Introduction
I am not ashamed of the Gospel.[1]
The late Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias explains the motivation that led him to write his book, Can Man Live Without God?
I have heard [spiritual] questions that are deep and complex sometimes coming even from young teenagers, but the solutions I have heard most often offered to them are, quite frankly, superficial and simple. Many frustrated young people have expressed, “All I hear my parents or preachers saying is that the Bible says this is so and therefore it is so, and that is the only answer necessary to give. What they do not realize,” the young person passionately pleads, “is that when I begin my answer at school (or in the university) with ‘the Bible says,’ my answer is immediately dismissed as irrelevant, and in some instances I am torn to bits.”[2]
Noted former atheist turned Christian author, C.S. Lewis expressed a similar sort of veiled embarrassment at the notion that Christians rely solely on scripture in his book Mere Christianity.
I ended my last chapter with the idea that in the Moral Law somebody or something from beyond the material universe was actually getting at us. And I expect when I reached that point that some of you felt a certain annoyance. You may even have thought that I had played a trick on you—that I had been carefully wrapping up to look like philosophy what turns out to be one more ‘religious jaw.’ … This has not yet turned exactly into a ‘religious jaw.’ We have not yet got so far as the God of any actual religion, still less the God of that particular religion called Christianity…We are not taking anything from the Bible or the Churches; we are trying to see what we can find out about this Somebody on our own steam.[3]
Popular apologist Frank Turek travels to colleges and universities all over the country and explains how
We can deduce, without reference to the Bible, that there is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, moral, personal, intelligent Creator who created all things and sustains all things to this very moment.[4]
In this so-called scientific, post-Darwin age of skepticism and doubt, Christian apologists attempt to save souls with the same tools that atheists and pagans use to tear down the Gospel of God. Ashamed of the Word of God and not believing in the power of God, they instead turn to the tools of science and philosophy to draw men to Christ. They do this because when they rely solely on the Word of God, men laugh at them, mock them, and dismiss them. Not fearing the God who saved them, rather they fear the derision of their fellow mortals. Full of pride and the need to impress men with their intelligence and their wisdom, rather than the humility and desire to glorify the God who gave them life, they appeal to men on behalf of Christ with their reason and their evidence.
The ministry of apologetics “attempts to show that the gospel message is true in what it affirms.”[5] Apologists try to defend the truth of the Gospel against claims that God does not exist, that Christ was not an actual person, that he is not God and did not rise from the dead, and that the Bible is not a historically reliable document, to name a few. While we should know and understand the facts surrounding our religion, many of these apologists pivot from merely explaining the history of the Gospel and the reliability of scripture, to contradicting plain scriptural teaching and believing that these facts and philosophical arguments somehow create faith in the unbeliever. For example, instead of agreeing with Paul, who said that all men know that God exists and still deny his existence and refuse to give him glory (Romans 1.18-20), they agree with the atheists who claim that they do not believe he exists. The apologists then try to convince men with facts and logic of something they already know but simply deny. They believe that logical argument and scientific facts will convince men of the truth of the Gospel when Christ says, “The Spirit gives life” (John 6.63), and Paul says that God gives faith and repentance (Ephesians 2.8; Philippians 1.29; 2 Timothy 2.25).
Should we use every means available to us to draw men to God? Absolutely not. We must use the means God has prescribed in the manner he has prescribed. Paul said
Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? … So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.[6]
We do not appeal to men through reason and evidence because God does not save through reason and evidence but through his Word and through his preaching. God has not abandoned his Word because men mock us. God merely requires that we have greater courage and greater faith to boldly proclaim his Word that formerly met with far less contempt. God now requires greater humility so we withstand the mockery of the men of this modern age, not thinking of ourselves at all but of him and his glory. Apologists like Zacharias openly deride Scripture themselves when they describe scriptural solutions to spiritual questions as “superficial and simple.”
The Problem
Unfortunately for large swaths of the Church, apologetics, rather than scripture, has become the foundation for faith. Apologists teach that apologetics “strengthens the faith”[7] and that evidence and philosophy give men the necessary rationale for faith in Christ. The Bible does not teach this. Instead, scripture teaches that men must repent of their sin because they are condemned and eternal torment awaits them, but that Christ offers redemption. Scripture teaches that men already know that God exists, and that he will call them to account for the sins in their lives. Scripture teaches that men, dead in their sins, rebellious toward God, unwilling and unable to respond to the offer of salvation, require a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts before they can believe. In spite of all this, modern apologists believe that men are not sinners, that they do not need any work of the Spirit in their hearts, and that they can absolutely respond to the offer of Christ without any transforming work of the Spirit. They only need the right amount of persuasive reason and evidence to convince them to believe in Christ. These apologists do not believe that they must preach of sin and the eternal condemnation that awaits men. Instead, they teach that men should believe in Christ because God does exist, Christ did rise from the dead, the Bible is reliable and true, and that ultimately Christianity is reasonable and scientific. They teach the bare basics of knowledge that even demons possess and they call it “the Gospel,” and when men agree to their rational propositions and accept their factual statements, they call it “salvation.” They teach that if a man merely agrees with logical propositions and statements of fact, then he has been saved from eternal damnation. Instead of the Word of God leading to the work of God, they lead men to mental decisions and temporary convictions. This is the message they proclaim in churches and colleges everywhere.
If you’re a skeptic, please keep in mind that you should believe or disbelieve what we say because of the evidence we present, not because we have a certain set of religious beliefs. We are both Christians, but we were not always Christians. We came to believe through evidence.[8]
The agency or method or means that confers authority only does so by a greater authority. The king bears his own heir. The people elect their government. Science determines truth by the witness of the senses. If reason and science determine the truth of scripture, then they are the new authority. If reason and science are the authority, then reason and science have replaced the Word of God. If reason and science determine the truth of the Gospel and Scripture, then reason and science replace the authority of God himself. If reason and science give men faith in God’s Word, then reason and science replace the power of the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately [apologetics] isn't often spoken of in church and why isn't it spoken of in church? Because the seminaries are so far behind. The seminaries who teach the pastors are teaching pastors to preach to a generation that existed fifty years ago when you can open the Bible and people would go, “Oh the Bible! I guess I got to agree with the Bible.” Today it's completely against that so the seminaries are just now catching up to teach pastors that they've got to teach apologetics. That's what this is—evidence that it's true. So people who have questions can get them answered before they're going to believe what the Bible says.[9]
God does not use reason and evidence to change hearts and neither does he abandon his authority to reason and evidence. God himself changes hearts through the power of His Spirit in the preaching of His Word, and he tells us directly through his Word that his Word is true. He gives us his Spirit to confirm the truth of it. God is the authority. If he saves through his Spirit and His Word and not through the reason and evidence of men, then reason and evidence are not saving anyone, and all a man has if he believes himself saved by reason and evidence is a false redemption and a false faith.
The apologist believes that reason and evidence convinced him of the truth of Christ, and that he can assume his experience as truth rather than scripture. Since reason and evidence led him to Christ, reason and evidence can lead everyone to Christ. He ignores scripture which teaches that God himself opens blind eyes, gives life to dead hearts, and grants repentance and faith to rebellious sinners.
The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Spirit gives life.
He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as Prince and Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
If perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.
For to you it has been granted, not only to believe in Him, but to suffer for His sake.[10]
In straying from the simple truth of the Bible, these men have created a separate gospel. In abandoning the truths that men are sinners in the heart, completely unable to believe in Jesus, that they need a work of God before they believe, that they must hear from the truth of God’s word before God will work in their hearts, they lead men away from salvation and condemn not only the hearers of their false gospel, but themselves.
What is the creed of the apologist? Reason and evidence. Does that sound familiar? It should, for the atheist shares the same creed. Atheists believe in the things they see and the philosophy they understand. Atheists believe in reason and evidence.
Faith is trusting in what you have good reasons to believe is true. That's what it means to actually be a Christian who is following reason …[11]
Our faith rests on the solid foundation of sound reasoning and scientific evidence! Is anything more sure than the reason and science of men? Read what Christ says:
Everyone who hears these words of mine, and does not act upon them, will be like the foolish man, who build his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and winds blew, and burst against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.[12]
Christians found their faith on the Word of God, by the witness of the Holy Spirit, not on any philosophical argument or any fact discovered by scientific observation. Turek and other apologists believe that we must follow the dictates of reason and in turn, reason leads us to God and Christ. They believe that scientific evidence leads us to faith. If they merely present the unregenerate unbeliever with enough rational argument and scientific evidence, he will come to Christ. If he understands that the internal morality of men and the facts of the created universe speak to the existence of God, the claims of Christ and the truth of the resurrection, he will be saved. In this, they deny the corruption of sin and the witness of scripture. They deny that sin dwells in our hearts and ruins our relationship to God. They deny that sin corrupts the mind and the heart, including the thoughts, desires, and intentions of the heart. They deny that sin replaces reason. They deny that sin desires to rebel against God, to blaspheme his name, and deny his existence. Did Aristotle reason himself to Christ? Or Plato or Marcus Aurelius? Did a single Egyptian, who witnessed the miracles of the plagues, come to faith in Yahweh? Did the Pharisees, who witnessed the works of Christ, reason themselves to faith?
When these apologists proclaim a false gospel, they give men a message that does not save. Consequently, men and women who think themselves true believers inevitably fall away. Jesus said that even when we preach the Word of God, men often do not receive it with true faith.[13] How then can the unbeliever receive the Gospel with faith when these apologists proclaim the saving power of reason and evidence rather than the Word of God?
While some of these men claim to leave the fruit of their labors in the hands of God, they all attribute too much power to their reasoning, evidence, knowledge, and intelligence. For example, Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ, the bestselling apologetic book on Amazon, references his education and journalistic experience as some kind of validation of his investigation into Jesus Christ. He says,
In this quest for truth, I’ve used my experience as a legal affairs journalist to look at numerous categories for proof—eyewitness evidence, documentary evidence, corroborating evidence, rebuttal evidence, scientific evidence, psychological evidence, and yes, even fingerprint evidence. ... I applied the training I had received at Yale Law School as well as my experience as legal affairs editor of the Chicago Tribune.[14]
He likens his investigation to a murder trial, as if Christ is on trial and we are the jury who weighs the evidence for and against him. When he was an atheist, “there was far too much evidence that God was merely the product of wishful thinking,” and for him, “the case was closed.”[15] He says that his investigation into Jesus followed “the same classifications that you’d encounter in a courtroom.”[16] “If you were selected for a jury in a real trial,” he says, you would be required to “rigorously subject the evidence to your common sense and logic.”[17] Strobel also says that the Holy Spirit “nudged” him in the same direction that the “strong current of evidence” and the “torrent of facts was flowing.”[18] The Spirit of God needs a Yale-educated journalist to investigate the evidence and acquit Christ of the charge of fraud.
William Lane Craig, a Christian philosopher whose works attempt to reconcile Christianity with either evolution (science) or free will (philosophy), believes that the Church’s influence has waned due to a lack of intellectualism. We just aren’t logical enough. He quotes Charles Malik, who bemoans the absence of a prominent evangelical scholar whom “the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics world might quote … as a normative source.”[19] He continues to quote Malik who says that philosophy is “the most important domain for thought and intellect,” and that greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ requires a year studying the likes of “the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years poring intensely over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle.”[20] He quotes early twentieth-century scholar J. Gresham Machen who claimed that the “resistless force of logic” has reduced Christianity to nothing more than a “harmless delusion” and a “logical absurdity” in the eyes of many.[21]
While philosopher Douglas Groothuis believes that evangelism requires “the in-filling and direction of the Holy Spirit,”[22] and that “the results [of apologetics and evangelism must be] left to God’s sovereignty,”[23] he also believes that “conversion is necessarily intellectual and involves cognitive assent to propositions taken to be objectively true.”[24] He says that Christians must demonstrate the truth and rationality of Christianity using objective criteria, and without this, “there is no apologetic, but only preaching,”[25] as if preaching is somehow less effective and less desirable than apologetics. He maintains that Christians must use apologetics as “pre-evangelism,”[26] helping the ineffective Word of God along in its task of saving souls. Ultimately Groothuis believes that we evangelize by presenting Christianity as the most reasonable of the many religious options.
The best method for this holy endeavor [of missions] is to present Christianity as a hypothesis that passes rational testing better than rival worldviews.[27]
All of these self-proclaimed apologists believe this, to one degree or another.
The Solution
Our faith does indeed have evidence and it is indeed rational, but it is more than rational. It is spiritual. God is a spirit and he is beyond the rational and the material. Science and philosophy add nothing to our knowledge of God that scripture does not teach us. They are utterly redundant. The rational and the material do not support the spiritual. God does not stand upon the sand of reason and evidence, and neither does his Word or his salvation. Christ did not say we worship God in reason or through evidence.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.[28]
We worship God, we know God, we understand and believe in God, through spiritual not natural means. Even when Christ mentions truth, he does not mean truth disseminated by rational or scientific means, but truth revealed by the Spirit of God. We are not atheists who trust only in what we see. We are not pagans who reason their own truth from their sinful hearts. We trust in Scripture as God reveals it.
These apologists detest the idea of “blind faith,” as if there is such a thing as “seeing faith.” This is a contradiction. Faith that sees its object, that understands it and tests it through science, observation, and rational and philosophical examination is not faith. We do not need faith if we understand something, if we see it and know how it works. We do not need faith in the sun when we see the sun and understand its effects on the world. We do not need faith in gravity when we drop an object and we see it fall to the ground. The apologists detest blind faith because the world detests it and they cannot bear the weight of the ignominy and humiliation of testifying to the truth of a God that no one can see or understand. They refuse to withstand the mockery of blind, ignorant, blasphemous men who despise their Creator and Savior, so they take whatever steps possible to minimize this mockery and use the same tools and wisdom as the men who hate God and curse his name.
But faith is absolutely blind. It is the opposite of seeing and understanding; it is the opposite of rigorous scientific observation and testing, of logical and philosophical examination. We do not trust in God because we see him, or because we understand what he does or who he is. We believe in God because he has chosen us, given us life, and created faith within us. None of this constitutes “sight.” One apologist has said, “I am a Christian because it is evidentially true,”[29] but this is patently false. God births each Christian. God is the cause of every believer, not reason, and not evidence. God opens the eyes of blind men. He gives life to dead men. He does not present himself to the rational or the scientifically minded and wait for them to believe in him, and neither do men save themselves when they encounter correct logical or factual evidence. One sinner does not encounter the Gospel and claim Christ by his rational mind when some other less rational sinner rejects Christ. Men learn of the world by reason and evidence but they do not reach any knowledge of the Most High through these. Men do their best to understand the universe through reason and evidence but they in no way understand the Creator of the universe through reason or evidence. No worm crawling around in a worm-farm reasons himself to understanding the human who rules his tiny worm-world. Men understand and evaluate the words of other men through reason and evidence, but in no way do they understand or evaluate the truth of God’s word through reason or evidence. God reveals himself to men and he does it through scripture by the power of his Spirit. Everything else reeks of atheism and paganism.
Faith is blind because our faith does not rest on evidence or philosophy but because it rests on God whom we cannot see and we do not completely understand. Yet our faith is not blind as faith in some fable or myth. Our religion is historical and rational and we do not believe in a fiction. As Peter said
For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.[30]
But nothing that the apostles witnessed provides the foundation for our faith. No miracle has created faith in any believer nor has any rational argument manifested any work of the Holy Spirit in any believer. Many men and women witnessed the same Christ perform the same miracles and still did not believe. Many atheists and pagans have considered many rational arguments for Christianity over the centuries. Many have even diligently studied scripture, reading and trying to understand the primary source, yet have come away without faith. How do we explain this? Why do some believe without the evidence and many fail to believe even when seriously considering it? We believe because God wills it so.
When we search the Bible, we can either assume beforehand that we know and understand enough within ourselves to understand scripture, the world, and ourselves, and then attempt to unravel the mysteries of God, or we can assume that we know nothing at all, and admit that we need God to reveal to us who he is, what he does, and what he desires. If we assume that we already understand who God is, how the world works, and who we are, then what more is there for us to learn? But if we assume that we understand nothing, only then will God reveal to us the mysteries of his world, his desires, his nature, and ourselves.
To this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at my word.[31]
God saves us, he teaches us, and he keeps us in him. He does none of this through apologetics. He does none of this through reason, evidence, knowledge, facts, science, or philosophy. He saves through his Word by the power of His Spirit. All is of Him and nothing is of us, or our science, or our philosophy, or our facts, etc. Reason, science, and philosophy do not validate his Word or his existence. They possess no greater authority than God or his Word. If we believe this, we ruin the Gospel, we preach lies, we do not lead any to Christ, and we create false believers. This kind of apologetics has become an abomination. Consider the words of Cornelius Van Til:
Christ must be the ultimate authority over our philosophy, our reasoning, and our argumentation—not just at the end, but at the beginning, of the apologetical endeavor…Our apologetical method, not merely our apologetical conclusions, should be controlled by the word of Jesus Christ…If the apologist treats the starting point of knowledge as something other than reverence for God, then unconditional submission to the unsurpassed greatness of God’s wisdom at the end of his argumentation does not make sense…The word of God would necessarily (logically, if not personally) remain subordinate to that autonomous, final standard.[32]
[1] Romans 1.16
[2] Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God?, Word Publishing, 1994, page 13.
[3] C.S. Lewis, The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classic, HarperSanFrancisco, 2002, page 23.
[4] Cross Examined, “I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist LIVE from Louisiana Christian University - Part 2,” published March 29, 2022. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11k-VkNiIXc
[5] Clark Pinnock, quoted in Evidence that Demands a Verdict, © 2017 Josh McDowell Ministry, Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, page xxxii.
[6] Romans 10.13,14,17
[7] Cross Examined, “Why do we need arguments when we have the Scriptures?”, published August 24, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VxVw2d2uYI
[8] Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I don’t have enough faith to be an Atheist, Copyright 2004 by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, published by Crossway Books, page 14.
[9] Cross Examined, “Why Don’t Churches Teach Evidence for Christianity?”, published October 24, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QahH6Tw-ejg
[10] Psalm 146.8; John 6.63; Acts 5.30,31; 2 Timothy 2.25; Philippians 1.29.
[11] A tweet by Frank Turek. https://twitter.com/DrFrankTurek/status/1504880356960477190. Incidentally he adds “following scripture” but more revealingly he adds it second in the list of what we are to follow: reason, then the scriptures, but only the scriptures because reason proves their truth.
[12] Matthew 7.26-27
[13] Matthew 13.1-23.
[14] Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, © 2016 by Lee Strobel, published by Zondervan, pages 14-15.
[15] Ibid, 14.
[16] Ibid, 15.
[17] Ibid, 16.
[18] Ibid, 290.
[19] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, © 1984 Moody Press, page xii.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid, xiii.
[22] Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, © 2011 Douglas Groothuis, published by InterVarsity Press, page 650.
[23] Ibid, 29.
[24] Ibid, 39.
[25] Ibid, 51.
[26] Ibid, 28.
[27] Ibid, 647.
[28] John 4.24.
[29] Melissa Dougherty, “When a Christian leaves the Faith: My Thoughts”, published June 1, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RluEHxI0Gv8.
[30] 2 Peter 1.16
[31] Isaiah 66.2
[32] Cornelius Van Til, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, edited by Greg L. Bahnsen, ©1998 by the Cornelius Van Til Committee, published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, pages 2-3.
