Anyone starting with his or her own reason and the data of creation will be inevitably drawn to conclude that God exists. One's own consciousness and reason is not only the appropriate starting point of all inquiry, it is the only conceivable starting point of any inquiry. Anyone exposed to the Christian Scriptures who has sufficient opportunity to use his or her reason to investigate the evidence for its inspiration will inevitably draw the conclusion that it is the true Word of God. The Christian apologist is called to demonstrate the truth of the faith through rationally compelling proofs.
These bold statements are the key tenets of the sound methodology of Christian apologetics known as "classical apologetics." This methodology is so named because the confidence that reason undergirds the Christian religion has been the classic perspective of the church. In Scripture Elijah boldly challenges the people to weigh the evidence and "if Baal is God, follow him" (I Kings 18:21). There is no reticence to call people to decide in light of the evidence. God, speaking through Isaiah, calls fallen man to reason together with him (Is. 1:18).
Christ exhorts his incredulous disciple Thomas to place his hands in Christ's side, even while chastising his slowness to trust reliable witnesses (John 20:27). Paul at Mars Hill goes so far as to quote statements from two pagan thinkers to document what may be known about God from nature (Acts 17:28). Building on this base, Paul presents special revelation about what God had done through Jesus Christ. No account in Scripture shows the slightest reluctance to appeal to man's reason to examine the truth of the living God. The often misinterpreted first chapters of 1 Corinthians in fact present a classical understanding. Paul rejects oratorical wrangling and the flowery rhetorical emptiness which is considered wisdom by much of the world, to ensure that believers' faith rests in "demonstration of the Spirit" and of the power of God (1 Cor. 2:4-5). Paul is assuring not merely a more godly foundation but a more rationally secure one as well. Only a teacher sent from God like Paul could do mighty miracles: It is only rational to give assent to the tidings they bring (John 3:1).
Defenders of the classical understanding that reason undergirds the Christian faith diverge over which particular rational methodology is the best to address a particular challenge, but all grant that reason is the place to begin and end the apologetic venture. Although for all Protestants the case for classical apologetics ultimately stands alone on Scripture's authority, it is significant to note how this view has dominated Christianity throughout its history from the early church throughout the middle ages to the Reformation. Despite significant contemporary rejection, it historically became particularly embedded in the Reformed tradition and its great universities and seminaries, reaching its climax at Princeton Seminary during its era of orthodoxy (1812-1929).
The Good Gift of Reason and the Reprobate Mind
If Reason points unswervingly to the truth of the Christian religion, why are so many brilliant thinkers opposed to the Christian faith? A simple way of answering is that people have darkened their minds, not their reason. The heart does not like what the reason sees and holds down the truth in unrighteousness. The first chapter of Romans makes clear that by the light of reason and the evidence of nature, God makes his existence and attributes clear to everyone. However, this knowledge is not well received by fallen people. "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened" (v. 21, emphasis added). From this wicked heart that holds down the truth in unrighteousness, people become futile in their imaginations and are given over to a reprobate mind, or mindset. This mindset neither accepts spiritual truths about God, nor knows these truths experientially (1 Cor. 2:14) because the heart hates them. However, this mindset is not reasonable, nor rationally consistent. The reason still points to God.
A key illustration of the human condition from a classical apologetics perspective is that of a doctor with a patient. If the doctor tells a patient that he is to die from an inoperable brain tumor, the first reaction is predictable. There must be a mistake! This reaction is not a rationally weighed decision. He intellectually knows that the doctor is a trained professional and highly unlikely to have given such a precise and devastating diagnosis without careful analysis. However the heart finds the news so devastating, that it holds the truth down. This denial stage may last for moments or years. If it is imperative that the doctor get through to the patient in spite of his denial, the only recourse is to try to force the patient to examine the evidence rationally. The doctor may, for example, make him look at the x-ray of his condition. Now the patient has the power to refuse to examine the evidence or to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what it clearly shows, because he so fears what it demonstrates. Still this classical methodology is the doctor's only recourse. He is certainly leaving his patient without excuse.
So it is with classical apologetics. All biblical apologists know that the unbeliever has a biased heart and has produced a wicked mindset against the truth of God. Given that the reprobate mindset does not accept the truth of God, the question is how ought it to be approached? There are truly only two options available: reason with the person or ignore the person. If one reasons with the person, following the clear example of Scripture, as well as centuries of Christian apologetics, one is following a classical perspective. But isn't this a little like preaching to dead bones? Such a practice itself is not without biblical precedent. We cry out to those dead in trespasses and sins, "whosoever will, let him come," knowing that only those resurrected by God's grace will be made willing. So to reason with those of wicked mindset who suppress the truth in unrighteousness is no more unreasonable.
However, there is an additional truth undergirding the field of Christian apologetics. Although the wicked mindset cannot lovingly accept spiritual truth, the fallen mind's reason can still ascertain much truth. Although a person cannot know these truths experientially, he or she can know much about them. Indeed, all those who come to saving faith in Christ have already understood part of the claims of Christ intellectually. Although apologetics cannot make someone believe, nor can it make him "know" the beauty of the truths presented, apologetics indeed can demonstrate the truth of the content of the faith. For the natural man, to know God is to hate God, yet some acknowledge God's existence despite their dislike of him simply by the overwhelmingly airtight case for the truth. The greatest evil mind, Satan himself, is a prime example. Some patients will acknowledge the deadly tumor in their bodies despite how little they like that truth. The Puritans called such intellectually convinced unconverted people "seekers." One of many sad effects of the relative decline of classical apologetics during this century, before its current resurgence, is the decline of those intellectually persuaded by the case for Christianity before coming to a saving knowledge of God.
Reversing a False Copernican Revolution
Some contemporary critics of classical apologetics accuse it of making too much use of philosophy in defense of the faith. Its defenders willingly acknowledge that whatever is true in philosophy is in fact God's truth and is of much use in defending the Christian faith. However, most contemporary critics themselves have uncritically swallowed the central postulates of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The key elements of Kant's epistemology must be rejected since they undercut the heart of both general and special revelation. Historians of philosophy describe Kant's views as a Copernican revolution in which epistemology (the study of how we know what we know) moved from viewing the object as containing objective truth received by a primarily passive observer. Instead, for Kant and his followers, the subject (or observer) brings his own categories and ways of perceiving reality. This switch to focusing on the subject rather than the object is the key to contemporary subjectivism in our culture, and also to the methodology of the presuppositional school of apologetics. For this school, one does not have the remnants of the natural image of God to view objective reality and ascertain truth. Rather, one's own presuppositions directly affect the very content of what is perceived. For all the nuance among different practitioners of this school, this starting with presuppositions in the subject of epistemology is a givenness of humanity, and one is exhorted to adopt the existence of God and the Scriptures as the divinely inspired word of God as the only appropriate presupposition on which all truth rests.
Indisputably, part of the attractiveness of presuppositionalism at this century's end is the way in which it grants the subjective presuppositions of Kantian epistemology and thus meshes well with the mindset of our culture. The classical apologist must fight upstream to reassert the objectivity of truth and the capacity of man to perceive it via reason. However, upstream we must go, as has so often been the case in church history.
Classical apologetics grants that every sinful person by nature brings his presuppositions to his perception of the world. Indeed, these false presuppositions are the heart of what is known as the reprobate mind spoken of in Scripture. However, to bring one's presuppositions to the search for truth is in fact the heart of sin. Christians are not called to exhort unbelievers to exchange their own wicked presuppositions for godly ones. Rather, they are to exhort unbelievers to strip away their presuppositions and return to the internal irrefutable truth of reason as the starting point of all search for truth. Reason is irrefutable as the starting point of intellectual endeavor, for one cannot refute reason without becoming internally incoherent. Reason and the data of nature then irrefutably point to the existence of God. When a person is given the opportunity to investigate the truth of the Christian Scriptures, he or she discovers this. But these truths are not presuppositions, they are conclusions.
Classical apologists join with our presuppositional colleagues in destroying the false presuppositions of the unbelievers we approach. We delight in pointing out that our colleagues' use of reason in critiquing these false world views shows their own subtle and unintentional realization that reason is in fact the only valid starting point of human inquiry. But we also gladly point unbelievers to valid arguments from reason which establish the truths of God's existence and Scripture.
Reversing a philosophical Copernican revolution is difficult. Kant's emphasis on the truth of the subject has undercut not only the field of apologetics but also all the other disciplines of study. For instance, exegesis has become for many the study of what one brings to the text. The defense of Christianity needs to reclaim reason as a God-given starting point.
Between Rationalism and Fideism
Lest the reader misunderstand, I need to make absolutely clear the difference between saying, on the one hand, that reason is a God-given starting point and that rational argumentation is the methodology of sound apologetics, and saying, on the other hand, that reason is meant to be the finishing point of theology. Opponents often unfairly accuse classical apologetics of rationalism. This is simply not the case. A rationalist is one who accepts as true only those propositions which can be directly proven by human reason, while irrationally refusing to accept anything given by direct revelation from God. The classical apologist attacks rationalism as not only wicked, but also as irrational. To say that reason is the starting point in ascertaining truth in no way negates that reason may point to information from a Supreme Being of much greater intelligence than humanity possesses, which it is eminently rational to accept, eminently irrational to reject. To give a simple illustration, it is eminently irrational for me to refuse to accept the information concerning my physical condition given by a trained physician unless he can prove to me with my high school knowledge of biology all the reasons he has for his diagnosis. It is infinitely more irrational to refuse to accept the wisdom given by the all knowing and totally truthful God because it goes beyond human reason's ability to comprehend it all. Thus, it is unfair to accuse classical apologists of rationalism. Indeed, it is the classical apologist who cries the loudest against the wickedness of such a mindset. Classical apologists add to the presuppositionalist's critique, insisting that rationalism is not even rational.
However, on the other side, classical apologetics also attacks the opposite error of fideism. Fideism believes in faith as a means of receiving wisdom apart from a rational foundation for the faith. Fideists consider it a godly thing to accept something "on faith" even though there is no reason to believe the source that one is trusting. Although fideism has surfaced around the edges of Christianity from earliest days, its present day resurgence among Christian intellectuals was again largely influenced by Immanuel Kant. Kant is famous for his claim of having destroyed reason to make room for faith. Many godly believers have indeed accepted this view of faith as something existing apart from a rational foundation.
On the surface fideism sounds like a godly perspective. Who does not initially resonate with hearing man's evil reason attacked in the name of Christ? However, this attack on reason is at least as reprehensible as the medieval church's tendency to attack the body as being in and of itself evil. Although our bodies are constantly used for evil until our heart is changed, it is blasphemous to call this part of God's good creation evil in and of itself. It is even worse to call the reason God has given as part of his image in us evil, even though all acknowledge that one's wicked heart will cause one to abuse his reasoning capacity for evil. Still, reason is a gift of God, and there is valid and invalid reason, not wicked reason. The intellectual Christian faith is based upon valid reasoning.
It is worth noting that the purest form of fideism is often found in cults and false religions. But a leap of faith is always dishonoring to God who created us in his image with a rational soul. (Though God, in his infinite mercy, sometimes allows people to stumble into the actual truth of the Scriptures.) Rather, God usually expects that we investigate and see if, in fact, the claimed revelation we see is that of God or Baal. Faith is certain as Hebrews points out, because it is taking God at his Word, and God's existence and the truth of his Word has already been demonstrated abundantly to the reason. The reason then rationally takes its rest when it receives conclusive proof that the one speaking is God who cannot lie. Faith is certain because it is founded on reason.
But then one will ask: where is the struggle of faith? This struggle of faith is not the struggle of the rationality of the faith. The devils have passed the intellectual persuasion aspect of faith, and tremble. Rather the struggle of faith is the fiducial or trust aspect. Intellectually, one knows what Christianity claims, but will he or she by God's Spirit trust the God behind the revelation? This new heart is entirely the gift of God, and the struggle remains in the believer to trust God in the midst of trials. It was eminently rational for Job to understand that God was working all things together for his good. It was eminently a great struggle to subdue his doubting heart to trust God in the midst of all the pain he experienced. Classical apologetics desires to clear up the intellectual problems of faith, so that the true experiential problems of faith appropriately can come to the fore.
Conclusion
The truth of classical apologetics is one of the richest truths given to the church. Even at the height of medieval error the church never lost its awareness that human reason pointed unfailingly to the truth of God. The growing return to the appropriate distinction between reason as a gift of God and the wicked heart's attempts to abuse it, gives reason for hope that the church is awakening from a period of fideist slumber. Classical apologetics remains the key for the church to give once again a reason for the hope that is in us as we face a new millennium of false mindsets challenging the wisdom of God.
