Truth Really Matters

buy prednisone 5mg online Part 1:  Attitude Matters

Does it matter what ‘philosophical approach’ you bring to personal (‘1-2-1’ or ‘121’) evangelism?  Does it matter what your attitude is?  Well, certainly!  Since the Scriptural pattern is evident, we should follow the Lord Jesus who, when he taught, provoked a peculiar response . . . “the people were astonished at his doctrine:  For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”  Admittedly, provoking astonishment may be difficult in our present age, but teaching and preaching with authority is straightforward.  As God exhorted His prophet Isaiah (58:1), “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.”

This essay is not written for anyone who is not already engaged in 121 evangelism, but rather for those who are already on the playing field, not just watching from the box seats, hot dog in hand, occasionally cheering or criticizing those who try.  The ‘how to’ of sharing the Gospel is a simple enterprise; even children can be trained.  If you are new to your Christian responsibility to follow the Lord in witnessing for Him, I refer you to the evangelism articles on this site, and especially my free e-book on the subject in the free e-bookstore.

Rather, this essay speaks to the rational foundations of a Gospel witness, the apologetics, the verbal offense and defense necessary to uproot the lost worldview of the fellow you engage.  The purpose of apologetics is to help the lost to see and to face reality, to put an end to his self-deception, to dissipate the clouds of delusion that keep him bound by self-destructive sin and from knowing his need for the Savior.

Every Christian witness is an apologist, one who must be prepared to make a reasoned defense of Biblical truth (1 Peter 3:15).  What is the role of apologetics?  Greg Bahnsen explains:  “The apologist defends what the theologian has learned, with the tools and insights refined by the philosopher, for the evangelistic purpose of seeing the unbeliever’s heart and mind changed.”  Lest the novice be dismayed by the prospect of dealing with professional theologians and the arcane world of academic philosophical discourse, I’ll point out that every believer becomes a theologian as he studies and understands his Bible, and every believer who learns common sense logic, which is simply part of daily life, becomes a philosopher, regardless of his expertise in arcane terminology.  Your philosophy includes how you see the world, how you decide whether you know something, and what principles you use to live this life and to interact with God and man.  Clearly, the Christian’s philosophy should be Biblical at every point.

Greg Bahnsen, shortly before he died, wrote the book Van Til’s Apologetic:  Readings and Analysis, published in 1998, a big volume full of excerpts from the extensive works of Cornelius Van Til (1895 – 1987), a Reformed theologian both famous and infamous for insisting that presuppositional apologetics is not only the Biblical pattern, but the only method that Christians should use in approaching the unbeliever.  In a nutshell (a large nutshell, perhaps) the presup (I insist on the liberty to abbreviate) approach is to confront the unbeliever with the Christian worldview in its entirety, to show him that the Biblical claims about God, man, the universe, redemption, ethics, and everything make perfect sense of reality and that the unbeliever’s worldview does not . . . the skeptic, whether atheist, Mormon, or Muslim, has a worldview that is not internally consistent and is unlivable.  Unlivable?  The atheist, for example, does not live as if he is only a bundle of molecules without a coherent self and without an objective morality.

I’ll pull nuggets from the book, commenting along the way, not necessarily distinguishing between Van Til’s original writings and Bahnsen’s commentary, since the two are very much in sync.  My big caveat up front is that while I am very much in tune with Van Til on apologetics, he loses his mind when his Calvinism seeps through.  And Van Til is a completely committed Calvinist, wholly subscribed to Unconditional Election (The ‘U’ in TULIP) and a strong version of Calvinist ‘sovereignty,’ which supposes that every event in history is pre-ordained by God’s sovereign plan.  Of course if God is sovereign in that manner, then what’s the point of apologetics?  A good argument will have no more effect than a bad one; in fact the bad argument must have been part of the plan and the fact that I’m criticizing Reformed theology right now must be fore-ordained, too!  But everyone seems to have an unsavory dish or two on his smorgasbord, so we’ll just enjoy the prime cuts of steak that Van Til and Bahnsen grill up for us.

Bahnsen asks where in Paul’s speech on Mars Hill (Acts 17) does he transition from theology to apologetics to evangelism . . . are there lines of demarcation?  Of course there are no clean distinctions.  Paul presupposed the truth of God’s word in everything he said and applied such truth toward the converting of souls.  And so apologetics is not separate from evangelism or theology.  “Apologetics works to develop a method of gospel presentation that is consistent with the full teaching  of Scripture and anticipates the personal needs of the unbeliever.”  We need to understand God’s truth and apply it in a way to help the lost face his disconnect with reality . . . that he is a sinner headed for Hell and needs the Savior.  The more the apologist / evangelist understands about the unbeliever’s worldview, the more helpful he can be.

Just yesterday I gave a packet of tracts to a fellow in his 30s.  My wife and I were putting these packets on doorknobs in a neighborhood in our city and I caught the guy just as he was finishing up a plumbing job and loading equipment into his van.  He is a Lutheran and promptly interacted as if he and I are both Christians, but simply members of different churches.  I asked him where he would be when he died.  He was confident of Heaven based on his pattern of “doing the right thing.”  Using the law (murder, adultery, lying , etc., including sins of the heart and mind) I pointed out that he (like me) is unrighteous and needs salvation as a gift.  He professed that Jesus is his Savior,  which I challenged by asking why he gave me the ‘wrong answer’ before, admitting that he trusted his self-righteousness for salvation.  In brief, his Lutheran worldview is internally inconsistent, revealed even more dramatically when he insisted that many roads lead to God.  I refuted that via John 14:6 which is what Jesus – the fellow’s professed Savior – said about that.  He can’t be a follower of Jesus and deny the very words of Jesus.

The conversation lasted about five minutes.  I could tell from the beginning that he was anxious to get on the road for his next appointment, but I was able to keep him engaged to say what I believed he needed to hear.  The mission is to challenge the lost with the perfectly consistent truth of the Gospel and point out that his own worldview doesn’t make sense . . . and most especially that this is not a philosophical or theological debate; rather, that his eternity is at stake.  It’s personal!

The Christian’s witness must honor the Christ of whom we witness, “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  (Col 2:3)  Do you believe that?  Then you must presuppose the truth of God’s word as you represent Him.  A nation’s ambassador does not approach a foreign leader with probabilistic arguments about the existence of his King and his kingdom.  He proclaims his King’s message boldly.  If his witness is rejected, he may well challenge (in effect), “What, are you crazy?  Don’t you see the power and wealth of my King?  Don’t you see the consequences of rejecting His offer of peace?”

Of course, the evangelist must not “strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, instructing those that oppose themselves . . .”  (See 2 Tim 2:23-26).  Yet the evangelist knows what reality is and must do his duty with the perfect confidence of an ambassador of the King of Kings.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  (Prov 1:7)  As I begin to talk with an atheist, I will tell him up front that I’m a Christian and assert that he has no intellectual ground to stand on without God . . . not just any god, but THE God as revealed in the Bible.  I’ll point out to him that he and I don’t even exist – as persons – if we are just molecules in motion.  Rational thought cannot be founded on random brain chemistry.  Neither can objective morality.  Thus I am cracking the foundation of his worldview on epistemological grounds.  He cannot know anything unless God is real.  He can know, however, once he confesses that he is made in the image of God, a person who can think and know rationally, make decisions, is morally accountable, and can recognize sin in his life and his need for the Savior.

The presup approach puts the lost on the defensive immediately.  He is ‘in the dock’ under accusation.  C. S. Lewis wrote in his book, God in the Dock:  Essays on Theology and Ethics, “The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge.  For the modern man the roles are reversed.  He is the judge:  God is in the dock . . . The trial may even end in God’s acquittal.  But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the dock.”

A traditional or evidential approach, as for example in the works of Lee Strobel or William Lane Craig or J. Warner Wallace, may convince the skeptic that God probably exists, which also means that God may with some probability not exist.  Then the case must be made that it’s not just any god, but THE God of the Bible.  Then the case for Jesus must be made along with a probabilistic case for the resurrection and the reliability of the Gospel accounts.  This is a long road!  All along the way, God is in the dock and the skeptic enjoys the role of judge.  But the point is evangelism, isn’t it?  To save the lost fellow, he must humble himself, admitting that the accusations against him do, in fact, condemn him, and he needs forgiveness and mercy.  Along the evidentialist road with its twists and turns and pleas for the rebel to consider the possibilities, it’s hard to transition him from the judge’s bench to the dock.

The presup approach is also called a transcendental defense by some, in that only the presups of the Christian worldview account for the universe, man, morality, rational thought, etc.  Our worldview transcends what our eyes see and our ears hear, but only by starting from a transcendent position can we make sense of what we see and hear.  The evangelist has the mindset that only the Biblical worldview with all its claims (creation, the Flood, history, incarnation, redemption, salvation, etc.) can make sense of reality.  The skeptic doesn’t see this, of course, because he is a rebel:  he insists on his own autonomy apart from God or revelation.  The evangelist confronts the skeptic with the God’s-eye view of his environment and shows how everything makes sense, but only from the Biblical perspective.  He can then step into the skeptic’s worldview and point to the contradictions and mysteries.

The presup argument is thereby indirect.  The direct evidentialist argument attempts to build the house one brick at a time, hoping to slip in a foundation somewhere near the end.  For example, “Now that you believe that God probably exists and Jesus probably rose from the dead and the Bible is probably true in its historical accounts, now I encourage you to take a wild leap and believe the Bible cover to cover, trust Jesus as Savior and Lord, change your entire life and worldview, and admit you are headed for Hell and now beg for mercy.”  That’s a tough sell, since you’ve been honoring his rebellious judging skills along the way.

I don’t want to build the fellow a new house one brick at a time.  I want to throw the whole house at him!  Why should this work?  Because Scripture assures me that God has written his law in the heart of the most rabid atheist, that creation declares its Maker, and that God’s word is recognizable as truth.  On that last point consider the Gospel of John, which was written for the express purpose “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”  (John 20:31)  John’s Gospel does not build a probabilistic case from within a skeptic’s unbelieving worldview . . . it declares Him!

Evangelism is not a math problem or a logic game.  The mission is to reach heart and mind and provoke repentance and a reasoned faith.  We should trust the Biblical pattern:  God knows what is in man and how to reach him.  While we do our part, we trust that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-8).

Edward J. Carnell was a student of Van Til’s, but diverged from him in later years when Carnell taught that the Christian worldview can be treated as one hypothesis among many, to be evaluated by various ‘independent means’ including coherence, historical veracity, and personal satisfaction.  Carnell:  “In the contest of hypothesis-making . . . the winner is he who can produce the best set of assumptions to account for the totality of reality . . . Bring on your revelations!  Let them make peace with the law of contradiction and the facts of history, and they will deserve a rational man’s assent.”  In accord with the Roman Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, Carnell wrote, “First we must know in order that we might believe.”

Thus Carnell (and many others today) presuppose that logic, rational thought, and methods of historical analysis are more foundational than God’s word.  Who is in the dock?  God exalts His own word above His very name (Ps 138:2) and quite rationally, when he made a promise to Abraham, “because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself.”  (Heb 6:13)  Where do logic, rational thought, and true history come from?  Logic and rationality are integral to God’s  person; they don’t float along independently of space / time and God himself.  God is not beholden to some independent body of truths; He is the Author of truth.  What about historical analysis?  Unbelieving historians start with the presupposition that miracles cannot happen and that Jesus of Nazareth, if he existed at all, was no more than a man.  Given those presuppositions, what do you think their conclusions will be regarding the validity and accuracy of the New Testament?  Yet evidentialists step right into secular historical methods, hoping to convince the skeptic anyway.

One small point . . . In a skeptical worldview, what is the value of true, accurate history?  Why is a true historical account good?  That’s a moral issue.  Without objective morality, established by God, “who cannot lie,” what is a history book but a collection of molecules in the form of paper and ink?  Yes, we should use historical and archeological arguments . . . if these areas are the stumbling blocks of the lost . . . but we must use them affirmatively in the context of the Christian worldview.  The sinner must be confronted with the personal nature of the issues, that God’s revealed history puts him in the dock, that because the Gospel accounts are genuine God-breathed history, that he is facing judgment and needs forgiveness.  The history of the cross and the resurrection has utterly personal consequences for everyone.

Van Til:  “In the first place, every Christian must tell the non-Christian that he must be saved from his false views of God and himself.  The greatest love can be shown for the lost only by those who have themselves sensed most deeply the lost condition from which they have been saved.  The best physician is he who tells the patient who needs surgery that he must be rushed to the hospital, not he who tells him to take a strong sedative.”  Indeed.  Always integrate apologetical arguments with a Gospel plea.  Don’t play with the debate.  Use logic, use the moral law, use history, use science . . . but always as tools to open mind and heart to saving truth.

Now, in examining your competing worldviews, you can’t talk about everything at once with the skeptic, but every specific element must be placed in context.  Bahnsen:  “Thus, we do not attempt to defend the resuscitation of a particular human corpse, and then attempt to add an argument that this revived individual is also a divine person (etc.); rather, we set forth and defend the resurrection of the incarnate Son of God.  Likewise, the Christian apologist does not argue for just any kind of abstract, general theism (‘a god of some sort or other’), but rather for the specific conception of God revealed within the Christian Scriptures . . . apologetics becomes the vindication of the Christian worldview as a whole, not simply a piecemeal defense of isolated, abstractly defined, religious points.”

This is in contrast to ‘traditional apologetics.’  If you read a variety of modern books on apologetics you’ll likely see a pattern.  There are two direct appeals to the unbeliever, seeking to establish first that God exists, and secondly that you can trust the New Testament, particularly about Jesus and His resurrection.  Tragically, some modern traditionalists / evidentialists don’t work at defending the Old Testament, because they are compromised on Genesis, buying into some form of theistic evolution.  Pitiful!

The traditional approach may seem quite instructive regarding the details of various philosophical and historical arguments, but it goes against the Biblical pattern of preaching to the lost.  One not-so-minor issue is that it takes a lot of time to build a case from scratch, hoping that your lost friend is patient enough to hang in there for a few hours while you move from one probabilistic argument to another.

Many years ago, having been exposed to traditional apologetics, I thought that was the only way to go when dealing with an atheist / evolutionist.  Doing 121s on the street, when I met a skeptic I sighed internally and thought, “Oh my.  Here we go.  I’ve got to convince him that God exists and that evolution is wrong . . . this will take a long time!”  In frustration, I searched for alternative approaches.  By the grace of God I found some helpful apologetics sources and did my own Biblical analysis to develop my own approach.  You can find the details in my essays in the Evangelism section of this site, including “How to Witness to an Atheist.”  What I had ‘stumbled into’ was Presuppositional Apologetics.  (Thank you, Lord.)

The bigger problem in modern evangelicalism is disdain for apologetics, disdain for reasoned argument.  It’s all about building relationships, they say, and showing people that following Jesus is cool, fun, and you can be happy and prosperous.  Be a happy evangelical and your non-churchgoing neighbor will want to be a happy evangelical, too.  Win him to you and you can introduce him to Jesus.  Blah.  The fundamentalists (Independent Fundamental Baptist churches) despise apologetics in a different way.  Just preach the Gospel, they say, and then manipulate the fellow to pray a so-called ‘Sinner’s Prayer.’  Their ‘philosophy’ generates many false converts.

But the mind and the heart, along with the conscience and the will, must be in sync for repentance to be real, for faith to be grounded in reality.  “In thy light shall we see light.”  (Ps 36:9)  “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”  (John 12:46)  “But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”  (John 3:21)  Saving faith is about seeing reality and acting on what you know.  The convert is not blind anymore, he’s not deceived; rather, he sees clearly and understands for the first time in his life.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”  (Prov 9:10)  True repentance turns the sinner away from the old paths.  He now knows the wickedness of sin and willfully abhors it.  True faith shows the well-lit path for following the Biblical Jesus day by day for the rest of his life.

In abhorring apologetics, many evangelicals and fundamentalists abhor the very reasoned discourse that is necessary for the lost to understand that he must be saved and just what that means.  Bahnsen:  “Apologetics can be pursued with a humble boldness, one which displays true concern for the error of the unbeliever’s thinking and the destructiveness of his ways.  This does not mean giving even an inch on any issue of truth over which we disagree with the unbeliever.  But it does mean, as Dr. Van Til would always say, that we keep buying the next cup of coffee for our opponent.”  Of course, the fellow we’re trying to reach is not our ‘opponent.’  Our opponent is Satan who has blinded the mind and heart of the lost fellow.  We do our best to shine light on reality because the stakes are infinite, and we pray that the Holy Spirit illuminates and convicts so that our friend willfully chooses to repent and trust Christ.

Van Til’s system of presup apologetics can be summarized by the points below.  I’m using his outline, but edit it for efficiency’s sake and with some of my own interpretation.  (You can see Van Til’s unedited work on page 610 of Bahnsen’s book.)

1. In apologetics we must use the same principles we use in theology, especially the principle of the self-attesting authority of Scripture, that God speaks truth through His word in such a way that the image-bearers He designed can hear it.
2. Therefore, we don’t make our appeal to alleged ‘common notions’ of unbelievers and believers, but rather to the points of contact we have with unbelievers due to the fact that they are made in the image of God, and that God’s law is written in their conscience.
3. We set the Christian worldview squarely in opposition to that of the unbeliever. We point out that he has no autonomy because this is God’s creation.  As a man the unbeliever has no personhood and no possibility of rational thought without God as revealed in the Bible.
4. The entire set of the claims of Christianity are not only reasonable, they are the only rational way to make sense of anything, such as existence, design in creation, history, morality, relationships, life’s meaning, beauty, justice, etc.
5. The argument for the Christian worldview must be by presupposition. “God’s revelation is the sun from which all other light derives.”  Unless you start with the foundation of Biblical truth you won’t be able to prove anything.  (How can an atheist even begin a rational argument unless he can show that his brain chemistry can transcend itself and produce rational thought?)
6. When confronted with Truth the sinner can respond to the drawing / leading / convicting of the Holy Spirit to act on the evidence set before him. Here Van Til would see the Holy Spirit acting irresistibly only on the ‘elect,’ whereas I see an opportunity for everyone to respond, since all are drawn by the Spirit (John 12:32) and God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), since God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”  (1 Tim 2:4)
7. Traditional methods of apologetics must be discarded. Here and in many other places, Van Til identifies traditional apologetics with Roman Catholic and evangelical (of the non-Reformed variety) scholarship.  All such non-Reformed evangelicals are called ‘Arminians’ by Calvinists.  Van Til likes to insist that presup apologetics is ‘owned’ by Calvinist theology.  My view is not only is this false, but that TULIP destroys the purpose and the value of apologetics.

As mentioned before, you obviously can’t throw an entire worldview on the table in a moment of time for a comprehensive examination.  But you can pick any serious subject and place it in the context of Biblical truth to show that it makes sense only in light of God’s word.

Let me know what you think.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

Lafiagi Part 2:  Reality Matters

Why is it that NASA and other space-faring wannabe organizations go on and on about a bit of water on Mars, and the potential for water under the icy crusts of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn?  Their declared motivation is that water is necessary for life to exist.  Therefore, if water is there and in abundance, then there is a good probability that life exists!  Really?  Just how does that follow?  Isn’t there a difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition?

Supercomputers exist on Earth.  The key chips in supercomputers are silicon-based.  Silicon comes from sand.  Mars has sand.  Ergo, astronauts arriving on Mars have a good chance at discovering supercomputers on Mars!  Yet life, as dependent on water as Intel chips are on silicon, is far more complex than supercomputers.

Why such a desperate hope to find life – even microbial life – on another planet?  Here’s the reason:  If life is found on one more planet besides Earth, then evolution is proven to be true!  Furthermore, then life must be ubiquitous across the universe!  Now that is truly bold inductive reasoning:  1 . . . 2 . . . infinity!  Such is the desperation to believe (blindly) that evolution not only occurs, but is so powerful that there is no need for the Creator.  Why the desperation, though?  It’s clear that if life is found on another planet, there will be a gigantic collective “Whew!” and rejoicing that evolution must actually work.  Wait a second!  Does this mean that even the most hardened atheistic scientists aren’t sure?  Despite all the dogmatic textbooks crammed down our children’s throats, and all the emphatic statements from media scientists like, “Evolution is a fact!” and “No reputable scientist doubts evolution!”, their worry is a palpable admission of uncertainty.

So, if you actually found a supercomputer on Mars, might you suspect that someone had left it there, and others designed and built it?  Now, I don’t expect life to show up anywhere else than on Earth, at this stage in the history of the universe.  (Things may change in the ages to come.)  But if it does, its extraordinary complexity is certainly due to the awesomeness of the Creator.  Not convinced?  See my free ebook on this subject and the many essays that will leave you with no further doubts.

I recently finished reading a bi-weekly magazine, Science News (11/12/2016) and noticed a motivating theme behind many of the articles.  One discussed issues with Saturn’s rings; for example, “It’s hard to make rings in the last 100 million years.”  And, “Esposito argued that despite some youthful appearances, the rings are ancient . . .”  You see, the motive for analyzing the dynamics of the rings is to fit the observable data into an evolutionary universe.

Another news item discussed fossils of the placoderm, an extinct armored fish that had bony jaws, although not the same jaw design as that of ‘modern’ fish, along with dogs, humans, etc.  Some paleontologists now speculate that the ‘modern’ jaw descended from placoderms.  “We’ve suddenly realized we had it all wrong.”  (That happens a lot in the evolutionism industry.)  Again, the entire motivation for study is to fit observable fossil data into the evolutionary scheme.

Another reported study analyzed MRI data to correlate what happens in the brain when lying,  tentatively concluding that lies are more likely when activity decreases in the amygdalae, brain structures associated with emotions.  It’s clear that the underlying thesis of the researchers is that brain chemistry is everything, no need to invoke a mind, a soul, or free will.

What is common to these research initiatives?  (There are several more such items in the very same issue.)  What motivates the smart people who devote chunks of their lives and who spend big chunks of taxpayer dollars to getting answers?  It’s an unbelieving worldview, namely that of atheism / naturalism / materialism.  The Saturn ring observations will only be modeled and interpreted within a billions-of-years Big Bang paradigm.  Fossil data will only be interpreted within the fantasy of evolution.  Human behavior will only be interpreted in terms of brain chemistry, with humans seen as merely another animal species.

In my previous essay on Cornelius Van Til’s approach to presuppositional apologetics (See Greg Bahnsen’s book, Van Til’s Apologetic:  Readings & Analysis), I pointed out that the foundation of the evangelist’s approach to the skeptic must be to confront him with the Biblical worldview and explain how it – and only it – makes sense of reality, of creation, of man’s existence, of logic and truth and beauty; and that the unbeliever’s worldview, whether atheistic or Roman Catholic or Buddhist, doesn’t.  Van Til:  “We do not seek to defend theism in apologetics and Christianity in evidences, but we seek to defend Christian theism in both courses.”  Namely, we’re not trying to convince the lost fellow that some kind of god exists, but that creation is due to the Creator described in the Bible, who offers redemption via Jesus Christ, and that he had better repent and trust the one and only Savior.

We can invoke arguments about Saturn’s rings or the fossil record or human consciousness, but we must do so in a package that makes the Gospel personal, personally challenging the lost to transcend his oh-so-tiny materialistic worldview and recognize his personal accountability to THE GOD who knows his every thought, word, and deed.  Consider the Scripture, John 1:12.  What does “received Him” mean?  It means the whole package of Christ as Creator, Judge, Messiah, and Savior.  And so the whole package must be conveyed.  The task of the evangelist is to communicate the package efficiently and powerfully, with none of the equivocation so common in evangelical culture.

Van Til:  “The fight between Christianity and non-Christianity is, in modern times, no piece-meal affair.  It is the life and death struggle between two mutually opposed life and world views.”  The attack may arise from astronomy or geology or biology or history.  But back of the attack is a worldview that denies the existence of God, denies the fellow’s accountability for his sins, and denies his very existence as a created being made in the image of God, which enables him to have a consciousness that transcends brain chemistry, and to make use of God’s very own character-istics such as logic, truth, and integrity – the valuing of truthful analysis and reporting.  Challenge him on his worldview, which cannot account for science, rational thought, or even sensible communication between two personal beings.  In his view, our one-to-one must simply be acoustic noise associated with two clumps of molecules.

The ‘natural man’ has the ability to transcend his worldview if you provoke him to, since he is an image-bearer, has a God-given conscience that can be challenged on the basis of moral law (10 commandments), and is one of the ‘all’ who are ‘drawn’ by the Holy Spirit who works to bring understanding and conviction on the inside while the evangelist makes his plea on the outside.  In order to honor God, the Christian witness must embrace this Biblical pattern, always looking to penetrate the darkness, the cloud of delusion, always on offense.  Consider the preaching of John the Baptist – or pick your favorite prophet.  No defensiveness there.  Neither did Elijah give any credence to the possibility that Baal’s prophets might have some valid points.  Paul “confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”  (Acts 9:22)  Peter “let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”  (Acts 2:36)

I’m not discussing specific tactics in this essay.  I have done much of that in the material on this site, including the essays on Evangelism and the free ebook on that subject.  It’s not hard!  I’ve worked hard to make it simple and compact so you can skip all the errors I used to make!  Yet tactics should be subservient to strategy, and strategy must be dictated by principle . . . Bahnsen:  “Apologetics works to develop a method of Gospel presentation that is consistent with the full teaching of Scripture and anticipates the personal needs of the unbeliever.”

Bahnsen again:  “If the believer and the unbeliever do not claim to have knowledge, but are content simply to exchange personal opinions (‘I believe the Bible about Christ’s virgin birth’; ‘I do not believe it is possible for a virgin to give birth’), they are not rationally addressing religious issues or engaging in apologetics.  They are simply sharing autobiographical details that can be ignored.  The issue is whether either side’s personal beliefs are known to be true or not.  To argue about knowledge is to argue about the objective state of affairs, not simply about subjective commitments or feelings.”

A direct argument can be made with someone who shares relevant assumptions (or presuppositions).  For example, I can make direct arguments via Scripture, and therefore conduct apologetics, with a Calvinist who takes the Bible as God’s word.  The atheist doesn’t share that presupposition.  For that matter, neither does the Roman Catholic, who elevates papal authority, nor does the Mormon who elevates the Book of Mormon.  Nevertheless, all share a moral consience, and so God’s moral law can  be used to challenge the heart.  With the Catholic or Mormon, for example, I can discuss salvation by going quickly to the 10 commandments, but with the atheist, I typically have to spend a short time on creation (design) and consciousness (the ‘brain chemistry’ issue), before transitioning to his objective – in his own mind – guilt under God’s laws.  The atheist thereby requires an indirect argument . . . I must challenge his worldview’s presuppositions so he can see how his life makes sense only through a Biblical perspective.  Now, with the Calvinist, I not only make direct Scriptural arguments, but I also challenge his deterministic worldview, within which he cannot live consistently.  Namely, he lives as if he makes choices and he lives as if he can make a difference and as if God just might save a dear loved one . . . he pleads with that loved one as if his pleas might tip the balance.

Van Til reacted strongly to criticisms that presuppositional apologetics is guilty of  ‘fideism,’ supposedly asking the skeptic to make a blind leap of faith to the Christian worldview.  It’s a misinformed and false accusation.  The presup approach, with its emphasis on fully examining opposed worldviews, is completely rational.  How can any other approach be termed rational, if the apologist either ignores the differences in foundational assumptions, or else willingly subjects himself to the insanity of the materialistic worldview?  Van Til:  The unbeliever’s position “ought to be refuted by a reasoned argument, instead of by ridicule and assumption . . . Christianity is the only reasonable position to hold.  It is not merely as reasonable as other positions, or a bit more reasonable than other positions; it alone is the natural and reasonable position for man to take . . . the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience.”  So challenge the unbeliever with this truth, which gives him an opportunity to open his mind and his heart.

It is traditional apologetics, sometimes termed evidentialism that, in arguing probabilistically for evidence for God and probabilistically for the reliability of the New Testament, that requires a blind leap of faith (fideism) at some point to transition the skeptic from judge and jury (condescending to consider your arguments), to a whole-hearted, humble repentance and faith that enables salvation.  Remember that salvation is the issue and the objective.  These aren’t parlor games.

What about this objection:  “Hey, you must argue about probabilities because there is no such thing as an absolutely compelling proof.”  Van Til:  “In this way of putting the matter there is a confusion between what is objectively valid and what is subjectively valid to the natural man.”  Bahnsen:  “Although this is overlooked in casual conversation, it is well to remember that there is a conceptual difference between ‘certainty’ (a property of propositions) and ‘confidence’ (a property of persons).  Likewise, there is technically a difference between the ‘soundness’ of an argument and its ‘persuasiveness.’  Only the latter is relative to people.”

Another way to say this is that you, as a person, can be subjectively convinced wholeheartedly enough to make big decisions, decisions about whom to marry, which academic major to choose, whether or not to cross a street after looking – merely looking – to see whether a bus is coming.  You don’t need mathematical (propositional) proof.  In fact if someone gives you what is apparently sound mathematical and physics-based proof that the street is free of traffic, yet you see a bus coming, you will ignore that propositional apologist.

Hey, remember the big picture here . . . it’s all about evangelism.  When heart and mind are convinced of the truth of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit . . . who has been working to convict all along . . . will seal the deal with regeneration and provide all the proof the new convert needs.  For example, at this point in my life am I still thinking that God probably exists?  Am I just working to tack on more 9’s to a 99.99% probability?  Of course not.  Do I think of the existence of my wife and children as probable?  Could you convince me that my wife and children have some probability of non-existence?  And so it is with presup apologetics.  We confront the unbeliever with the whole package, the whole worldview . . . at least enough for him to understand reality sufficiently to make a life vs. death, Heaven vs. Hell decision.  Van Til:  “The natural man must be blasted out of his hideouts, his caves, his last lurking places.”  Arguing probabilities, as the evidentialists do, lowers the claims of God on man.

In doing evangelism, we trust that this is the Biblical pattern that the Holy Spirit has given us and that He will work with.

By the way, if you’re not already trying to reach out with the Gospel, via 121s and / or tracts, then this essay is totally irrelevant to you.  In that case your only question about apologetics may as well be, “What strategy should I use for not talking to people?”

Now, when Van Til invokes his Calvinism, he goes too far:  “As for the question whether the natural man will accept the truth of such an argument, we answer that he will if God pleases by his Spirit to take the scales from his eyes and mask from his face.”  Van Til is a committed Calvinist.  He believes that God will regenerate only the pre-ordained-from-before-the-foundation-of-the-universe elect.  God will regenerate with ‘irrestible grace’ only the elect by His sovereign will.  No others get to go.  Within the same paragraph, though, he contradicts himself:  “Apologetics is valuable to the precise extent that it presses the truth upon the attention of the natural man.”  Therefore, good arguments are more valuable than bad arguments, according to Van Til . . . which is surely the thrust of his entire published works!  But in Calvinist sovereignty and Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement and Irresistible Grace, what’s the practical difference between a good and a bad argument?  Will God fail to regenerate someone who hears a bad argument?  Will He regenerate a non-elect fellow who hears a really good argument?  Will the date of regeneration be delayed for someone who hears nothing but bad arguments for years and then finally hears a good pitch?  Sigh.

Van Til’s mind must be shut off when he contradicts his Calvinism, although expressing his heart:  “For if men are told the truth about themselves, and if they are warned against the false remedies that establish men in their wickedness, then, by the power of the Spirit of God, they will flee to the Christ through whom alone they must be saved.”  I agree!  Those ifs matter!  What the evangelist does matters.  What the sinner chooses matters.  In Unconditional Election they don’t.

Let’s get back to ‘rational Van Til’:  “Repentance means the recognition of bankruptcy.  It involves the suppliant’s attitude – begging for mercy, for pardon, for life.  It means fleeing from the City of Destruction and pressing on to the Celestial City even when Mr. Worldly Wise Man and all his friends are going in the other direction.  It means bearing the offense of the cross.  Will any of the wise of the world accept his Gospel and repent?”  The answer is yes.  The Bible is clear that the Gospel has the power to save and the Holy Spirit will bring conviction, if the sinner chooses.

But recall what you, as the evangelist, are trying to accomplish – to help the lost uproot and cast aside his entire way of thinking about himself, about God, about the world, about his purpose and manner of life.  You don’t do this one little probability at a time.  He’s got to agree with God that he’s been completely wrong about everything that matters.  In my experience it is clear that it is harder for most people to fully embrace “I have been wrong!” than it is to repent from the sins of the flesh, including drunkenness, fornication, greed, anger, etc. To admit “I am wrong!” and proceed to act out on that means a worldview transformation.  Therefore . . .

You can’t sneak up on people and hope to fool them into conversion.  You can’t just drop hints.  You can’t invite them to church and hope they absorb it.  You can’t just win them to yourself and hope they find Jesus attractive, too.  You’ve got to confront them with THE TRUTH!  You’ve got to risk a less-than-enthusiastic reaction when they actually comprehend what you are saying.

I see multitudes of evangelical church members who came over from the Roman Catholic church, or from an unchurched ‘worldly’ background, or from wherever, who pick up a little ‘loving Jesus’ here, or a little ‘following Jesus’ there, and a little social gospel cheeseburgers for the homeless hither, and a little have-a-great-marriage camp yon.  It’s all very . . . nice.  But nobody ever gets lost (wrong) – in his own mind – and so nobody ever gets saved.

Van Til on the relationship of reason to faith:  “When God has reasoned with us and changed our minds till our every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, we must use our minds, our intellect, our reason, our consciousness, in order to receive and re-interpret the revelation God has given of Himself in Scripture.  This is the proper place of reason in theology.  There is no conflict between this reason and faith, since faith is the impelling power which urges reason to interpret aright.”

The unbeliever doesn’t buy this.  He thinks he is employing reason in an entirely self-sufficient way.  He doesn’t worry about his brain chemistry getting in the way and doesn’t worry that the logic he uses transcends what’s in the periodic table.

The unbelieving scientist can, indeed, do science, but only by employing transcendental principles.  The believing scientist, even if (individually) he is not as skilled as some of his Nobel Prize winning peers, is far more in touch with reality because of his transcendent perspective.

For example, can the world’s best unbelieving biologist properly understand a cow?  Both the Christian and the atheistic scientist can quantify milk and protein production (along with methane), can investigate genetic differences among breeds, and may even do innovative work in optimizing breeds.  But only the Christian understands that cows are a blessing from God for man’s benefit, that they are creatures that ought not – on an objective moral basis – be mistreated, and that its DNA is designed.  Cows aren’t evolved.  In fact, only by recognizing design can some advances be made.  The idea of junk DNA, for example, is entirely an evolutionary idea and has hindered progress in genetics and medicine for many years.  Only by finally recognizing design – purpose – across the entire genome of a given organism (including humans), geneticists and biochemists are beginning to figure out just how life works at the cellular level.

My wife and I recently took a trip to the Grand Canyon.  Only because we are Christians can we see it as a consequence of the Genesis Flood’s aftermath, a judgment upon man’s sins some 4400 years ago.  The evolutionarily disabled, including our bus driver / tour guide, can only see it as a result of some random processes of erosion, which is incredibly blind.  The features of the canyon speak to awesome and powerful scouring action by vast quantities of flowing water.  You can see the ‘scour marks’ everywhere.  If normal erosional processes are the root cause, why aren’t Grand Canyons everywhere?  The natural man misses not only the physics and geology of it, but also the history and, above all, the moral significance.  (Yes, we passed out tracts to about a hundred folks on this trip, tracts I’ve designed on the fossil record and the sedimentary layers.)

The non-Christian chemist can marvel at the fascinating diversity of organic compounds made possible only by the structure of the carbon atom, but only the Christian chemist can see that the purpose for the design of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and the character of their interacting forces allow the bodies of image-bearers to live and move and have their being within their Creator’s realm.

Likewise, the Christian astronomer thanks God for the wonderful stability of our sun and its consistent radiation output, for the delicate balance of the Earth’s orbit and the tilt of its axis and its rotation to allow for a livable environment . . . yea, much more than livable, enabling even prosperity despite the Fall and its consequences, a Fall incomprehensible to the natural man, who can see only luck, chaos, and yet an inscrutable order and regularity.

Likewise, the Christian historian sees a rational arc of history from creation to the final judgments to the Millennium to the ages to come.  He sees Israel’s regathering as the prophetic herald of the end times.  Why do so many secularists despise Israel?  They don’t see the spiritual war and scoff at the Christian’s warnings of Tribulation to come.  The unbelieving historian cannot understand history.

The non-Christian’s view of history, science, purpose, meaning, the nature of man and the purpose of it all is so small.  God’s reality is bigger than that.  The Christian sees so much more now and envisions so much more in the future . . . not just a generalized future, but his own future as a child of God, an inheritor of his Savior’s promises, as one who will live and learn and reign and love and fellowship for eternity future.

There is much, much more to be gleaned from Van Til, particularly the rational Van Til.  Better yet, there is much more and better that you and I can do to sanctify our own perspective as growing children of the coming Kingdom, and to share that perspective with others blinded by sin, deceived by the small and corrupt wisdom of this world, who simply need a bit of rationality to open their minds and grapple with their need for the Savior.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

Part 3:  Where do you start?

. . Let’s listen in on a pastoral staff’s brainstorming meeting on how to grow their church . . .

 “We’ve got to be relevant to our community, so how about a big food drive for the poor?  Everybody will notice that!”

“Sure.  Write that down, along with the idea of collecting shoes for orphans.”

“What about the young people, the kids?  We’ve got to be relevant for the kids!”

“Maybe we could recruit . . . or hire . . . some high quality musical talent for our, uh, worship service?  If we don’t put on the best show, the kids will find some other place to rock.”

“Great, good idea.  Write that down.  What about the adults?”

“Well, the ones with kids are hooked already, as long as we keep the kids happy.  The rest of them . . . hey, we could do a teaching series on how to have great sex in your marriage or, uh, with your significant other.”

“Yeah, and another series on money . . . how to make it and leave a financial legacy.  We can launch that with a full spectrum marketing campaign!”

“Great.  What about people who actually want to be involved, you know, doing something?”

“Well, we can always use more parking lot monitors and nursery workers.  And more hosts for small group meetings.  Hosts don’t need to actually know anything . . . we can provide them with talking points every week.  Anything really important we need to do, the pastoral staff can handle it, of course.”

……………………………….

What are the goals of American churches?  What are the goals of American Christians?  Are they the same?  You might sit down with your family and write down what your goals are . . . what you think God’s will is for your lives . . . and then write down what you think the goals are for your church.  Don’t go to your church’s mission statement for that.  Just analyze what the church does every week and what it spends money on.  That will tell you what they value and what they’re trying to accomplish.  And the same for you.  What do you do every week and what do you spend money and time on?

Where should you start if you’re going to figure out your life mission, from scratch?  This may sound crazy, but the place to start is theology, your worldview, what you believe it’s all about, what you think about reality, the reality of who you are, who God is, what the past teaches, what you think the future holds, your responsibilities to God and how you think God wants you to deal with others.

Simple, right?  Actually, it is, if you’re a born again Christian and have a Biblically based worldview.  (The second does not necessarily follow from the first.)

I’ve read and written about some of the work of Cornelius Van Til, a luminary in 20^th century apologetics.  He espoused and defended what is called presuppositional apologetics, the approach I hold to because I am absolutely convinced it is the Biblical pattern for reaching the lost with the Gospel, in addition to discipling / training young believers to defend their faith.  In Van Til’s book, The Defense of the Faith (1955), he gives us a glimpse into his mindset:

“Now the basic structure of my thought is very simple.  I have never been called upon to work out any form of systematic theology.  My business is to teach apologetics.  I therefore presuppose the Reformed system of doctrine.”

Namely, he doesn’t start with the latest marketing ideas, nor an analysis of culture to determine the most relevant way to reach people.  Neither does he start with philosophical ideas, nor the writings of the so-called ‘church fathers.’  He starts with what he believes is Biblical doctrine.

Now for the most part, his apologetics is, indeed, built on the Bible and there he gets it right.  Where, on occasion, he gets it wrong, is where his Reformed doctrine steers him wrong.  In fact, as I’ve argued in other essays, if you start with Reformed doctrine, there is no use for apologetics at all.  Everything . . . I mean everything . . . is swallowed up by the Calvinist perversion of the idea of sovereignty, and the salvation of every individual in history is settled by Unconditional Election.  Game over.  Go home.

OK, so that’s the big caveat on Van Til.  When he forgets his TULIP, he gets a lot right and I love the guy for that.  By the way, I don’t recommend The Defense of the Faith for you to read.  I’ve got the 2008 unabridged 4^th edition and in this essay I’ll pull some ‘relevant’ nuggets out for you.  Van Til is often wordy and a bit esoteric in style so, since life is short and there are only so many books you can read, pick one of the other books I’ve recommended for nighttime reading.

The opening dialogue in this essay illustrates the tendency of evangelicals to start anywhere at all, even a brainstorming session, to figure out how to do what God already designed long ago.  Whether it’s evangelism or discipleship, noting that these two areas pretty much encompass the vital aspects of the Christian life, we start with God.  And we learn of God from His revealed word.

Van Til writes that there is too much discussion over whether God exists, and too little about what kind of God we are talking about.  Classical apologists weave clever yet obtuse arguments for the existence of some kind of god.  We rather should start with God – as revealed in the Bible – and declare His nature boldly and forthrightly.

For example, God is holy and just.  He is loving and merciful.  He offers forgiveness, yet pays for it Himself (the cross).  He is omniscient and omnipotent.  These characteristics resonate with the heart and mind of man, since we are made in His image.  Every lost man instinctively knows that if God is there, He must be holy and just.  Every man knows that God must be loving enough to give us a way out of a judgment we certainly deserve.  Every man knows that all the wicked of the ages must be brought to justice.  And every man, when confronted by the law – the 10 commandments – has conscience enough to know that he will see judgment.

The evangelist must make these points efficiently, compassionately, and fervently.  The Christian mom and dad must teach their children this theology to enable them to confront their Judge and Savior, too.

In short, the heart, mind, and conscience of man will resonate with truth so that you don’t . . . and you shouldn’t . . . try to convince him that a generic god exists.  We’re not preaching or teaching the Muslim or Roman Catholic or Hindu gods.  And we’re not going to reach entertainment-addicted, self-absorbed Americans with worldly methods.  You might get them to enjoy the show, but you won’t get them saved, unless you eyeball them with Truth.  That at least gives them a chance.

This essay is not about methods.  I’ve covered methods in many other pieces on this site.  This essay is really about foundational theology and principles that underlie both evangelism and discipleship.  It’s a very modest survey, yet I hope that some nuggets will be beneficial.

Van Til:  “. . . the attributes of God may also be summed up by saying that God is absolute personality.”  God is THE source of the idea and the existence of personality.  In atheism there are no persons, just clumps of molecules bumping around.  But in reality, namely this world we live in, we are persons because we are made in the image of God. 

“There were no principles of truth, goodness, or beauty that were next to or above God according to which He patterned the world.  The principles of truth, goodness, and beauty are to be thought of as identical with God’s being; they are the attributes of God . . . Non-Christian systems of philosophy do not deny personality to God, at least some of them do not, but, in effect, they all agree in denying absolute personality to God.”

This decisively answers the question of Plato’s character Euthyphro, “Is the good good because God says it is, or does God say it is because it is good.”  That’s a false dilemma.  The first choice makes God’s laws arbitrary, the second puts qualities like goodness above and beyond God, as if God entered into our universe where they already existed.  The Biblical solution is that goodness, love, beauty, justice . . . indeed all virtues . . . are the very nature of God.  We find good to be good, and evil to be evil, because our nature, reflected in what we call conscience, has been formed from God’s character.  Sin, of course, mars us and warps us, but that’s our fault.  Christ came to restore us, in toto, not merely saving us, but transforming us so that, eventually, once resurrected, we will have the eternal unmarred nature we were intended to have from the beginning.

Van Til stresses the point that, although we are created in His image, yet “man must always be different from God.”  We can never outgrow our creaturehood.  We exist and operate on a different scale.  One of the advantages of our finiteness is that we can grow throughout eternity, never bored, never exhausting the infinite riches of our relationship with the Author of everything.  Atheists who despise the concept of Heaven on the presumption that it will be boring are fools indeed.  (I expand on this in my free ebook on this site, “One Heartbeat from Hell . . . Plus Eleven Other Compelling Reasons to Become a Christian.”)  In this life, also, Christians have no excuse to be bored.  Got free time?  Pray.  Praise God.  Thank God.  Use your theology to spend free minutes to appreciate your Savior.

Van Til:  “We cannot expect to attain to comprehensive knowledge even in Heaven . . . we should have to be God ourselves in order to understand God in the depth of His being.  God must always remain mysterious to man.”  But mysterious is in the same sense as the mysteries revealed to us by Paul and the other apostles in the New Testament – mysteries revealed at the proper time are mysteries no longer.  Through eternity, mysteries will certainly be unfolded, but since the knowledge of God is inexhaustible, we will never lose the joy of anticipation.

So what is faith?  We can trust God explicitly and implicitly, because what we don’t understand yet is built on an ever growing and solid foundation.  Amazingly, God trusts His children.  Van Til:  “Man was to be prophet, priest, and king under God in this created world . . . As a prophet man was to interpret the world, as a priest he was to dedicate this world to God, and as a king he was to rule over it for God.  In opposition to this all non-Christian theories hold that the vicissitudes of man and the universe about him are only accidentally and incidentally related to one another.”

The unbeliever thus makes man too small.  God’s children, in the ages to come, will have such responsibilities restored.  Unbelievers want to rule now, despite – in their worldview – being mere clumps of molecules embedded within a chaotic universe.  And they want to rule without any God telling them what to do.  Man’s fall was an attempt to redefine his life and his future apart from God.  Bad move.  Death entered the world and human lifespans are too short, even if man was smart enough to overcome the impossible interstellar distances that keep him from taking over this galaxy, not to mention the entire universe, Star Trek fantasies notwithstanding.  Worldly man lives and dies too quickly for such distances, though, and only God has the technology to resurrect man and enable him with God-given technology (power) to inherit God’s creation.

Van Til sees the question of knowledge as “an ethical question at the root.”  Factually correct knowledge about God is not the same, Biblically and in reality, as knowing and loving God.  Multitudes of false converts populate the churches who possess some true doctrinal knowledge, but whose assent to doctrine does not produce works, as described in James 2:14.  Knowledge of God that does not transform does not save.  An evangelical or fundamentalist churchgoer may know much about Scripture, but in his rebellion knows nothing at all of spiritual value . . . his knowledge just puffs him up.

Where do you start in politics?  Start with God, the Bible, and man.  The Scriptural arc of history includes a certain prophetic future.  Evangelicals today are obsessed with politics, but apathetic to the Great Commission.  Should Christians in America vote and vote responsibly?  Of course.  Might a Christian run for political office?  Sure, if that’s God’s will for his life.  If it is God’s will, though, he won’t neglect personal evangelism and discipleship, and he will maintain a Biblical perspective on his work . . . for example, tax policy and taxation rates are important enough to get right, so get it right.  But it’s the lost world’s obsession that political activism will save the nations and create a godless utopia.  Hey, Christian, don’t play the antichrist’s game.  That’s where the political efforts of man will climax.

Whether in politics or in business or in family life or whatever, what are your grounds for making decisions?  Secular philosophers presume that man can acquire knowledge autonomously, without any reference to God who is the source of all knowledge.  A common secular approach is to “go to as many as possible of those reputed to have knowledge.”  University professors enjoy the conceit of seeing themselves as ultimate sources.  But worldview matters.  If we got here by evolution, your ethics will be different than if we are accountable to God.

Van Til notes that Eve went to as many as possible of those who were reputed to have knowledge.  In her mind, apparently, God and Satan both had a reputation for knowing stuff.  Eve had to weigh the reputations.  She put herself in the Judge’s seat, which belongs only to God, expressed through His word.  Eve judged poorly and ‘whipped’ her husband into going with the flow.  Her epistemological choice was entwined with ethics and we live with the consequences.

Here’s another reason Van Til offers to bolster our confidence that we must always start with a God-centered view of life . . . Anything we know about God should and can be objective.  God certainly knows himself and every conceivable detail of His creation.  Our existence within the creation derives from God, along with any meaning and hope in life.  “We are fully interpreted before we come into existence.  God knows us before and behind:  He knows the thoughts of our hearts.”

Have you ever considered that God doesn’t just see you from in front or behind like others see you.  He sees you from above and from beneath and from within.  His omnipresence gives Him a perspective from any and all vantage points.  Yet He builds a road from Himself to us, as Van Til points out, via Scripture and the indwelling Holy Spirit (for believers).  That road, like any road, goes both ways.  We can find God by the road He built and thereby find objective knowledge of Him and His will, enjoying true although not exhaustive knowledge of reality.

Our knowledge is not exhaustive, of course, because of our finiteness, but what we do know can be TRUE.  Postmodernists and subjectivists deny this, of course.  They’re wrong – willfully out of touch with reality.  Evangelical small group studies that simply poll their members for feelings or opinions without searching for definite true answers from God’s word insult God and destroy each other.

Can’t unbelievers be objective about the big issues?  No.  In standing on a God-denying worldview they deny reality.  What can they say that is true about ethics or purpose or marriage or the nature of man?  Regardless of claims to objectivity, fervency in support of error is willfully wrong . . . sinful.  What should they do about it?  Deal with it – repent.  The Christian must be compassionate and gracious in his witness, while being bold and direct.  The stakes are too huge to equivocate.  If you have a relative or a friend or a neighbor in denial (Who doesn’t?), they will be wrong about life’s purpose, wrong about ethics, wrong about WHO holds their atoms together, wrong enough to be one heartbeat from Hell.  Help them out!

Help him or her out even if he denies all reality.  Van Til’s expositions on apologetics depend on the Biblical truth that the natural man knows he is a creature of God and responsible to Him, even if he vocally denies it.

Van Til:  “A man may have internal cancer.  Yet it may be the one point he will not have one speak in his presence.  He will grant that he is not feeling well.  He will accept any sort of medication so long as it does not pretend to be given in answer to a cancer diagnosis.  Will a good doctor cater to him on this matter?  He will not . . . So it is with the sinner . . .”

You, Christian, have the responsibility to bring “flame-throwers to the very presupposition of the natural man’s ideas with respect to himself.”  Use the law to get to the conscience that you know is there, because he, too, is made in the image of God.  The natural man “is so much in contact with the truth that much of his energy is spent in the vain attempt to hide this fact from himself.”  How do you do this in practice, on the street, or with your lost grandma in your living room?  See my Evangelism essays or my free ebook on methods.

In brief, though, some methods are more powerful than others.  It’s generally fruitless in an initial – and possibly only – encounter with a skeptic to argue historical issues regarding the Resurrection or the consistency of the New Testament manuscripts.  The power issues are those at the foundation of the skeptic’s worldview . . . rationality, morality, hope, love, meaning . . . namely, all the ‘big stuff’ of life that goes beyond mere molecules in motion.  The foundational issues are those embedded in God’s character and reflected in His image-bearers.

Only because God is rational and therefore not constrained by brain chemistry, is it possible for us to be rational, not merely chemical automatons.  Love, hope, and meaning are issues that God wired into us.  The atheistic worldview has no room for any of life’s real issues.  Morality is entwined with justice and with judgment, and God’s laws make perfect sense to every man’s conscience.

If the unbeliver is a Muslim or a Roman Catholic, etc., the principles are the same.  The natural man’s conscience is convicted by the Biblical laws and the Gospel is the only sensible remedy.

Presuppositional apologetics, then, is a two-step approach.  First, confront the unbeliever’s position to show that it cannot be lived or thought coherently.  Second, help the unbeliever understand the Biblical worldview as the only possibility for this life and for eternity.  The Gospel flows directly from step two.

Van Til quotes A. E. Taylor, a professor and philosopher of a century ago, on the observation that skeptics who exalt science as the pinnacle of all truth, stand on no foundation.  All science is built on the presupposition of the ‘uniformity of nature.’  Yet, “No one could possibly prove its truth to an opponent who seriously disputed it.  For all attempts to produce ‘evidence’ for the ‘uniformity of nature’ themselves presuppose the very principle they are intended to prove.”

You see, every experiment in physics, chemistry, or biology is done at a particular point in space-time.  But results are published as if they apply throughout space-time.  Just a moment after any experiment is done, the Earth has rotated to a different orientation, and has moved through space along with the rest of the solar system, into a somewhat different part of the galaxy.  The galaxy also moves within the universe, and the expansion of the universe presents a somewhat different universe as our environment changes moment by moment.

But it’s reasonable, you say, to assume uniformity.  After all, how can we make any progress of any kind if we don’t?  Right.  We assume it.  We presuppose it.  We presuppose that the laws of physics don’t change moment by moment and that it doesn’t matter much whether we measure the charge of the electron at 10 am or 4:23 pm.

As Christians we presuppose God who established consistent laws and made science possible so that man can exercise dominion, whether we do it well or poorly, in using our free will because we are not automatons, but in that respect share God’s character of choice-making.

The bottom line point is that everyone lives and dies with presuppositions.  Pick the right ones and reality makes sense.  You can’t prove the existence of God when you start with unbelieving presuppositions.  But atheistic / materialistic presuppositions do not allow for rationality or logic, so you can’t even have a conversation.  If you start with the presupposition of God as revealed in Scripture, however, everything makes wonderful sense.

Van Til:  “One cannot prove the usefulness of the light of the sun for the purposes of seeing by turning to the darkness of a cave.  The darkness of the cave must itself be lit up by the shining of the sun.  When the cave is thus lit up, each of the objects that are in it ‘proves’ the existence and character of the sun by receiving their light and intelligibility from it.”

And so God illumines reality . . . all of creation and all of the richness and complexity of human existence.  Once you’ve established in the heart and mind of the unbeliever the awesome distinction between God’s worldview and the paltry alternatives, then by all means, if helpful, move on to specific arguments about historicity, flood geology, etc.

I like this assessment by Van Til:  “Modern philosophy in practically all of its schools admits that all its speculations end in mystery . . . It admits that ultimate reality is unknowable to man . . . (everything is) necessarily relative to the mind of man.”  How can it be otherwise for the natural man?  If man is merely an accidental product of naturalistic forces within the universe, what are man’s hopes and dreams and intents, other than the vagaries of brain chemistry?  The natural man makes a blind leap of faith to assume that truth is something meaningful and that man, on his own, can determine such truth.

Van Til goes on to note that modern theology goes hand in hand with modern philosophy, in which the Bible cannot be trusted as an authoritative source and so we can reinvent God to conform to our feelings of what He should be, so that He doesn’t interfere with the way we want to do things.  Sins become mistakes, worship becomes a rock concert, and salvation is about charitable work in this life . . . and, by the way, don’t worry about the after-life; if it’s there, everyone goes to the heaven of your imagination.

Now, here’s an issue that is a bit subtle, so I’ll try to make it simple enough so that I can understand it.  Van Til insists that every man since Adam has been both utterly irrationalistic and utterly rationalistic.  How can that be?

When Adam refused to take God’s prediction that bad consequences would follow disobedience, Adam irrationally assumed that God didn’t know what He was talking about and the universe simply might not be like that.  At the same time, Adam decided that he, Adam, could be certain enough of his own conclusion to bet his life on it.  That’s rationalism – man deciding autonomously what truth is.  Rationalism is the foundation stone for atheists, who insist that their reason and logic transcends brain chemistry, while at the same time insisting that there is nothing between their ears but brain chemistry.  Hey, that’s irrational!

And so every man and woman since Adam sins, going our own way, imagining that sin has no evil consequences, whether selfishness or substance abuse or fornication or greed, despite the clarity of God’s word and despite enormous evidence all around us, including our own experiences.  At the same time, man continually decides that he, himself, can make the rules for the day on his own authority.  This all is true both for unbelievers and for believers who fall or leap into sin.

I’ll end my review here.  Bottom line:  It’s a simple, old-fashioned Biblical principle . . . Build your life on God’s word in very practical ways.  Start with a God’s-eye view of marriage, child-rearing, business, discipleship, evangelism, science, engineering, law, medicine . . . everything.  Be alert to discern the difference between worldly methods and philosophies which fight against Biblical counsel, no matter how plausible they seem.  This is not an easy thing to do!  It’s a life-long quest, because we are immersed in this deceptive world.  You’ve got to get into your Bible and live there at least a little each day.  And then live the day with God’s precepts in mind.  Memorize Scripture.  Think about it.  Discuss it.  Read and analyze good books by good authors to get insights that God has given them.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed reading Van Til.  I don’t recommend this particular book, unless you’re an apologetics glutton like me.  Yet despite his flaws (TULIP), he had some real insights.  I hope I’ve succeeded in sharing some of those for your edification.  Let me know.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com