MR: Our objective in this conversation is to consider apologetics, which is essentially a defense of the faith as a courtroom attorney would present it. Scripture exhorts us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have to those who ask. Traditionally there have been three basic positions within mainstream Evangelicalism-especially in the last one hundred years-with respect to how we should reach out to non-Christians. Those three positions are represented in this conversation by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary California, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, and Dr. R. C. Sproul, chairman of Ligonier Ministries.
Dr. Godfrey, would you open our discussion by outlining presuppositionalism for us?
WRG: The basic position of presuppositionalism is that no one comes to any question neutrally, that presuppositions stemming from a variety of religious points of view have to be taken very seriously in any kind of communication, and that we do not approach any question related to the Scripture and the gospel as if it were in doubt. Instead, it is the certain revelation of our God and on the basis of that certain revelation we carry out our defense of the faith.
MR: Dr. Sproul, classical apologetics is the position which you have defended, especially in the book you wrote with Art Lindsley and John Gerstner, Classical Apologetics. Would you explain that position?
RCS: We certainly begin with broad areas of agreement with the other two schools represented here. For example, we believe that there are necessary epistemological presuppositions that human beings share.
MR: What do you mean by "epistemological"?
RCS: I mean that, in terms of the necessary assumptions for knowledge-such things as the law of non-contradiction and the law of causality-we have much common ground. We all assume the basic reliability of sense perception; we know, too, that there are limitations to our objectivity because of the old subject/object problem; and we also all agree that when we are engaged in dialogue in the defense of the faith with the skeptic or the unbeliever, we are not prepared to surrender that which is precious to us and that of which we are convinced.
But we do have a debate about the fundamental question of whether the existence of God is something that is presupposed in the argument, or it is something we have the burden to prove rationally and empirically. In contrast to presuppositionalism, classical apologetics generally believes it has the burden to demonstrate the existence of God, and we do this by using the classical proofs. There is a different set of criteria by which classical apologetics is distinguished from evidentialism.
MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, could you elaborate on the evidentialist position?
RR: Basically, the evidentialist is willing to acknowledge that there are certain heuristic presuppositions we all make, and we should acknowledge that we make them. But, he wants to keep those as minimal as possible and as methodological as possible. The emphasis in evidentialism is to work from the facts to a conclusion, and, as Bishop Joseph Butler (an Anglican moral philosopher, 1692-1752) said, it is going to be probabilistic in the way that it is done. We will tend to start with Christ as God and work backwards to God, though if you press an evidentialist and he has to use the classical proofs, he'll do it. But we tend to argue from fulfilled prophecy and miracle-particularly the Resurrection of Christ from the dead-that the soundest conclusion to make from the facts is that Jesus was Christ and God. That does not mean, of course, that a person will become a Christian, but it does mean that he can come to the conclusion, based on facts, that the claims of Christ describe states of affairs which prevailed.
MR: Dr. Godfrey, as a presuppositionalist, what is your great concern about those who are not presuppositionalist in their apologetics?
WRG: Our general orientation is that we are concerned not to grant a prereligious neutrality to the investigation of evidence. We are committed to the notion that in the apologetic process we must recognize clearly the strong religious convictions and presuppositions that anyone brings to such a discussion-whether they are Christian presuppositions, on the one hand, or non-Christian presuppositions, on the other. We are willing and eager to look at and discuss evidence, but evidence and facts can never be seen as brute facts or uninterpreted facts. They are always interpreted in the light of certain presuppositions and religious commitments, and to fail to recognize that implies a neutrality in relation to basic religious questions that should not be granted.
MR: Drs. Sproul and Rosenbladt, what about that? Can an unbeliever come to what are called "brute facts" and just sort of "bump into them," or are all facts interpreted through a particular presuppositional grid?
RCS: The critique of alternate systems to the fully-orbed theism we see in Christianity is part of the great strength of presuppositionalism. Additionally, because presuppositionalism stands so squarely in the Reformed tradition, it has a clear commitment to the ideas that God has clearly revealed himself to every human being (as Paul teaches so manifestly in Romans 1), and that the fallen, corrupted man has a mind that has been captured and held captive by sin. We certainly agree with all of our hearts that nobody comes to this question from a perspective of neutrality.
Yet, at the same time, we believe that the arguments for the existence of God are objectively compelling. This does not mean, though, that we think the evidence will convert anybody. The Reformed and Lutherans don't believe that the evidence converts people. Calvin, for example, said that one of the values of apologetics is to stop the mouths of the obstreperous. Thus, we work at it for pre-evangelistic purposes, because we don't ask people to crucify their minds. Christ doesn't ask you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and take a leap of faith into the dark. He calls people out of the dark and into the light-the primary light being the self-revelation of God that we all agree is there.
Additionally, though, I think the most significant value of apologetics is not just pre-evangelism, but the support of the Christian from the avalanche of skepticism and criticism. The devil, the enemy, is saying, "You have to stop being rational, you have to stop being scientific, you have to stop using your mind and your senses and your analytical skills. Just take this leap of faith." That intimidates Christians, and an intimidated Christian in many ways is a paralyzed one. So, if the enemy can quench the bold proclamation and witness of the believer, he's made tremendous progress. Thus, one of the most important levels of apologetics is to be a support system. When we answer the critic, explaining why we believe what we believe, we are also saying to the Christian, "Hey, there is a reason for the hope that is within you, and God has given abundant proofs of the Christ that we serve, and so on."
MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, does the evidentialist differ on this point? Does the evidentialist think that a person can be swayed into the kingdom by amassing evidence upon evidence? Is there a point at which one additional piece of evidence becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back, and suddenly the skeptic is born again because there was that one additional piece of evidence?
RR: No, and unfortunately, there are many times when that is the way the evidentialist position is characterized. We will always attribute conversion to the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who are Lutherans use means of grace language here. Those means might be the means the Spirit uses, but it is finally always the supernatural activity of the Spirit through the proclamation of the gospel, period. God converts.
We will, nonetheless, hold to brute facts. Our parallel will be with science and we will seek to do a minimal amount of analysis of the motives or of the ontology of the fallen mind. Evidentialists believe that somebody can (through arguments from fulfilled prophecy in miracle and particularly to the resurrection) come to the conclusion that Jesus was in fact the promised Christ and that his promises are true because he is God. This does not mean that they will necessarily become Christians. The will is mixed in here, and if the person does become a Christian, then it was God the Holy Spirit who accomplished that.
We do not believe it is inconsistent to believe, at one and the same time, that God converts the will, and that brute facts can be defended as open to all human minds. Our most common parallel is with engineering or science, with the belief that knowledge can be had of something in an objective way, and that religious facts are no different from nonreligious facts. If when Quirinius was governor of Syria, God became man and as John said, gave evidence of this-that he was who he said he was-then the distinction between "religious facts" and "non-religious facts" is gone. That is, when Christ became flesh, the evidence was made available to believer and unbeliever alike.
MR: Dr. Godfrey, does the presuppositionalist deny that the resurrection is a public event? Is this only accessible through the eyes of faith as an historical event? Where does all of this talk about evidences fit?
WRG: The presuppositionalist believes that there is real history, there are real facts, and there is real objectivity, but we are also concerned always to remember in the conversation that the unbeliever, as Romans 1 says, suppresses the truth in unbelief and that therefore one can't assume that this unbeliever is a perfectly neutral evaluator of these facts. Instead, he comes to evidence with a suppressing attitude towards the truth as it is in Christ. But that is not to say that the use of evidence becomes irrelevant, because we do still need to answer his assault on the gospel. We need to answer his honest questions about the gospel. As such, there are many points, I think, where we would agree with much of the work done by classical or evidentialist apologetics in presenting the evidence that supports the case of Christianity. We don't see commitment to Christianity as something irrational. There are abundant reasons to be a Christian. The problem is that those reasons are suppressed and warped by the unbeliever, and that always must be kept in mind in the apologetic process.
MR: One of the questions people often ask of confessional Lutherans and Calvinists is: "You sort of academic types, you Lutherans and Calvinists, are people who talk a lot about this book, that book, this author, and that author. You talk a lot about theories, but what about the people out there who actually need to hear some kind of defense of the Christian faith. They need to come in contact with Christianity somehow, but instead of finding some way of actually carrying out the apologetic task, aren't you guys always just arguing amongst yourselves?" Do you think that this is a valid criticism? Do you think that there is so much reflection on the mechanics of apologetics that we don't actually engage in reaching the lost world?
RCS: Certainly that can happen, but I think that argument is overstated. Look, for example, at the Reformed tradition. We have a dispute about what is the most consistent, biblical-theological method of apologetics. Is it presuppositional? Is it the classical approach? But we all consider this an intramural debate among ourselves. If it did take up all our time and we weren't engaged in the actual business of apologetics, that would be a scandal. I spend a whole lot of my waking hours speaking and writing in defense of Christianity from a classical model. And then there are the evidentialists…
You know, we have not distinguished among the different kinds of evidentialists, which might be helpful. Because there are some evidentialists who believe you can "evidence" a person into a converted state…
MR: Those are Arminians.
RCS: Yes, that's exactly right. Those of us with a classical viewpoint agree that evidence is very important. We also agree that empirical evidence is "probabilistic." Now that is one of the things that drives the presuppositionalists crazy. They say, "Wait a minute. We don't want to go out and tell people that God probably exists, even if we can say that the probability quotient is astronomical. We want to say that God certainly exists." So the presuppositionalist says, "Unless you start with God's existence as a presupposition, you will always end up with some element of doubt. You will always have less than one hundred percent certainty, so you're obviously giving too much away."
The classical apologist would respond that simply declaring that God is certainly true isn't an evidence for it. Yet we also differ from the evidentialist in this regard. We believe that the classical arguments for the existence of God are demonstrative and compelling-rationally compelling, not just probabilistic. We believe that it can be reduced to a formal argument that nobody can gainsay rationally. Now, on questions of historical matters, we would agree with the evidentialists that in any empirical arena one can never have inductively a hundred percent of the evidence in at any one time.
MR: So, Dr. Rosenbladt, if historical arguments are necessarily probabilistic, and if, as Dr. Sproul argues, reason can construct an irrefutable argument about the existence of God, what is wrong with starting with the doctrine of God? Your argument about working backwards from miracles, and especially the resurrection of Christ, ultimately tried to prove God's existence. What is then wrong with starting at the existence of God, instead of at some historical point?
RR: Well, I'm fascinated. I'd be glad to hear Dr. Sproul talk more about the validity of the proofs, which ones, and how. This is certainly fascinating to somebody who has a background in philosophy. But there are also some of us who have a background first in science, and if push comes to shove, especially in this era, and if one is forced to choose between rational consistency and facts, there are certain of us who will choose the facts first, and try to make the system or logical theory fit it later as best we can.
Dr. Sproul is exactly correct then in saying that this line of argument forces the evidentialist to be limited to probabilistic arguments. But we prefer to begin with the incarnate God, and to work from that back to an argument for the Father. We are thus limited to probability, but this is built in whenever you're taking your knowledge in through your senses.
MR: Dr. Godfrey, what is your concern with probabilistic arguments?
WRG: Well, it seems that we would want to begin with the Scriptures, and the certainty that we have of divine revelation in them. We are not willing at any point or in any way to set that certainty aside in the apologetic process. So, while we understand that the person to whom we are speaking doesn't accept the authority of Scriptures, or perhaps even the existence of God, nonetheless we think that in the apologetic process, we cannot set that aside as an issue to be tested or to be brought into uncertainty. We begin from a foundational statement that we are certain of the truths revealed in Scripture and that cannot be put on the table as something to be investigated like a cadaver. It remains the living truth from which we have to operate in the apologetic process.
MR: So what does a presuppositionalist say to someone who says, "That is circular reasoning. You're assuming your conclusion without proving it."
WRG: In the first place, one would have to go back and say why is it really that every one of us is a Christian? The presuppositional apologist reads Scripture to say that we have heard the voice of the Savior, we recognize the voice of God in the Scripture, and it is not because we've amassed a certain amount of evidence to reach a certain level of wisdom. But God has spoken to us through the Word and brought us to himself, and it is out of that recognition of God that we operate. If you want to call that a circle, that's okay, but I'm not sure that is the best way of looking at it. It is taking into account the reality of God's action in time in relation to his people.
RCS: An underlying theme in much of this discussion has to do with epistemology: How does a person know what he knows? How do we come to any kind of truth-to the truth of God, or the cross, or the Bible, or anything else? In terms of supremacies, we agree that there is a primacy to the Word of God-that is our highest authority.
But it is useful to draw a distinction between this supremacy and the actual human progress of knowledge, of knowing anything. Nobody starts with the Bible because you can't read a Bible when you're born, and you can't even understand it when someone is reading it to you when you're born. I think the question we are discussing here is not one of supremacy, but rather, "How does a human being progress in knowledge?" We would argue that the first step in any apologetic has to be self-awareness or self-consciousness.
Much of this goes back to Augustine, because he said that self-awareness and God-awareness are corollaries, they're reciprocal. He was saying that there is not a great time gap here, the instant you're aware of yourself as a self, you are aware of yourself as a finite, dependent being. So with self-awareness comes an immediate awareness of God. I think this is the insight that the presuppositionalists more than anything else are trying to honor and to protect. As Calvin said, you can't know who you are until you first know who God is, because a correct knowledge of who we are is dependent upon the knowledge of the One whose image we are. But, on the other hand, Calvin says paradoxically, you can't even know who God is until you are the one who is knowing something. So when we say that we start with self-awareness or self-consciousness, we are not saying that self-consciousness or self-awareness is an autonomous thing. It's simply a given, an immediate apprehension of consciousness.
When we say that there is a formal proof of the existence of God, my awareness of myself as a self is, as Auguste Comte (a French positivist philosopher, 1798-1857) called it, a "transcendental apperception." It's not an empirical perception; it is not something that we learn through the senses. It is indeed mental, so it is still in the formal arena. Now when classical apologists ask the question, we say, "If there is such a thing as a self, if I exist-as Descartes argued-what are the necessary conditions for that?" And we would say that, logically, the very awareness of existence demands what Aquinas called an idea of "necessary being"-necessary not only ontologically, but logically. We are saying that the idea of the self rationally compels the idea of God. If anything exists, something must be self-existent and eternal. There has to be being, and that's where we start philosophically to show the truth claims of the Bible. The Bible does assume the existence of God, but it comes long after God has already demonstrated himself to every human being through what we call general revelation, both empirically in the theater of nature and immediately in the human soul. God has revealed his existence both outside and inside of us. We are saying, "Look! God has revealed himself. Now here's what makes that revelation morally compelling." We would all agree that God's revelation is sufficient to leave every human being without an excuse at the bar of his judgment. Again, we're just arguing about where we start, what's the best strategy, what's the best methodology.
MR: Dr. Rosenbladt, why not start with the question of being and the question of the self? Why do you start at the resurrection?
RR: Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge that if there is a way to approach this matter through the ontological argument, certainly it must be along the lines that Dr. Sproul just mentioned. This must be said first.
But think back in the New Testament how Jesus set himself before his hearers. Take an example like the paralytic being lowered down through the roof in Mark's Gospel. The crowds were too thick for his friends to get him there on the cot, so they lowered him down through the roof. Jesus approaches him and his first words are, "Be of good cheer, my son. Your sins are forgiven." In the back of the room the Pharisees argue amongst themselves and grumble saying, "Who can forgive sins, but God only?" Jesus then asks a question that is many times badly answered in sermons: "Which is easier to say, 'your sins be forgiven' or 'rise, take up your bed and walk'?" The answer to that question is, it is easier to say, "your sins be forgiven." Why? Because it's invisible. Then he follows that by saying, "In order that you may know that the Son of Man does have the authority to forgive sins, I say to you, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk.'"
In other words, it seems to evidentialists more congenial to the New Testament to follow that sort of pattern and to be drawn to conclusions in that kind of a way. What does that mean? Well, it draws us continually outside of ourselves, out to the evidence. Now, again, if a person does become a Christian, it's a "no credit thing." That's God's sovereign act through the gospel-the Spirit acting through the gospel-but it seems to us that this is more biblically appropriate or fitting than the more philosophically sophisticated ways.
RCS: This is a perfect illustration of where the evidentialist school of thought differs from classical apologetics, in terms of the preferred starting point and procedure. I look at that same text and say, "Okay, the Pharisees are skeptics here. They need some apologetics. 'Who does this guy think he is? Only God can forgive sins.' Now, they've already been convinced of the reality of God, so the dispute here is not about God's existence. The dispute is about the identity of Jesus. And what does Jesus do? He performs a miracle."
Now what some of my evidentialist brothers tend to think is that the miracles of Jesus prove the existence of God. We think, on the other hand, that the function of miracle is God's attesting the identity of Jesus. He is authenticating Jesus as his Son, as a supreme agent of revelation. We think this because a miracle can't even be identified as a miracle until you first establish the existence of a transcendent, supernatural God…
WRG: And the presuppositionalist would point out that although the evidence is certain and clear and compelling, most of those who saw it didn't believe. Therefore, as an apologetic strategy, more is needed than simply saying, "This evidence is compelling." For presuppositionalists, we want to say at the beginning that just as God is clearly known in natural revelation so that those who reject it are without excuse, so too God is clearly known in special revelation and those who reject it are without excuse. When Moses stood at the burning bush he immediately recognized the presence of God in special revelation, and every human being where God specially reveals himself is obligated to recognize and receive that revelation. Now that doesn't stop the conversation. It doesn't mean that we cannot press the inconsistencies of unbelieving thought or that we cannot press the abundant evidence God has to himself. But in that whole process that wall of unbelief that we face cannot ever be forgotten.
RR: In regard to Dr. Sproul's point about the necessity of arguing for a transcendent, supernatural God prior to a particular miracle, everybody who argues empirically must have some sort of rationale about miracles. But evidentialists don't believe that the answer to this is to begin with the existence of God in order to explain miracles, but again to start from the bottom. Note the persistent difference in our methods between working from the top, down (in the classical model), and from the bottom, up (in evidentialism).
What the evidentialist argues is that-as in scientific observation-all events have a degree of unusualness to them, but it's going to be analog. It's going to be continuous. It's going to be like a rainbow. It isn't going to be binary as in a logical proof. Instead, you are going to have degrees of unusualness and those who are trained in science are used to this. You are going to have something that is a true anomaly and it will catch your notice. That is sort of an analogy to miracle-a very minuscule one. Then you work from there to how can you adequately explain this. And the evidentialist says that there are going to be some events that took place in history that you are going to be hard pressed to explain without recourse to a supernatural God who really is there.
RCS: Or by just rejecting them as bad reporting and…
RR: But you wouldn't actually do that, would you?
RCS: No I wouldn't, but…
WRG: Sort of the way that the average Lutheran explains away the average Pentecostal claims to miracles.
[Laughter]
MR: This was civilized up to a given point …
WRG: But we would disappoint everybody if we continued to be civilized.
MR: That's right. They expect less of us-always trying to live down to people's expectations. This has been a very helpful discussion. Many people have asked us questions about the differences among the various views. It is important for us to reiterate, just for clarification, that these issues are not divisive in the same ways that theological issues are divisive between, for instance, Reformation folk and non-Reformation folk. This is a discussion within the Reformation fold. Additionally, this is not a debate about whether or not you speak to non-Christians. It's not even a question of whether you use evidences. It's not even a question of whether you do appeal to people's presuppositions or whether people have presuppositions. It's not a debate over whether you can argue people into the kingdom of heaven or whether they need to be called by the Holy Spirit in order to understand the things of God….
RCS: It is so important when we have these discussions to understand what we're agreeing about and what we're disagreeing about. I've been invited to Westminster Seminary a few times to discuss these matters with the presuppositionalists, and I like to begin by asking this primary question, or this prior question: "What are we concerned about in these debates?"
And I hear the presuppositionalists saying to me, "R. C., we don't want to pretend there's a neutrality. We don't want to give one second's credibility to the guy who claims autonomy, that he could just make this decision on the basis of the strength of his own mind through naked, speculative reason. We are not Aristotelian and the God we're trying to defend is not the God of the philosophers. He's not an abstract unmoved mover, so we're talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This is one of the presuppositionalists' great concerns, and when they hear the classical apologists arguing in abstract terms using Aristotelian categories or Platonic categories, they're very much afraid that we're going to negotiate those non-negotiables. At this point, I really feel their pain. We do share these concerns.
Now let me tell you my concern. I don't want presuppositionalists to give the pagan an excuse morally for rejecting God's self-revelation by presenting an argument that they can see is circular, and therefore self-defeating. And I don't want you to give the impression to people that Christianity is a form of gnosticism-that you can't even have a cognitive knowledge of God apart from conversion. You can't have a saving knowledge of God apart from conversion. We all agree on that. But cognitive knowledge we can have apart from conversion.
This is a helpful way to begin to get a better understanding of each other. We say to each other, "What is it about my approach that you worried about?" Once we can try to find a way to recognize those concerns, then we can work together much better-because we all do have the same ultimate concern here.
RR: Amen to all of that. I suppose the evidentialists' concerns have to do with anything that presents Christianity as a closed shop, anything that implies that there is some secret key combination to get you into the knowledge that isn't available publicly. We tend to be most nervous about anyone saying anything which sounds like, "I've got it, and until you make the key move you won't. Once you believe, then you'll know."
But I agree with you, R. C., as we understand where we differ and what our concerns are, we become more aware of our common enterprise. None of us thinks that our arguments convert. Only the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit converts. Agreeing about this, let's talk then about our responsibility to give an account of the hope that we have.
