Exploring Approaches to Apologetics CA513 o Apologetics t Exploring Approaches … · 2019. 9. 13. · And Martin Dibelius argues, “The obvious purpose of the apostle particularly

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics

Transcript - CA513 Exploring Approaches to Apologetics © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

1 of 12

LESSON 04 of 24CA513

Conclusions on Scriptural Approaches

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics

We did not complete lecture three. We did speak there of the people of Athens and Paul’s approach, the gods of Athens and Paul’s God, the morality of Athens, and Paul’s indictment. I want to conclude that presentation with the response of Athens and the Christian mission.

What was the response of the Athenians? Three different reactions to the apostle’s message are indicated by the author of Acts. First, some sneered at the idea of the resurrection (Acts 17:32). Removal of any fear of future judgment had been a major purpose of epicurean atomism. Believing that the atoms which make up an individual’s body at death disperse into infinite space, Epicureans could not imagine a resurrection. To them it was inconceivable. It is little wonder that they sneered.

The Stoic’s worldview also made the idea of judgment and resurrection difficult. Only if God is transcendent and personal can the teaching of judgment and resurrection make sense. God being distinct from the world, He can act upon it and raise His Son from the dead. The reaction of the Stoics and Epicureans and the idol worshippers reflects an attitude which apologists today must be ready to take.

A second reaction in verse 32; others said they would hear Paul again. If this expression of further interest was sincere, it was nevertheless unfortunate. The apostle would not again stand before the Athenians to proclaim the Gospel. Whether they had another chance to hear, we do not know. While not jeering, they were not believing. To fail to decide for Jesus Christ was in this case, for many of them, to decide against Him. Paul’s message demanded nothing short of total repentance. Until the old way was forsaken, the new life could not begin. “So Paul went out from the midst of them” (verse 33).

Gordon Lewis, Ph.D. Experience: Senior Professor of

Christian and Historical Theology, Denver Seminary, Colorado.



2 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

The third response: some associated themselves with him and believed (verse 34). When we consider the circumstances under which Paul operated, it is remarkable that any received his word. Not many on college campuses turn to the Lord, but in response to Paul’s message a number trusted Christ. One of these was a distinguished judge of Athens’ High Court, Dionysius. Luke’s mention of the Areopagite’s conversion discloses his desire to emphasize remarkable results, and the reference is made to Damaris, a woman undoubtedly well-enough known to be mentioned by name as well. The results of the Areopagus address were lasting. Several others in addition to the two named came to Jesus Christ.

Paul did not remain at Athens, but his converts did. According to the church historian Eusebius, Dionysius became the first pastor of a church that formed there. Although the church never rose to the prominence of churches in far less important cities, its contribution to Christian history has been by no means slight. From it came the first Christian apologist after the days of the apostles, Quadrates and Aristides, who wrote in the time of the Emperor Adrian. Unfortunately, their works have not been preserved. But Eusebius indicates that they made earliest attempts at systematic arrangement of truths of revelation and sought to relate these to Hellenic speculation. Athens may thus be regarded as the cradle of systematic theology and apologetics. Although Paul did not remain to see all the fruit he had planted, there was indeed much fruit from this message.

Having considered the results at Athens, what are the lessons to be learned for our Christian mission today? Is it a model approach for cultured Gentiles or not? The negative view claims that Paul himself was disillusioned with his approach and abandoned it when he continued his ministry in Corinth. In defending this position, in St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen, Sir William Ramsay advances several arguments. First, although Paul had adapted himself to philosophy as far as he thought right, the result had been little more than not. Second, the apostle made a sudden premature departure from Athens. Third, he took a different view of the relation of the pre-Christian world to God than he had in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. Fourth, when Silas and Timothy finally joined him in Corinth, they found him wholly-possessed by, and engrossed in, the Word (18:5). And fifth, Paul did not again speak in philosophic style.



3 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

Imposing as these arguments may sound at first hearing, they seem to be based on a misinterpretation of the facts. In the first place, the results as we have seen can hardly be called little more than not. With a conversion of two people named and several others, you have significant results.

Second, it is not clear that Paul left the city in haste. He did leave, but there is no implication that it was because of disappointment with his approach. The third argument—and it’s not strong either—for throughout this exposition the harmony with Romans 1 emerged. Is there anything which conflicts with the idea that these people from creation ought to have known of God’s power and existence and His moral demands, but they were not seeking after God and had not found Him? Is there anything which conflicts with 1 Corinthians? The foolishness of preaching in that epistle (1:21) is not foolish preaching. It is the preaching of the cross and the resurrection. Although to the Greek it may appear to be foolishness, in reality it is the wisdom of God. That Paul determined to know nothing among the Corinthians, saved Jesus Christ and Him crucified, is to be taken as a figure of speech, for in 1 Corinthians itself he went on to refer to church discipline, to problems at the Lord’s Table, and the use of spiritual gifts. Clearly he was saying the central theme of our preaching should be Christ and Him crucified, but there is nothing in that that would contradict what he taught about God.

Paul, in the fourth place, did not abandon biblical truths in order to accommodate himself to Greek philosophy. Many of his assertions about God show dependence upon the Old Testament as well as some allusions to the Greek philosophers. In connection with six verses, Acts 17:24-29, Nestle’s Greek Testament lists some twenty-two Old Testament allusions. This embarrasses any theory which tries to make a complete dichotomy between the biblical and philosophical materials. Frequently we hear that Hebrew thought forms are totally different from the Greek way of thinking. In some respects there is difference; in others, similarity. Paul simply stressed the agreement on creation, providence, God as free from need, and the unity of the race. So when Ramsay argues that Paul’s preoccupation with the Word at Corinth (18:5) implies he was not engrossed in the Word at Athens, his implication is unfounded. Devotion to the Word supremely characterized Paul’s reasoning no less at Athens than in his subsequent ministry, and quite to the contrary of Ramsay’s fifth argument, Paul did not give up philosophical dialogue. Every Sabbath at Corinth he reasoned, engaged in dialectic in the synagogue (18:4), and won both Jews



4 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

and Greeks.

In Ephesus he reasoned with the Jews for three months and then opposition arose (18:19). Did Paul, therefore, abandon apologetic reasoning? Far from it! Instead he moved to the school of Tyrannous where for three years he engaged in daily dialogues (19:8,9). At Troas on communion Sunday, Paul talked with them, engaged in dialectic again and reasoning, until midnight (20:7). After the Areopagus address, Paul did not cease reasoning with people, rather he defended his faith, seven days a week in the marketplace, in the synagogue, and the church with both Jews and Gentiles.

More recently, Professor Robert Mounce has denied the exemplary character of Paul’s Athenian address. “It is not relevant evidence,” he thought, “for determining the essential nature of New Testament preaching.” In a book of that title, Mounce observes the Areopagus address is fifteen or twenty years after Peter’s early proclamation at Pentecost, and Paul’s words at Lystra (Acts 14:15-17) and Athens (Acts 17) are not typical examples of evangelistic preaching because “at Athens Paul attempts an unparalleled conciliatory approach when he arrived at his real message, the risen Christ, he lost his audience. At Lystra Paul and Barnabas are engaged in restraining a mob from offering sacrifice to them. What they happen to say in such a crucial situation can in no wise be construed as a typical sermon.”

Indeed what the apostle said was typical for Gentiles. The approach to Gentiles is to a different social context than the approach to Jews. Dr. Mounce in his entire book on New Testament Preaching fails to include one address to Gentiles. That is a tragic mistake. Bertil Gartner, New Testament scholar, says, “How are we to explain the similarities between the Areopagus speech and the epistles if the speech did not exemplify Paul’s customary sermons to Gentiles?” And Martin Dibelius argues, “The obvious purpose of the apostle particularly called to this ministry was fulfilled here. In giving only one sermon addressed to Gentiles by the great apostle to the Gentiles; namely, the Areopagus speech in Athens, Luke’s primary purpose is to give an example of how the Christian missionary should approach cultured Gentiles. Paul’s background providentially prepared him for just such a crucial encounter as this.



5 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

And so we suggest to you that when you are ministering to people like those at Athens, you use Paul’s approach. Here’s one of the most dramatic movements of history as Jew meets Gentile, Jerusalem confronts Athens, Christianity faces philosophy, faith meets reason. Adolf Harnack aptly called it “the model of a mission address to educated people.” We cannot possibly take Paul’s example as Karl Barth does as an example of reducing Christianity to the thought forms of outsider’s philosophies. Paul’s approach here was not syncretistic. He was not saying that we should join with the naturalists and the pantheists. Neither can we take Paul’s approach to support another extreme interpretation saying that Christians have nothing in common with people in alternative worldviews. The fact is that because of general revelation, providence, and common grace, we have much in common with all others who are created and sustained by God. At the same time, we have a unique message because of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and that should be made clear as Paul did.

What conclusions can we draw then from lectures two and three on scriptural approaches to apologetics? First, approaches to the art or ministry of apologetics vary with the audience or context. It is indeed proper to contextualize our communication of the truth in doing apologetics with people in need today. But second, in terms of the science of apologetics or the defense of its objective truth philosophically, the defense of our claims concerning God, Christ, and Scripture there is common ground in the Old and New Testaments.

Three factors are involved throughout the Bible. First, an appeal to the logical consistency with earlier revelation. Second, the reliability of the facts attested. They are subject to verification by the five senses—by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. And third, the existential viability or authenticity of our claims indicate that they are true—that Christianity is the worldview which squares with reality. In our apologetics insofar as they are scriptural then, we will seek to demonstrate the logical consistency, factual reliability, and existential authenticity of our claims.

We turn now to two of the most significant apologists in the history of the Christian Church. We will speak today of Augustine and next lecture, as well, and then also compare his approach with that of Thomas Aquinas. After looking at these two outstanding leaders, we will then turn to contemporary approaches that



6 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

philosophers have used in our generation.

Lecture four then, actually begins with Augustine’s approach to apologetics. His approach is remarkably significant because of his own experience in various types of unbelief and in his development of his own case as a believer against those positions. I’d like you to consider his conversion as I wrote it up for a creative writing course a number of years ago. I called it “See Yourself in Augustine” and this essay is based upon his classic work ]], which every Christian leader should certainly have read carefully.

Whether you are a gifted intellectual, an unabashed worldling, or a conscientious ascetic, you may meet yourself in history’s first confessions. Their author, Aurelius Augustine, 354 to 430 AD, is “the foremost modern man,” according to no less a critical scholar than Adolf Harnack. Inspired by Augustine’s confessions, T. S. Elliot entitled a perceptive account of contemporary life The Wasteland, and according to the judgment of Fulton J. Sheen, a leading Roman Catholic scholar, “Augustine surpasses the existentialist as he depicts the poignant inner experience of the soul catastrophe in a catastrophic world.” Augustine’s world was remarkably like our own. With the twilight of the Roman Empire, the cultural values of Greece and Rome were ominously threatened. The decaying civilization suffered repeated attacks by the vandals, churches were desecrated, cities destroyed, entire populations massacred, and thousands enslaved. The striking similarity to our times has led Professor Daniel D. Williams to speak of Augustine’s kinship in crisis.

Oblivious to the portentous age, Augustine experienced a typical childhood. Looking back upon his early life, he remembers innumerable temper tantrums, insatiable pride, and inexcusable jealousies. As a boy he despised his mother’s old womanish counsel. More concerned with his image with his peers than his teacher’s judgment, he sought the commendation of his gang at the price of ethical integrity. With countless lies, he deceived parents and teachers. Desirous of constant preeminence, he sought dishonest victories. Of course, he censured others for those very things. If caught in them himself, he preferred rather to argue than to yield. “Is this,” he asks, “the innocence of childhood?”

As a youth Augustine was religious. Prayer provided a magnificent means of conscripting the services of God Himself for Augustine’s self-centered goals. One of those objectives meant the satisfaction of lust, which was fanned by avid viewing of stage plays. That led



7 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

to the engaging of mistresses. Not one to waste time in church, there Aurelius planned his future adventures. Out of firsthand experience of moral defeat, Augustine later wrote, “How much better to be conquered by a person in an athletic contest than by a vice.” To illustrate the shame of the morally vanquished, he analyzes his boyhood theft of a neighbor’s pears. The sin could not be blamed on any conditions or forces outside himself. “There was,” he admits, “no inducement to evil, but the evil itself. It was foul and I loved it. I plucked simply that I might steal. My enjoyment was not in those pears, but in the crime itself, which the company of my fellow sinners produced. Alone, I had not committed that theft, but when they say, ‘Let us go. Let us do it,’ we are ashamed not to be shameless.”

Today people are much concerned about pointless crimes, drive-by shootings of someone for no other reason than getting away with it, or to put it in the vernacular, for no other reason than the hell of it. And that is what Augustine was saying in his illustration of the pears which is thought to be overdrawn by some of his critics. Without the help of a psychiatrist couch, Augustine’s frank analysis of his skirmishes with ethical integrity, reflected a struggle common to people of high and low position today. On the electoral front as well, the young student groped through a tortuous maze of booby traps. Like an estimated two-thirds of young people today, he rebelled against the religion of his parents. For him and for them, Christianity became passé. At nineteen the seeker investigated the Manichean religion which claimed, like modern rationalism, nothing need be accepted on faith. Every tenant of religion, the boast ran, could be demonstrated to a reasonable person. As an auditor of the Manichean religion, Augustine believed in two eternal physical masses—good and evil, light and darkness. Evil could then be blamed on this convenient external source, the devil made me do it. For such heresy his mother tearfully felt obliged to expel him from her home. Undaunted, he would follow the evidence where it led.

But certain questions arose. Even the celebrated apologist of the Manichean’s Faustus failed to produce the promised logical solutions. A hard fought theological victory thus turned into a blistering defeat. Disillusioned, he tried stargazing, fortune telling, and astrology until these crystal balls also blew up in his face. Struggling on once more, he came to the no-man’s land of skepticism. The great philosophical systems of the Greek lovers of wisdom, Plato and Aristotle, had lost their power. Once the hall of confident idealism, Plato’s academy was now a center of skeptical



8 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

despair. As in the case with so many privates commissioned to capture the hill of truth, Augustine turned up AWOL, and today’s Augustines—charmed by religion, philosophy, or science—seem to have stumbled upon attractively camouflaged time bombs. Sooner or later, their youthful dedication to the surface glitter is shattered by realistic despair.

Paradoxically the freedom fighter found himself captive in a prison camp of his own making. His life amounted to longing for honors, gains, and wedlock. Freely indulging his desires, they became customary and custom not resisted became necessity. Like a character from a modern novel, Augustine at thirty is filled with increasing anxiety, a silent trembling, a great strife, a loathing of self, and internal war. Inwardly consumed and confounded, he writes, “I became to myself an unfruitful land.” This figure may be as significant for your intellectually and morally war-torn life as it was for T. S. Elliot’s perceptive mind and poetry.

But Augustine is not a great man because he was conquered by lust and skeptical despair. His greatness lies—as ours must—in his triumph over them. What transformed his meaningless existence into a dynamically purposeful life? He met someone he could trust. The steps by which his faith rose from the ruins are most significant. With the help of Neo-Platonist philosophers, Augustine saw that neither God nor evil were material things. God was eternal Spirit; moral evil was an act of a responsible will rebelling against His divine will. Augustine could no longer blame his sin on forces outside himself.

Through the ministry of Ambrose, the friendly pastor at Milan, Augustine perceived that biblical revelation need not supplant reason. The Scriptures, he discovered, were attested by many lines of observable evidence. Furthermore, they did not teach the childish materialistic notions which he had attributed to them. Many people today are in reaction against their faith because of a childish understanding of it. Augustine blushed at having so many years barked not against the Christian faith, but against the fictions of carnal imagination. The core of the biblical message the despondent man of thirty-two learned was that God loves us in spite of inability to find the truth or conquer lust. God lovingly provides through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ a just and lasting peace, both morally and intellectually.



9 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

While the intellectual steps toward faith were completed, the moral issues continued to route Augustine’s hopes for a new life. He now wanted to have faith in Christ, but he knew that would mean a complete and permanent break with his mistresses. If he were to be a Christian, he would be totally committed to Christ. He would not be a half-hearted one. In the Roman Catholic tradition of that time, it meant celibacy. The price of victory seemed too high.

An elderly counselor related the story of a young man much like himself. Victor Vitensis, and outstanding philosopher and ________, had publicly attacked Christianity. A study of the Bible for purposes of rebuttal, finally led to faith in its message. Although given the exceptional privilege of secretly joining the Church, Victor Vitensis publicly admitted his former errors and acknowledged his faith in Christ. Upon hearing that Augustine confessed, “I burned with desire to do likewise.”

Another friend told of St. Anthony, whose monastic ideal attracted many a promising young person away from family life and business. Two men in particular gave up good positions, broke their engagements, and devoted their lives to the service of God as they understood it. Augustine rebuked himself for his youthful prayer, “Give me chastity and continency, but not yet.” Now he cried, “How long!” Overwhelmed, he fled from his room into the garden. A voice said, “Take up and read.” Opening the New Testament book of Romans, he read through tears of repentance, “Let us live cleanly as in the daylight, not in the delights of getting drunk or playing with sex, nor yet in quarreling or jealousies, let us be Christ-men from head to foot and give no chances to the flesh to have its fling.” That’s Romans 13:13,14—the Phillips Version.

Augustine wrote, “No further would I read, nor did I need. For instantly as the sentence ended, by a light as it were of security infused into my heart, all the gloom of doubt vanished away. Thou did so convert me to thyself that I sought neither wife nor other of this world’s hopes.” While many non-Christians imagined that a person of faith is deprived of freedom and joy, Augustine found it the reverse. “How sweet that it suddenly become to me to be without the delights of trifles and what at one time I feared to lose, it was now a joy to me to put away, for those didst cast them away from me, thou true and highest sweetness and instead of them didst enter in Thyself.” Motivated by this holy love, Augustine devoted himself to communication of the Good News to other self-enslaved people. He mastered the Scriptures,



10 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

fervently prayed, and skillfully penned some of the greatest literary classics of Christianity. Not even the shattering of the Roman Empire could deter him from his heavenly calling, but to the activists of his time, nothing could have seemed more futile than Bible study, prayer, and preaching.

When human civilization is under a foreboding cloud, should a talented person spend years in the study writing a philosophy of history like The City of God, an autobiography like The Confessions, or a theology like On the Trinity? History effectively answers that question. Augustine’s grave was still fresh when the North African Church was wiped out. The Roman Empire quickly disintegrated, but the gifted mind and devoted heart of Augustine continued to speak. For fifteen centuries his dynamic thought resounded in the Western Church and world, and twentieth century leaders still listen with profit to Augustine’s wisdom.

Acute, intellection, moral, and global crimes confront students today with destiny determining decisions. Preoccupation with a crisis or feverish activism culminates in anxious tension. Unbridled sensualism still enslaves. Autonomous intellectualism ends in paralyzing skepticism. Students unsatisfied with these alternatives are discovering, as Augustine did, a better way. It is the way of faith in Jesus Christ.

Mature attention to Christianity removes childish notions and focuses upon the heart of the matter. What will today’s Augustines do with Christ? His loving death and resurrection in behalf of the anxious and the despairing calls for a response. To sneer, to ignore, to put it off is to decide against His redemptive love. Many try to postpone reception of Christ’s grace, only to struggle as Augustine did. It is not easy to sell all that one has to follow Christ. Not yet, is answered by “Why not now?” Finally, through the witness of a friend or an inescapable verse of Scripture, the divided will is made whole in its unconditional commitment to Jesus as Savior and Lord. That transforming trust is but the beginning of an abundant and productive life even in days of crisis. If you have seen yourself in Augustine’s struggles, you can, as so many others have, see yourself in Augustine’s faith. Be a Christ-person from head to foot.

Having considered Augustine’s own conversion and the example it presents to us of many factors in apologetics, we want to look at his apologetic more systematically. Recall if you can the elements involved in that conversion. There were numbers of factors here—



11 of 12

Lesson 04 of 24

the prayers of his mother, the philosophical reasoning of the Neo-Platonists, the love of his pastor, his pastor’s carefully interpreted biblical expositions, his pastor’s use of Christian evidences, the counseling of others on that church staff, the testimony of young people like himself who had committed themselves to Christ and His service, and finally a simply passage of Scripture. We ought not to imagine more for any one of these factors than it can produce alone.Neither should we neglect the importance of any one of them as a contributing factor to the conversion of a person from a wholly different worldview and way of life to Christian Theism and Christian living.

Looking more systematically, then, at Augustine’s apologetic, we note how important it is in the thinking of scholars of this field. Twentieth century theology has been preoccupied with the problems of theological method and apologetic method expressed particularly in the form of a debate about reason and faith or philosophy and theological belief. Because of observations similar to that of the Neo-Orthodox theologian, William Hordern, Carl Henry asserts, “Evangelical theology’s best hope for a relevant and aggressive impact in our turbulent times lies in a bold biblical emphasis on the relation of revelation or faith and reason. This,” Dr. Henry contends, “is one of evangelicalism’s present imperatives.” And students today can have a significant ministry in contributing to this understanding of what we can think through and how our faith is related to reason.

Augustine’s unique significance for the contemporary discussion is accentuated by both these writers. Dr. Hordern observes that “an increasing number of modern Orthodox thinkers are reinterpreting the relation of reason and revelation by finding new meaning in Augustine’s insights on this subject.” In Dr. Henry’s judgment, “The historic Augustinian, Calvinist conception of the relation of revelation and reason holds magnificent relevance for a generation reaching for a transcendent God while yet concerned for the rational integration of all life’s experiences. Considerations like these then call for careful scholarship in the study of Augustine.

One of the most common statements made of his apologetic is that he puts faith before reason, that in his thinking, we must believe and only after we have believed can we understand. Existentialists have then placed him in their camp and have denigrated systematic theology and philosophic reasoning in defense of the faith. Augustine did say, “If you will not


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

12 of 12

Conclusions on Scriptural ApproachesLesson 04 of 24

believe, you will not understanding.” Similarly, “If you cannot understand, believe in order to understand.” And “Faith precedes, understanding follows.”

In our next lecture we will be considering exactly what those statements mean. Augustine has a significant contribution to make in our understanding of what it means to believe and then what it means to trust Christ. He will say at one point, “Who does not know that one must understand what it is one is asked to believe and why one is asked to believe it?” He places reason first, then, in defining the content to be believed and the reasons for that faith rather than another. In addition, we will see that he has a place for total commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and that his faith involved far more than knowledge and assent; it involved trust and a devotion of his whole life and thought to the kingdom of God. The apologetic of Augustine is based upon God’s general revelation to start with. In that, he finds common ground with others, but that does not preclude his use of special revelation and a distinctive knowledge of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, His death, and the evidence for His phenomenal resurrection. I look forward to considering his work with you next time. It was the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation at Syracuse University.

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics CA513 o Apologetics t Exploring Approaches … · 2019. 9. 13. · And Martin Dibelius argues, “The obvious purpose of the apostle particularly

Documents