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EASTER EVENING 1999 I mentioned this morning my reading in the apologetics of the resurrection, the reasoned arguments advanced by Christians through the ages for the historicity of the biblical accounts of Christ's rising from the dead. It is an extraordinary claim we Christians make, to be sure. Something utterly contrary to our own experience and that of our contemporaries. A great many smart people don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Do we Christians have sound reasons for believing that he did? We don't talk about apologetics very often in church and that for several reasons. Preaching here is based on the consecutive exposition of the Bible and, frankly, the Bible does not engage very much in apologetics. Apologetics is what Christians do on behalf of the Bible and its veracity, not what the Bible itself does very much of. What is more apologetics, by and large, is for non-Christians and we are mostly Christians here on any given Sunday. (Though Reformers thought the main benefit of apologetic arguments was for the encouragement of the faith of Christians. And it is for this purpose that I raise the subject tonight.) There is a value in our considering these issues from time to time and there is no better time than Easter Sunday, when the Christian church admits to the world that it suspends its entire belief on its certainty that Jesus rose from the dead now some two thousand years ago. Can a reasoned defense be given for that confidence? You are aware, perhaps, some of you are no doubt aware, that Christians, even Reformed Christians have long argued about apologetics, about how the defense of our faith is to be made, about what apologetic approach is most faithful to the Bible and to the gospel. The ordinary believer in our churches may well be forgiven if he comes to think that these debates are little more than tempests in teapots. But the dispute is taken very seriously by some. If you read the literature you will find smart Christians arguing whether some of the classic arguments for the truth of our Faith are valid or not; whether appealing to the reasoning of unbelievers invites them to think they are free to sit in judgment on the Word of God; whether certain kinds of arguments leave us with a message that is only "probably" true; whether presupposing the Christian faith amounts to arguing in a circle, and so on. Dr. van Til, of Westminster Theological Seminary, did not like the way Dr. Gordon Clark did apologetics and kept him out of the OPC as a result. Dr. van Til didn't like the way that Francis Schaeffer did apologetics and once wrote a syllabus detailing his errors, even though Dr. Schaeffer was certainly indebted to Dr. van Til for many features of his thought. Dr. Schaeffer, though an alumnus of Westminster Seminary, used to recommend Covenant Seminary to young men at L'abri who asked him where they should train for the ministry, in large part because Dr. van Til was at Westminster. The Ligonier men, R.C. Sproul and the late John Gerstner, didn't agree with Dr. van Til either and in their writings on the subject go out of their way to chart a different course. John Frame of Westminster Seminary in California has written a new study of van Til's apologetics in which he tries to bring the two sides a bit closer together. His book has been rather bitterly attacked by some stalwart students and supporters of the late Dr. van Til. I tell you straightout, if you read all of this literature, you would probably still think it was a tempest in a teapot. Actually, I do myself. Many of the arguments that travel back and forth concern not theology -- all these debaters are Calvinists -- but philosophy, a subject concerning which we can be much less dogmatic and assured. An example would be the problem presuppositionalism -- the views of Dr. Clark, or Dr. van Til, -- has with the composition of the Bible. If you say, as these men say, that we must begin with the assumption that the Bible is the Word of God and the truth about reality and then argue that, in fact, apart from that assumption, no one can justify knowledge of any kind, or justice, or morality, or meaning in life -- all of which I happen to think is absolutely true, by the way -- how do we get round the problem of determining the biblical text. It is all very well to say that the Bible is our presupposition and that we prove it by demonstrating that it is the only foundation for what everyone knows is true, however unwilling he may be to admit it. But what is the Bible? Does it contain the long ending of Mark; the account of the woman taken in adultery; this word or that phrase in verse after verse? Well, these people answer those questions in exactly the same way anyone else does -- by appealing to textual evidence, weighing the likelihood of various readings based on the evidence of the manuscripts, and so on. But then the Bible is not your presupposition. It is not the first thing you know. You are making empirical, scientific decisions about what the Bible contains in order to determine what the Bible is, so that you can presuppose it as the foundation of all your knowledge. I've put that problem to van Tilians and they have admitted that it is a problem; to Dr. Clark himself and he just brushed it off. But it is a perfect example of the sort of ambiguities that we have to struggle with in philosophical theology, which is another way to describe apologetics. I don't think there is an entirely satisfactory solution to that problem. We are bumping into our finitude. Believe me, this is nothing compared to the problems unbelieving philosophy faces at every turn. What is more, you are, as I am, more likely to approve of the apologetics of someone who has actually gone out and mixed it up with the world and been used by the Lord to bring unbelievers to faith in Christ, than of those who have a very elaborate theory of the defense of the faith but don't actually defend it to anyone except other Christians who read their books. This has always been the burden that Dr. van Til's consistently Reformed apologetics (that is what its defenders think of it) has had to bear. No one has actually yet made it work in the marketplace! Without a doubt the two most able and effective apologists for Christianity in the second half of the 20th century were C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. It is not terribly difficult for other philosophers and Christian apologists to find problems in their arguments here and there, but the world as well as the church listened to them, not because they fashioned a new set of arguments that no one had ever heard before, but because they made the old case for Christianity so clearly, used language so effectively, wrote so winsomely and persuasively. Another able apologist has been Josh McDowell with his book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict. It is true that some of his arguments are simplistic and that a number of them would look less impressive when subjected to sophisticated criticism, but, what he says in his books, by and large, is true and he wrote clearly and passionately and the Lord used his arguments to win many hearts to Christ. Some people, even from the Christian side, even from the Reformed side, will snipe at the works of these men as defective in this way or that, but it reminds me of something Charles Spurgeon said when a young ministerial student complained to him of the evangelistic technique of one Dr. Alexander. Spurgeon replied, "Well, tell me, how do you do evangelism?" "Well," the student replied, "I don't really do much evangelism." "Well," said Spurgeon, "I certainly like the way Dr. Alexander does evangelism much better than the way you do not do evangelism." A.N. Wilson, the British author, journalist, and literary critic said that reading Lewis convinced him not to be a Christian. He thought Lewis' case for Christianity simplistic. But, his criticism of Lewis' arguments was really much less impressive than he thought it was. In any case, the Bible makes it clear that the truth is not enough to convince an unbelieving mind, unless the Spirit of God is at work to give illumination and understanding to that mind. Apologetics is the reasoned defense of the Christian faith. Evangelism is the proclamation and explanation of the Christian gospel. Grace, however, is still necessary to produce belief. So, all of that to indicate that apologetics is not an exact science. It is not as purely a biblical discipline as theology. Different people do it different ways, some better and some worse. Indeed, some people need apologetics of one kind, others need another. Some people, by reason of education, background, temperament, would be utterly unimpressed by Josh McDowell's arguments but would have much more trouble dispensing with the arguments of John Polkinghorne's The Faith of a Physicist or the philosophical arguments of Alvin Plantinga. But there are many more who would find Plantinga incomprehensible, but Josh McDowell clear and convincing. But, the fact is, whatever the method, we know we are to engage in a reasoned defense of our faith and of its historical claims, because we see that being done in the Bible itself. Indeed, Paul does it here. He uses two arguments that quickly became part of the apologetic weaponry of the church. 1. He argues from the fulfillment of prophecy in vv. 22-23. 2. And, in v. 26, he uses a form of the argument from history. Christians have been using these same arguments ever since. Mike Pfefferle reminded us of the conversion story of Richard Ganz, a former Jewish psychiatrist and now Reformed Presbyterian minister who became a Christian at L'abri in Holland. One day someone read Isaiah 53 in his hearing. He didn't know the Bible and so didn't know that Isaiah was being read. He had replied to the effect that such a passage didn't prove anything because anyone could describe and interpret the Lord's death that way after the fact. It didn't prove anything. But the fellow handed him the Bible and showed him that what had been read was from the prophet Isaiah, who wrote 700 years before the birth of Christ. The argument from fulfilled prophecy was powerful proof for him and he believed. Many more use the historical arguments, especially when defending the Christian claim that Christ rose from the dead. I read some of those arguments over again this week and was, once again, impressed by them. Perhaps I was especially impressed by the fact that unbelievers feel compelled to account for the same evidence without accepting supernatural Christianity. Almost everyone accepts the force of the arguments that are typically raised in defense of the resurrection. 1. How else could a band of simple, dispirited people collect themselves after the death of their Master and become a force that would turn the world upside down, and turn it upside down precisely with the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead? In A.D. 29 there was no such thing as a Christian church. A few years later there were Christians in every part of the Roman world. 2. How do we explain the Christian religion, its high ethics, its explanatory power, its spiritual authority, its book, its weekly Sunday, if Christ died on the cross and, defeated, remained dead? Is the Sermon on the Mount the rantings of a delusional young man; the machinations of a fraud, a religious charlatan? 3. How do we account for the Apostle Paul and his teaching: no one has been able successfully to persuade large numbers of people that his claims were simply a fraud or that they were the result of a hallucination. Here we have, without doubt, one of the most powerful intellects and influential minds in the history of the world. A man who was himself completely skeptical of Christian claims and a persecutor of the church. He says that his views changed as a result of an encounter with the risen Christ. 4. How come the account of the resurrection does not bear any of the marks of invention and is, in fact, loaded with the characteristics of history and truth-telling. The prominence of women witnesses, for example, goes a long way to debunk the claim that the story is a fabrication. No one, in that culture, wanting people to take seriously his account would make women so prominent among the witnesses. Remember, there were many Jews who expected a resurrection at the end of the age, but no one, including Jesus' disciples, expected one in the middle of history! 5. And how unlikely is it that the Christian message, which was a specific claim about an event in recent history, should spread at a rate so alarming to its opponents and they be unable to do anything to stop it, when the new movement had for its leadership a few fishermen, a tax collector, and some other assorted individuals of no particular consequence? "These things were not done in a corner!" It was this sort of argument, arguments from history, that brought an English attorney, by the name of Albert Henry Ross, who wrote under the pseudonym of Frank Morrison, to change his mind altogether about the historicity of the resurrection. He grew up, in the early years of this century, in an educated culture that no longer gave credit to the historic claims of Christianity. His day, in that respect, was not so unlike our own. Today 45% of American students entering college think that the Bible is the Word of God, but only 11% still think that when they graduate. But it was also a culture of wide historical learning and critical sophistication. A writer by avocation, Ross decided to write a book about Jesus, a book that would deal only with that part of the gospel history that a modern mind could believe with confidence. That, he thought, would be Jesus' teaching, not his miracles and certainly not his resurrection. But in doing the research for his book his mind was changed and the book he eventually wrote, entitled Who Moved the Stone? became one of the great defenses of the historicity of the resurrection written in the 20th century. As he put it, he came to realize that, "the whole [narrative of the resurrection] reads like an actual, unvarnished, and even naive transcript from real life." And, then, reflecting on the history of early Christianity, he wrote:
I just want to remind you, this evening, and encourage you that your faith, while you don't hold it primarily because of historical evidence, is founded upon historical evidence that deserves very real respect. Even the most skeptical scholars feel obliged to account for the facts in some way and their explanations are contrived, unconvincing, and, in many cases, amount to no explanation at all. Most of them, indeed, are the same arguments that doubters used in the early centuries. The theory that the disciples had hallucinations was proposed by Celsus in the early third century, and it is no more convincing today. Indeed, it is hard to argue with Polkinghorne when he writes, "It seems to me entirely possible that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead we would never have heard of him." [121] Indeed, such is the historical evidence that in the 20th century we find writers, even some Jewish writers, who accept the fact of the resurrection while refusing still to embrace Christianity. You remember the famous scene in Lewis' Surprised by Joy in which he describes the impact on him of an atheist friend at college who, though he showed no interest in embracing Christianity, admitted that, "Rum thing, it really did look as if Jesus did rise from the dead." But it is even a more striking admission coming from the mouth of a Jew who does not believe in Christianity. Geza Vermes, the famous scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, wrote:
The orthodox Jew, Pinchas Lapide, concedes even more. He explicitly accepts the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, though he does not, therefore, accept Christ as the Messiah. Such is the strength of the evidence, on the one hand, and of the unbelief of the human heart on the other. We are just scratching the surface. There are a great many more arguments for our faith. Arguments of the presuppositional kind -- that without the truth of Christianity, people cannot justify even their own unbelief; arguments of the philosophical kind (the ontological, cosmological, moral arguments that have been offered in a bewildering variety of forms through the ages -- and are being contested again today: Richard Dawkins [The Blind Watchmaker] vs. Phillip Johnson et al.; Ravi Zacharias' restatement of the moral argument, without Christianity life loses its meaning and everyone knows it because everyone acts as if the implications of Christianity were true, even while claiming not to believe Christianity itself!). And there are still other arguments. The argument from experience (changed lives) and one that I read just recently. It might be called the "moral improvement" argument. I believe in Christianity because, unquestionably that belief makes me what everyone knows to be a better man. And, when I am not good, I know it is precisely because I am not practicing my Christian faith, I am not being true to what it teaches and requires, nor to the example of my Savior. In his book, Why Believe?, the British scholar, Rendle Short, recollects that in his Voyage of the Beagle Darwin describes in dismal detail the misery and low condition and outright wickedness of the people of Tierra del Fuego. But, when Darwin returned to that country many years later, after the teaching of the Bible had spread through the island, the change for the better was so marked that he not only testified to his admiration and amazement, but became a regular subscriber to the Missionary Society! The impact of Christianity didn't make Darwin a Christian -- grace alone could have done that. But the visible impact of its goodness could be seen even by the representative unbeliever of that day. We will leave it there. It is perhaps especially important for us all to be somewhat familiar with these arguments, for apologetics are very necessary today. Without them we may win the occasional convert, but we will lose the culture as a whole (as in France, e.g.). Our numbers will grow proportionally smaller and our influence disappear. Don't think it a small thing to defend the faith as a philosophy of life, as an account of history. That defense is what makes the gospel plausible in a culture! And, tonight especially, don't think it all that difficult a thing either. The reasons to believe are manifold and strong -- so strong that they stand the test today after a two thousand year effort on the part of the Devil's brightest scholars to prove them unconvincing. |
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