloodline at least had the virtue of clarity. Aristocratic connections could not be faked. One either did or did not belong to the titled crowd. In the new aristocracy, matters are more slippery.

Importance, after all, can be faked, at least a little.

No one knows, for example, what level of indebtedness is being sustained by someone driving a Lexus, wearing extravagant clothes, indulging costly tastes, and taking exotic vacations. It may be that this opulent “lifestyle” is actually floating over an empty bank account. Since truth today places few constraints upon us, it is entirely possible—indeed, I believe it is very common—for people to construct a set of appearances which are quite at odds with their own personal reality. By purchase and associations we make ourselves into the people we wish others to think we are. We stage our own characters, construct our own identities. We are constantly invited to do so in the thousands of advertisements which we see year in and year out. It is by the purchase that we can become all that we want to be.

No one knows, either, when someone’s world is going to come crashing down financially, taking away with the one hand what had earlier been bestowed with the other. At a single stroke, a person can tumble from his or her perch among the rich and powerful, and land, with a dreadful sigh, among the hoi polloi. What a cruel reversal!

It is our affluent society which has made importance obtainable. But importance and standing which are simply purchased, let alone faked, are hollow. They are quite meaningless. That is our most closely guarded secret, one we will scarcely even whisper to ourselves, but when we begin to see this we are just beginning to catch up to what Solomon knew (Ec. 2:10-11). However, there is a shaft of bright light that shines through the thick clouds in Ecclesiastes. Solomon also says that, contrary to what he had been observing, it is possible, by God’s gift, to “find continued on page 46 MODERN REFORMATION