A Training in Ministry Course

TRAINING IN MINISTRY

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH:

APOLOGETICS IN ACTION

Don Fairbairn

A 12 lesson study of Christian apologetics to equip learners to defend and share their faith in an intellectual environment.

To purchase copies of this book, or its Leader’s Guide, log on to:

TRAININGINMINISTRY.COM Locate the title, then click on: 2 INTRODUCING I-TIM The Institute for Training In Ministry (I-TIM) is a church-based ministry which will help pastors “equip the saints for the work of ministry”. It begins with Christianity 101, the basic discipleship course, and builds from there, including the training of pastors. I-TIM courses all have a related practicum. Ministry assignments help assure that learning translates into ministry—“for building up the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12) Your possession of this I-TIM book is a good indicator that God is calling you to serve our Lord. His commission to his followers is very clear: “make disciples”. Disciples are learners, who learn from him, do his bidding, and make still more disciples.

HOW I-TIM STARTED. I-TIM began with a vision on the part of missionary educators Bob and Maryann Samms. They returned from the Philippines in 1979 with a vision to help churches equip people for ministry. God blessed, and courses were developed, tested, and used in the Denver area. God has now given us a fuller vision of I-TIM—wherein this ministry training program is made available to any local church. These churches can, if they choose, adapt the course content, design their own covers, and even choose their own “on demand” publisher. (We recommend The Book Patch.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Don Fairbairn holds an A.B. degree in English Literature from Princeton University and an MDiv. from Denver Seminary, and a PhD. from the University of Cambridge. He has been on the international staff of Campus Crusade for Christ and has served as an apologist/evangelist in Soviet Georgia. He is currently Professor of Historical Theology at Erskine Theological Seminary.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION USED. Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS

How to Use Training In Ministry Courses 4 Curriculum of TIM Courses 5 Introduction to Apologetics 1 Why Apologetics? 8 2 Evaluating Claims to Truth 17 The Defensive Task: Demonstrating the Truth of Christianity 3 The Historical Reliability of the Bible 27 4 The Existence of God 36 5 The Nature of God 45 6 Jesus as God and Man 54 7 The Historicity of Christ’s Resurrection 64 8 Responding to Common Objections about Christianity 75 The Offensive Task: Responding to Other World-views 9 The Absence of God: Atheistic Materialism 85 10 The Absence of Absolutes: Relativism 95 11 “God” as an Impersonal Force: Pantheism 105 12 Putting it all Together: Apologetics in Action 115

4 FOR STUDY LEADERS

Welcome to this significant opportunity to be involved in Jesus’ Great Commission to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:18-20). To help you move forward, you are encouraged to:

1. Download a free copy of “DESIGN YOUR EQUIPPING MINISTRY” from: TrainingInMinistry.com. Ch. titles in this key resource are:

 What in the World is the Church Doing?  The Biblical Mandate to Equip  Lay Ministry in the Mirror of History  How to Implement Change  How Adults Learn Effectively  How to Lead Effective Discussions  How to Develop Your Equipping Ministry 2. Download the free Leader’s Guide for this course. (Note: this course does not currently have a Leader’s Guide. But for ideas on how to lead the weekly group session, you can down-load one from another TIM course. This guide will be of help to you as you lead each weekly group session. Educational Philosophy of TIM Courses Every TIM course incorporates a head, heart, and hands approach to learning. Head represents content to be learned, heart the application of this truth to one’s own life, and hands, involvement in ministry through using the course content. Your Time Commitment As the Group Study Leader, you should spend adequate time: 1) Preparing the workbook lesson—just as thoroughly as you expect your learners to prepare. 2) Reading the Leader’s Guide and marking those questions and other items you want to emphasize during the group session. The Weekly Group Meeting This 90 minute weekly meeting should feature a discussion of the lesson, focusing on integrative and application type questions found in the Leader’s Guide. It should consist of an hour of interaction with the lesson, as well as time for prayer and group fellowship. Ministry Involvement This ministry opportunity should be appropriate to the gifts and ministry experiences of each learner; result in their growth; and “build up” the Body of Christ. 5 CURRICULUM OF TIM COURSES

TRAINING IN MINISTRY courses will enable you to “equip the saints for the work of ministry and so build up the body of Christ.” Grounding Courses

CHRISTIANITY 101 is designed to disciple new Christians, either in small groups, or one-to-one. Application: Learners will lead another person through this course.

A PANORAMA OF THE BIBLE features easy-to-remember visuals for each of the 12 Bible periods. Learners will thrill to find that they can remember the major themes of Bible content and message. Application: With the aid of the Leader’s Guide, learners will lead another person, or a small group through this course.

TRUTH THAT TRANSFORMS will provide learners with a solid foundation in the major doctrines of Scripture, with an emphasis on practical applications. Application: Learners will, with the aid of the Leader’s Guide, lead another individual, or group of people through this course.

A PANORAMA OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY provides a “big picture” view of the Church from the 1st through the 20th century. It also emphasizes practical lessons we can apply to our own ministry. Application: Learners will teach this course to another person or group. Growing Courses

WELCOME TO YOUR MINISTRY teaches the important truth that God has called and gifted all believers for ministry and challenges them to get involved in some basic ministries in the church. Application: Learners will commit to getting additional training for ministry, and getting involved in it.

HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR SPIRITUAL GIFTS will provide believers with a better understanding of which spiritual gifts they may have, and how to use their gifts in service for Christ. Application: A short-term assignment will be given, wherein learners use one of their gifts in an approved ministry.

LEARNING TO SERVE: JESUS AS ROLE MODEL teaches the servant life-style of Jesus in many ministry related contexts, and helps learners put this into practice in their ministry. Application: Learners will be given a ministry role wherein they demonstrate the servant-leader style of Jesus.

6 GOING Courses

YOUR MINISTRY OF PRAYER studies prayer in Scripture, and will help learners become involved in a significant ministry of prayer. Application: Participants will commit to a ministry of prayer as suggested in the course content.

OUTREACH AS A LIFE-STYLE will train lay people to develop friendships with people, leading to sharing Christ with them. Application: Learners will practice this personal evangelism approach in their lives of sharing their faith.

YOUR MINISTRY AT HOME provides practical principles in how to establish and maintain a truly Christian home. Application: Applying the principles week by week within the learner’s family, including being consistent in reading the weekly schedule of verses and journaling based on these verses.

TOUCHING TOMORROW BY TEACHING CHILDREN is a superb tool to train more workers to serve in the exciting ministry of teaching children. Application: Teaming up with an experienced teacher as an assistant for one quarter or more.

CHRISTIANITY IN THE WORKPLACE relates faith to practical and ethical issues on the job. Its focus is how to be like Christ in the work world. Application: Learners will apply these biblical principles to their areas of work.

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH is a course on Christian apologetics, which will equip learners to defend and share their faith, especially among intellectual unbelievers. Application: Learners will engage in an effective ministry of defending and sharing their faith.

A SURVEY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT is a 12-lesson survey of the New Testament. It includes outlines of each book, background information, and questions for individual study. Application: Learners will be able to lead Bible studies in any New Testament book.

HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE will give students an in-depth exposure to the inductive method of Bible study and help them develop their own outlines for leading Bible studies. Application: Based on their study, learners will lead 10 Bible studies in the book of Ephesians.

YOUR MINISTRY OF LEADERSHIP will encourage, equip, and train Christian men and women for increased effectiveness in leadership. Application: Learners will demonstrate the skills taught in this course in an assigned ministry position.

INTRODUCTION TO APOLOGETICS

8 Chapter 1

WHY APOLOGETICS?

“Do you mind if I sit here?” Jenny dropped her lab coat on the back of a chair, took a seat in the cafeteria with a group of her colleagues, and picked up the thread of the small talk as she began eating her lunch. “Say Jenny,” David spoke up during a lull in the conversation, “I heard that you became one of those born-again Christians a couple of months ago.” “Well, yes, I have become a Christian. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.” “You know, it always seemed to me that Christianity was just a bunch of worn-out superstitions. I mean, you’re a physicist, Jenny. How could anyone as brilliant as you ever buy into something like that?” The small talk was over for now. Craig commented, “Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that too. I have nothing against religion and all, but it really bothers me how Christians are so exclusive. Why can’t you just accept the fact that all religions are basically the same?” From across the table Mary chimed in as well: “I can appreciate the moral teachings of Christianity, but Jenny, you don’t really believe that Jesus was God, do you?” Before responding, Jenny sighed to herself. That she was being criticized didn’t really bother her so much. In fact, her friends were more incredulous than hostile. But what upset her was that she didn’t know how to begin answering her colleagues, and maybe she wondered whether there even were any answers to their questions. Sound familiar? This conversation is fictional, but with a few changes in details it could have taken place thousands of times. In fact, if you are outspoken about your faith, you may have found yourself in a similar situation on occasion. Perhaps you can remember a few times when you

9 have felt the frustration of hearing your faith questioned, without knowing how to respond to the critic. If so, list one or two of these incidents here. ______Sometimes criticisms do more than frustrate a believer who is unable to respond. They can also lead to doubt about the truth of Christianity. Perhaps you have sometimes felt a tension between what you know you are supposed to believe and a sense that those beliefs may not be credible. If you have felt this kind of frustration or doubt, then this course is for you! Over the next twelve weeks, we will be examining the reasonableness of Christian faith. As you and your group work through the lessons, you will

 Discover important criteria for evaluating truth claims.  See that the central features of Christianity stand up very well to careful examination (much better, in fact, than do other world- views which are popular today).

 Become a lot more confident of your ability to defend Christianity in a persuasive way.

 Be able to dispel some nagging doubts that may have been plaguing your own faith. With this in mind, let’s take a look at what apologetics is and why it is important. What is Apologetics? In English, the word “apologize” has decidedly negative connotations. To apologize is to admit that we have been in the wrong. One might think that to engage in apologetics is to apologize for Christianity, to confess that there is apparently something wrong with being a Christian. But this negative idea of “apologizing” is not at all what is meant by apologetics. The term comes from the Greek word apologia, which 10 means “a reasoned defense” or “a well-thought-out reply.” Let’s look at two of the places this word is used in the New Testament. In Acts 22, Paul addresses people in Jerusalem who had angrily attempted to kill him because they believed he was opposed to the law and the temple. Paul uses this situation as an opportunity to present a defense (apologia, Acts 22:1) of his innocence and his belief that Jesus is the Messiah. Read Acts 22:1-21 and list several reasons he gives for his innocence and his belief in Christ. ______The same word (apologia) is used in Acts 25:16, as Festus describes Paul’s right to defend himself against the Jews’ charges. In both of these passages, people are making a charge against an individual (Paul), and the accused has the opportunity to offer an apologia, a reasoned defense of his innocence. Summarize the difference between this kind of defense and the way we use the word “apologize” in modern English. ______Apologetics, then, is not a negative endeavor at all; it is a very positive one! It involves offering a reasonable defense of Christianity to those who charge that it is irrational, impossible to live by, or simply false. Paul’s defense in Acts 22 illustrates two other important facets of what apologetics involves. First, Paul describes several aspects of his earlier life in the hopes of persuading his audience that he is innocent and that Jesus is the Messiah. We can thus infer that there was no single statement that he could make to prove that he was not opposed to the law or the temple. Similarly, it is impossible to prove by a single argument that Christianity is true. Instead, apologists use various lines of reasoning to demonstrate that Christianity is a reasonable belief system, in the hope of persuading the skeptic to adopt it.

11 What is the purpose of using more than one line of reasoning in apologetics? ______Second, Paul’s comments are specifically directed toward the people making the charge against him. Apologetics is not a set of arguments for Christianity developed in isolation. It involves interaction with people whose world-views are significantly different from our own. A willingness to listen carefully to other people’s beliefs and their questions about Christianity is very important. Only through such interaction can we speak about Christianity in a way that will be persuasive to these people. How can taking seriously the ideas and beliefs of non-believers help persuade them to become Christians? ______Apologetics involves two major tasks. The defensive task is to demonstrate Christianity’s truth in a meaningful and persuasive way. The offensive task is to expose the weaknesses of non-Christian world-views in order to make clear that a person needs to turn from those views toward Christianity. It is important to note here that neither of these tasks involves adopting the attitudes associated with the words “defensive” or “offensive.” The word “defensive,” like the word “apologize,” seems to suggest that there is something wrong with being a Christian and that we need to be “on the defensive” when we talk about it. As we have seen, this is not the case at all. When we defend the truth of Christianity, we can do so with confidence that it is reasonable to be a believer. Similarly, the word “offensive” might seem to indicate that we will offend people when we show them the problems with their world-views. It is true that people may be offended, but this should certainly not be our goal. Rather, we should seek lovingly to bring people to the point of recognizing the bankruptcy of their world-views, so that they will know they need to change. (We will discuss the attitude with which we should carry out apologetics more fully in lesson 12.) 12 In this course, we will examine the defensive task of apologetics in lessons 3-8, and will introduce the offensive task by considering several non-theistic world-views in lessons 9-12. Of course, apologetics also involves responding to other theistic world-views (such as Islam, Judaism, various polytheisms, and cults), but for the purposes of this course, we will limit our study to non-theistic world-views. Write your own definition of apologetics, incorporating your understanding of the elements discussed above. Be prepared to discuss (and defend!) your definition with your group. ______Objections to Apologetics References to “persuasion” in the preceding section may bother you. In fact, many Christians object to the entire discipline of apologetics because of its efforts to persuade people of Christianity’s truth. There are a number of reasons for such objections, two of which we will consider.

THE CROSS IS EMPTIED OF ITS POWER. In I Corinthians 1:17-2:5, Paul contrasts the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of the world. He writes that to preach with words of human wisdom would be to empty the cross of its power (v. 17b). In v. 21b he declares, “it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” Based on this passage, many people argue that we should seek conversions through the “foolishness” of the message, not through wise and persuasive arguments. This objection fails to take into account what Paul means by human wisdom. In v. 18, Paul does not imply that the message of the cross actually is foolishness. Instead, which people think that this message is foolishness? ______Furthermore, in vs. 27-31, Paul implies that the mark of human wisdom is a boastful focus on itself. It is this wisdom which the cross shames (vs. 27, 29). Instead, we are to speak with wisdom from God, wisdom that 13 focuses on and boasts in the Lord (vs. 30-31). When we proclaim Christ we are to avoid boasting in the cleverness of our arguments. But this does not mean we should avoid persuasive arguments altogether. Instead, we should use arguments that place the emphasis on God and lead people to accept His truth, rather than arguments that simply impress them with our wisdom. This is precisely what apologetics seeks to do. In fact, Scripture actually commands us to engage in apologetics. Look at I Peter 3:15-16. The word translated “answer” here is apologia. What does this passage indicate about our responsibility to engage in apologetics? ______What does it indicate about the manner in which we should carry out apologetics? ______

IT IS USELESS. A second major objection to apologetics is that since no one comes to faith in Christ through rational arguments, apart from the Holy Spirit’s work, apologetics is actually useless. While the first part of this statement is true, this truth hardly relegates apologetics to a position of uselessness. No one comes to faith in Christ through anything we do alone, including presenting the gospel. But the Holy Spirit can and does work through apologetics, as He does through other forms of witness, to bring people to Christ. J.P. Moreland, apologetics professor at Liberty University, offers an insightful response to this objection: Certainly the Holy Spirit must be involved in drawing men to Christ. But a preacher is not absolved of the responsibility of preparing his sermon just because the Spirit must apply the Word of God to the lives of his listeners. In the same way, ambassadors for Christ are not excused from the responsibility of defending the gospel. The Spirit can use evidence to convict men of the truth of the proclamation11

1J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House), 1987, p. 12.

14 You may have other objections to or reservations about the validity of apologetics. If so, list them here and be prepared to discuss them with your group. ______The Importance of Apologetics In the introduction to this lesson, I hinted at the value of apologetics in evangelism and in a believer’s own life. Now let’s look at reasons it is important to study apologetics.

APOLOGETICS CAN HELP CREATE AN ATMOSPHERE OF INTELLECTUAL HONESTY IN WHICH FAITH CAN FLOURISH. Unfortunately Christian doctrines are sometimes presented in an authoritarian way. People are expected to accept them without a good understanding of how they fit together or why they are true. If a person with legitimate doubts about Christianity were in such an atmosphere, how might he or she respond? ______In contrast, an environment in which genuine questions about and objections to Christianity are welcomed, allows people to seek truth honestly. How would such an atmosphere be more conducive to the emergence of genuine faith? ______

APOLOGETICS CAN HELP STRENGTHEN THE FAITH OF BELIEVERS. What is the danger of a faith that refuses to face and resolve genuine doubts (or is never given the opportunity to do so)? ______

15 ______All of us know that we are to believe the Bible and the things that it teaches. This fact however can lead to a great deal of tension when Christians recognize that they have trouble believing (or don’t believe) what they know they should believe. When we find ourselves in such situations, we should remember that things are not true only because they are in the Bible; they are also in the Bible because they are true. The reasoned arguments of apologetics can help us understand why things are true (and therefore why they are in the Bible), which can strengthen both our confidence in the Scriptures and our faith in Christ Himself. As you think about your own faith, you may have doubts about some aspects of Christian teaching. If so, list them here. ______Plan to discuss these doubts at the next group meeting (or if you prefer, with your group leader in private).

APOLOGETICS CAN HELP BELIEVERS INCREASE IN OUR COMPASSION AND CONCERN FOR NON-CHRISTIANS. As we saw earlier, apologetics requires us to listen carefully to the concerns of people with different world-views, to attempt to think as they think, and to understand their perspectives. What changes will naturally come about in your attitude toward a non-believer as you attempt to do this? ______What risk is involved in such an attempt at understanding? ______Some Christians are afraid of attempting deep understanding of non-Christians and their world-views. But we need to remember that if Christianity is true, we have nothing to fear from contact with other ways 16 of thinking. We, and our non-believing acquaintances, can only profit from an honest search for truth. Assignments In order to gain a greater sense of the biblical importance of apologetics, let’s take a look at two other passages in which it takes place. Read each passage, identify the Christian truth that is at issue, and describe the way the speaker defends that truth. Matthew 11:2-6 ______Acts 17:16-34 (concentrate on vs. 22-34) ______Think of several non-Christians you know. List them here and give the reasons they are not believers (as well as you know). ______Begin praying that God would both equip you to help answer their objections and give you opportunities to do so.

17 Chapter 2

EVALUATING CLAIMS TO TRUTH

In order for people to come to an agreement about what is true, it is necessary to have a common understanding of how to determine the truth or falsity of a world-view. This immediately presents us with a major problem because our ultimate standard for truth is not one that non-believers share. As Christians, we believe that the Bible, God’s inspired Word, is the ultimate authority for establishing truth. Consequently, the truth of other ideas is determined by their consistency with Scripture. What would likely be the result of a discussion with non-believers in which you set forth the Bible as the standard for determining what is true? ______It is necessary to seek standards for truth that to some degree we share with non-believers. Notice that doing this does not constitute relinquishing our belief in the authority of Scripture. It consists simply in a willingness to discuss truth in a meaningful way with those who have different convictions regarding the source of truth. Remember what was said last week: things are not true only because they are in the Bible; they are also in the Bible because they are true. And because they are true, the core ideas and events of Christianity are accessible by other methods of evaluating truth claims. Through the centuries Christian scholars have sought to establish criteria for evaluating truth claims in order to convince skeptics that Christianity is true. Many of these scholars concentrated on a single criterion in the belief that it could validate Christianity alone. (For example, some demonstrated the truth of Christianity only from reasoning based on observable data in the world, others only by examining the presuppositions that underlie Christianity and other world-views.) Many apologists believe that no single criterion is adequate to demonstrate the truth of a world-view convincingly. These people argue that various

18 criteria for truth need to be combined in order to engage in apologetics effectively. Think about the objections non-believers you know have to Christianity. Would a single criterion of truth be likely to appeal to all of them? If so, what one? If not, why not? ______In this course, we will adopt three broad criteria by which one can evaluate the truth of a world-view. During this lesson, we will examine each of these criteria and attempt to understand both why each is inadequate by itself and how they can be combined into a convincing test for truth. Then in the subsequent lessons we will apply these criteria to various facets of Christianity, as well as to other world-views that are popular today. These criteria are rational consistency, factual adequacy, and viability for life22 Rational Consistency Briefly stated, the criterion of rational consistency is this: If a world-view is true, it will be consistent in what it asserts. That is, none of its statements will be self-contradictory, nor will any of its assertions contradict other statements. In addition, the various assertions of a world- view will fit together in a reasonable fashion; they will logically relate to each other. This criterion is based upon the validity of one of the categories of human thought, called the law of non-contradiction. The law states that something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect. If a world-view affirms and denies the same thing at the same time and in the same respect, it is inconsistent and therefore not true. When using the law of non-contradiction, it is very important to remember the qualifiers “at the same time” and “in the same respect.” Without these, many ideas would appear contradictory which actually are

2These criteria are explained in David L. Wolfe’s book Epistemology: The Justification of Belief (InterVarsity Press, 1982). They have been elaborated into a system of apologetics by Charles Moore, former apologetics professor at Denver Seminary.

19 consistent. For example, the concept of the Trinity appears to be a contradiction because at the same time it affirms and denies that God is one. However, Trinitarian doctrine actually teaches that the statement “God is one” is true only with respect to His essence. It is false with respect to His Person because there are three Persons in the Godhead. Therefore, the idea of the Trinity does not violate the law of non- contradiction. Another important point about the law of non-contradiction is that to say two different things is not necessarily to affirm and deny the same thing. For example, non-believers have argued that Christ’s deity and humanity are contradictory because the doctrine teaches that at the same time (during His earthly life) and in the same respect (with respect to His nature), Jesus was God and a man. However, in order to be a genuine contradiction, this doctrine would have to teach that Christ was both God and not God. To say that He was a man is not necessarily the same as saying that He was not God (He could be and was both). Thus there is no genuine contradiction in this doctrine. In order to make sure you understand how the law of non-contradiction works, read the statements below and determine whether they are genuinely contradictory. Explain why or why not. “I can’t express myself in words.” ______“George Washington was both president and not president of the United States.” ______“Susan is smarter than everyone in her school.” ______20 “I and all other things in the universe are one” (a statement by a New Age writer). ______“ If there is no God, there is no ultimate purpose in life” (a statement many Christians make). ______If you had trouble with the last two, don’t be surprised; you have not been given all the information needed to make a decision. What is the ambiguous word or idea in each of these last two statements whose meaning you need to know more precisely in order to determine whether the statement is consistent or contradictory? ______The ambiguity of these two statements reveals an important implication of rational apologetic discussions. If a non-Christian makes statements about his or her world-view that appear to be contradictory, it is crucial for us to understand exactly what the non-believer means by those statements. By doing this, we can avoid the mistake of dismissing as contradictory something which is actually consistent but which we simply do not understand properly. What are some aspects of Christian belief that you think are vulnerable to the charge of being rationally inconsistent? Be prepared to discuss with your group how you would respond to these charges. ______The criterion of rational consistency is clearly a necessary test for the truth of a world-view. If a religion or other philosophy contradicts itself, it certainly cannot be true. However, it is crucial to understand that this criterion by itself is not a sufficient test for truth, because a system of thought can be consistent without being true. 21 For example, some world-views that are very common at present are based on the premise that people are innately good and that any evil we do is the result of negative influences from our society or environment. Others start with the assumption that people have a tendency toward evil, regardless of the environment. It is possible to work out consistent systems of thought from either of these premises, but clearly the systems cannot both be true. With this in mind, we will now turn to the second test, that of factual adequacy. Factual Adequacy This criterion affirms that if a world-view is true, it will provide a convincing explanation for the observable data of human experience; it will “fit the facts.” Apologetic approaches that center around this test for truth are called “evidential” because they focus on the evidence which the world affords to support a given world-view. The basis for the factual adequacy criterion is the general reliability of human sense perceptions. For centuries philosophers have considered the possibility that there is no world external to our minds. They have debated whether we are all fundamentally deluded about the existence of the physical universe. Despite these debates, we can have virtually no knowledge about anything if we are mistaken in our most basic perceptions. The premise that our sense perceptions are reliable is (like the law of non-contradiction) fundamental to human reasoning about our world. This does not mean that all objects in the world are exactly as we perceive them. (The atomic structure of a table, for example, is much more complicated than it appears to the human eye.) But it does mean we can be confident that the phenomena we observe about the universe do exist, since knowledge about the universe is impossible without the assumption that there is something there for us to perceive and examine. An important element of the test of factual adequacy is the role of presuppositions in shaping the way people explain what they observe. For example, any world-view must explain the problem of observed human suffering. A Marxist who presupposes that there is no individual guilt, only social guilt, might say that this suffering is the result of oppressive social structures. In contrast, a Hindu who presupposes that people live many lives would be likely to say that it is the result of people’s evil deeds in their previous lives. Both of these assertions “fit” the fact of human suffering in that they explain it well from the

22 standpoint of anyone who adopts the presuppositions of that world-view. However, applying the criterion of factual adequacy also involves examining the presuppositions behind the explanations of facts. Is the Marxist concept of social guilt the best way of explaining all the suffering we observe, or does some other presupposition lead to an explanation that fits the facts better? Using the criterion of factual adequacy in this way is admittedly subjective, but it does provide a means of evaluating different world-views comparatively. What aspects of the physical world and human experience do you believe a world-view must be able to explain? ______Which of these do you believe Christianity can explain very well? ______Which ones do you think Christianity does not explain as convincingly? ______The criterion of factual adequacy provides the apologist with a means of distinguishing between two world-views, both of which appear to be internally consistent. As a result, combining the tests of rational consistency and factual adequacy gives one substantial ability to evaluate the truth claims of various world-views, and these are the criteria on which most Christian apologetics is built. However there is another criterion that is important for evaluating the truth of a world-view, the criterion of viability for life. Viability for Life The thrust of this criterion is that if a world-view is true, its implications will be ones with which people can genuinely and consistently live. A true world-view will not only explain the physical world consistently; it will also provide the meaning and purpose in life for which people long. 23 For example, the view that life is absurd and that there is no significant purpose for living (called nihilism) is one whose implications are extremely difficult for people to accept. Most nihilists are forced to affirm some purpose in living, at least on a day-to-day basis. This tension between their professed beliefs and their actual operational beliefs casts doubt on the truth of nihilism. One of the charges most frequently leveled at Christianity is that it is a “pie in the sky” religion—one which is inadequate to help deal with the concerns of life in this world. What are some specific areas of life which people claim Christianity does not adequately address? ______As with the other criteria for truth mentioned, viability for life is not an adequate test by itself. How is it possible for a world-view to provide a sense of purpose and meaning even if it is not true? ______Consider people who claim to have a very viable world-view but whose purpose in life is not ultimately a true one. What mistaken ideas might they use to gain a sense of purpose and meaning? ______The rest of this course will rely heavily on these criteria for truth. So before continuing, let’s make sure you have a strong grasp of each one. For each criterion state in one sentence its major premise and in another sentence the reason it is not adequate on its own. (You may want to refer to these statements from time to time as you continue in the course.) Rational consistency: ______

24 ______

25 Factual adequacy: ______Viability for life: ______Because of the limitations that each criterion possesses, none should be used in isolation. But taken together, they cover a broad range of experience and can enable you to evaluate various world-views fairly. This is not to say that all three criteria should carry equal weight in every apologetic discussion, since people’s interests and/or objections to Christianity will likely lie more in one area than in others. How can an understanding of these criteria help you tailor apologetic discussions to the specific concerns of each person with whom you are speaking? ______We are ready to begin the specific application of these criteria for truth in evaluating Christianity. This constitutes the defensive task in apologetics, the subject of the following six lessons. Assignments Turn back to the list of doubts you have about Christianity from Lesson 1. Try to place each in one of the three categories discussed in this lesson. ______Notice any patterns that emerge. It may be that the issues with which you 26 struggle fall primarily into one of these three categories. For example, you may be questioning whether Christianity is viable in the “real world.” If so, as you proceed through the course, pay careful attention to the material related to that criterion of truth. In any case, resolve to address your doubts specifically through discussions with your group or leader. Remember, if Christianity is true, it will stand up to your careful evaluation. You have nothing to fear by asking honest questions about your faith. Now consider the non-Christian friends or acquaintances that you listed in Lesson 1. Try to determine and write down the area in which each person’s principal objections to Christianity lie. (If you don’t know yet, pray for further opportunities to talk with these people in order to find out. You can then come back to this assignment later.) ______Throughout this course pay careful attention to material related to the criteria for truth on which each friend has questions. Pray for and look for opportunities to talk to these people, focusing specifically on areas related to their questions. As such opportunities arise, be prepared to share your apologetic conversations with your group.

27 THE DEFENSIVE TASK:

DEMONSTRATING THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY

28 CHAPTER 3

THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE BIBLE

Unlike many philosophies that consist almost exclusively of abstract ideas, Christianity focuses on God’s action in history. This includes His dealings with the people of Israel and His revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ. As a result, any attempt to deal apologetically with Christianity must concern itself with the major historical events on which our faith rests, particularly the Incarnation and Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. However, most of the key events of Christian history are described in no other ancient document besides the Bible. This fact appears to place us at an impasse. We cannot use the Bible to substantiate Christianity’s truth claims, since few non-believers accept the authority of the Bible. Yet we cannot easily discuss the events on which Christianity is based without using the Bible. Nevertheless, this impasse is more apparent than real. It is possible to use the Bible in apologetic discussions without assuming its divine inspiration. By applying the criteria for truth from the previous lesson to the Bible’s historical narratives, one can demonstrate that it is a generally accurate historical document. Because of this accuracy, even non-believers can be confident that at least the non-miraculous events of the Bible are faithfully reported. Armed with this confidence, they can then examine the miraculous events on which Christianity rests to determine whether there is sufficient warrant for accepting them as historical. The purpose of this lesson is to equip you to argue for the basic historical reliability of the Scriptures. What then is the difference between accepting the general reliability of Scripture and being convinced of its divine inspiration? ______

29 ______Why is it necessary for non-believers to have some sense of the credibility of Scripture in order for you to discuss Christianity’s truth meaningfully with them? ______The Bible’s Rational Consistency Scripture is not a single book, but a collection of books. It is a group of writings by an extremely diverse group of authors. The forty or more people who wrote the books of the Bible lived over a period of more than 1500 years. (The first five books of the Bible were probably composed between 1440 and 1400 B.C., although some scholars place them around 1250 B.C.; and Revelation was most likely written around 95 A.D.) The authors lived on three different continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), and wrote in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). They came from extraordinarily diverse backgrounds. (Isaiah, the aristocrat and confidante of kings, was a contemporary of Amos, a rural sheepherder and gardener. Luke the physician and Peter the fisherman were also contemporaries, penning biblical books at the same time.) In fact, virtually the only external feature which unites the writers of Scripture is that most of them were Jewish. In spite of this diversity, the Bible possesses a remarkable degree of internal consistency. From the loss of paradise in Genesis 3 to its restoration in Revelation 22, the biblical books are united around a single theme, God’s activity to redeem fallen humanity. The Old Testament books describe God’s establishment of a particular people through whom He would reveal Himself to the world and from whom would come the Savior. The historical and prophetic writings chronicle God’s faithfulness to that people, in spite of their repeated unfaithfulness to Him. Many of the poetic writings are a testament to Israel’s struggles with her identity and her wavering between uncertainty about and trust in God’s promise of redemption. The New Testament describes the consummation of God’s redemptive plan in the Person and work of Christ, as well as the spreading of the redemptive message to the entire world. What does the Bible’s unity of theme indicate about its claim to be reliable? 30 ______How is the internal consistency argument strengthened by the fact of the biblical writers’ diversity? ______While this argument deals with the general unity of the Bible, many skeptics claim that the Bible is full of contradictions. What are some of the alleged contradictions in the Bible that you have heard non-Christians point out? ______What are some apparent discrepancies that trouble you and cast doubt, in your own mind, on the Bible’s trustworthiness? ______In response to the charge that there are contradictions in the Bible, we should point out to non-Christians that these “contradictions” are more apparent than real. Many of them stem not from problems in the biblical accounts, but from our ignorance about the culture and reporting methods of the ancient world. As modern archaeology gives us more information about the ancient Near East, many of these difficulties are disappearing. For example, the biblical chronologies of the kings of Israel and Judah were long believed to be hopelessly contradictory. However, discoveries that have enhanced our knowledge of ancient time-keeping principles have led to satisfactory resolutions of these chronological problems. Much has been written about the way modern discoveries have helped resolve apparent contradictions in the Bible. A good summary treatment of many of these can be found in Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of

31 Bible Difficulties. A more detailed explanation of the apparent contradictions among the Gospels can be found in Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, chapters four and five. Review the Scriptural difficulties which trouble you and make a point to seek resolutions to these, either by consulting books such as those mentioned above or by asking your group leader about them. In light of our increasing ability to resolve such difficulties as we learn more about the ancient world, what would be an appropriate attitude regarding those biblical problems that do not yet seem to be resolved satisfactorily? ______The Bible’s Factual Adequacy As remarkable as the Bible’s consistency is, this alone does not show that it is historically reliable, so we will now turn to the factual adequacy of the Scriptures. When we speak of a world-view’s “fitting the facts,” we are referring to its ability to explain the observed reality of our world. For example, a scientific theory that is factually adequate explains well the scientific data gathered through experimentation. However, in the realm of history, we are not dealing with things that can be measured. History relies on the testimony of people who can validate and interpret a particular event. Therefore, a historical document such as the Bible can be said to be factually adequate if it is based on reliable testimony that substantiates the events it describes. How would our knowledge of history in general be diminished if we did not accept testimony as a valid basis for truth? ______In light of this, how could you respond to a person who refused to believe the Bible because it can’t be scientifically tested? ______

32 ______Let’s take a look at some of the standards by which historians (secular as well as Christian) attempt to determine whether the testimony of a given document is historical.

A RELIABLE ACCOUNT WILL BE BASED ON TESTIMONY FROM PEOPLE WHO WERE IN A GOOD POSITION TO KNOW THE FACTS. This is the main standard for historical accuracy. The ideal document is one written by eye-witnesses of the event being described and written within a reasonably short time after the event takes place. At the very least, an account should be based on sources that are chronologically very close to the event, even if the document itself is not written until later. This standard helps historians to distinguish genuine history from legends or other distorted stories. What do John 21:20-24, 2 Peter 1:16-17, and 1 John 1:1-4 tell us about the writers’ qualifications to chronicle Christ’s life? ______Read Luke 1:1-4. What is the source of the material that Luke includes in his Gospel? ______Now turn to Nehemiah 1:1-3. How can we be confident that Nehemiah was in a good position to know of events in both Persia and Judah during this time period? ______Read I Kings 11:41, 14:19, and 14:29. What does the presence of these sources indicate about the reliability of the information in I and II Kings? ______These are only a few of many passages which indicate that the biblical 33 accounts are based either on the testimony of people who were present at the events, or on earlier sources which provide such eye-witness testimony. The biblical authors were in a good position to know the facts and report them accurately.

A RELIABLE ACCOUNT WILL USUALLY INCLUDE VARYING PERSPECTIVES OR VIEWPOINTS. This is another important standard for historical reliability. It also distinguishes genuine history from legends, since the latter will likely be repeated in a standardized form once the legend has developed. Read Mark 16:1-5 and Luke 24:1-4. What element of these accounts makes it unlikely that the authors are simply reciting a set legend? ______Now turn to Matthew 14:13-21 and John 6:1-15. What are the details that Matthew includes but John does not? Which ones does John include but Matthew does not? ______How do these details enhance the credibility of the narratives? ______

AN ACCOUNT THAT INCLUDES DETAILS THAT ARE EXTRANEOUS TO THE POINT OF THE STORY IS LIKELY TO BE RELIABLE. These details suggest that the authors are faithfully recording what they observe, not simply writing what makes a good story. Read Mark 14:43-52 and John 20:3-9. What details in these accounts would someone reciting a legend not have been likely to include? Why not? ______

34 ______

AN ACCOUNT THAT PRESENTS BOTH GOOD AND BAD CHARACTERISTICS OF ITS HEROES IS MORE LIKELY TO BE RELIABLE HISTORY THAN ONE THAT PAINTS ONLY A ONE-SIDED PICTURE. Read Genesis 9:18-23 and Exodus 2:11-14. How do these accounts render the biblical portrayals of Noah and Moses more historically credible than they might have been? ______Evaluate Matthew 16:13-28. How might our impression of Peter have been different (and perhaps less believable) if Matthew had not included the material in vs. 22-23? ______

IF AN ACCOUNT IS FOUND TO BE ACCURATE IN PLACES WHERE IT CAN BE CHECKED WITH EXTERNAL INFORMATION, IT IS REASONABLE TO CONCLUDE THAT IT IS ACCURATE IN OTHER AREAS AS WELL. For example, recent discoveries of the kinds of covenants made in the ancient Near East have shown that in the third millennium B.C. the means of ratifying a covenant was by cutting animals in half and having the two parties walk between the pieces. The description of Abraham doing exactly this in Genesis 15:1-21 is very striking, since this practice was no longer in use by the time Moses wrote Genesis around 1400 B.C. That Moses would accurately report a practice common in Abraham’s time but foreign to his own, lends credibility to his entire portrayal of Abraham’s life. It should be clear even from only a few examples that the Bible measures up well to these five standards of historical accuracy. Using these, we can give a skeptical non-believer a sense that the Bible is trustworthy with respect to historical matters, and thus that it is valid to consult the Bible during apologetic conversations. The Bible’s Viability for Life Another line of reasoning supporting the Bible’s reliability is that it addresses the most important aspects of human existence. Scripture does not include history solely for its own sake, but describes the way history 35 illustrates humanity’s greatest problem (sin) and need (salvation). The Scriptures point to the solution to this problem (Christ’s atonement) and draw out the ethical and moral implications of the solution. In doing so, Scripture charts a promising direction for human life, one which provides a purpose in keeping with God’s ultimate purpose, and which gives clear guidelines for living in a fallen, evil world. As a result, the Bible offers a cogent explanation for the meaning of human existence, one that a nonbeliever should consider seriously. This aspect of biblical teaching does not alone constitute a reason for accepting its reliability. But the fact that the Bible offers a sense of purpose and meaning in a plausible way contributes to the impression (derived from the above criteria) that it is not a series of legends unrelated to authentic human living. Rather, the Scriptures constitute a valid historical document whose truth claims need to be evaluated carefully. Which of the arguments covered in this lesson are the most helpful to you in strengthening your own confidence in the Bible’s trustworthiness? ______In addition to the alleged discrepancies that you listed above, what other problems do you see with the Bible that make it difficult for you to trust it completely? Be prepared to discuss these with your group or group leader. ______Assignments Together with other people taking this course, develop a simple strategy for convincing a non-believer of the Bible’s historical reliability. In 36 summary form, list below some of the arguments that you think would be most persuasive. ______You may want to memorize these so that you will be able to use them when the opportunity arises. Try to take the opportunity to employ this strategy with one of your non-Christian friends. Discuss the results of the conversation at your next group meeting. Consider a situation in which a person remained unconvinced about the historical value of the Bible, even after you explained the reasons for its reliability. What might be some possible directions you could pursue in subsequent conversations? ______

37 Chapter 4

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

During a conversation with his brother Ivan, Alyosha (the hero of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s last novel, The Brothers Karamazov) says, “Indeed, this is the real Russian question: is there a God, and is there immortality?” 3 Although Dostoyevsky wrote these words in the 1880’s, the question rises with, if anything, greater poignancy now than when Alyosha first posed it. Today, many people feel adrift in a sea of uncertainty, a world devoid of anything permanent. They yearn for stability, for the anchor in a storm-tossed world which belief in God could provide. To such people, Alyosha’s question is the supreme question: Does God exist? Perhaps a number of your friends are seriously asking this question, but are at a loss to know how they might gain certainty regarding whether God exists or not. For the Christian, the answer to this question is obvious: we know God exists because He has revealed Himself to us in history, as recorded in Scripture. But few agnostics are likely to be convinced by this assertion. Even if they accept the reliability of the Bible, they could easily disagree that its events constitute God’s action. Thus in this lesson we will look at several other lines of reasoning which help substantiate our belief in God’s existence. Rational Indications that God Exists Ever since the Middle Ages, Christian theologians have sought to prove that God exists, but such proof has always been elusive. As modern theologian Thomas Oden puts it, God does not, for our convenience, become a direct object of scientific investigation, since God by definition is not finite and thus not subject to the measurements required by empirical sciences34

3Thomas C. Oden, The Living God, Systematic Theology: Volume One (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), p. 3.

38 Nevertheless, rational “proofs” can serve as food for thought to those who are puzzling over the question of God’s existence. The most sophisticated of these rational arguments is called the Kalam argument and consists of three major parts.

FIRST, GIVEN THE FACT OF THE UNIVERSE’S EXISTENCE, IT MUST HAVE EITHER EXISTED FOREVER OR HAD A BEGINNING. However, the universe cannot have existed forever because no entity that exists in time can be infinite. There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with the concept of entropy, or randomness and disorder. The universe is known to be moving toward total entropy; it is changing from an ordered state with high energy to a disordered, low-energy state. The universe cannot have been moving in this direction forever or it would have already reached total disorder. The second reason is that if something is to be infinite, it must be so “all at once.” An entity cannot exist for an infinite length of time by successively adding time to the length of its existence; it will never reach infinite existence by this means. But the universe is adding time to the length of its existence, a fact that shows that it has not existed forever. Therefore, the universe had a beginning. A notion that agnostics commonly hold is that matter is itself eternal. What problems with this notion does the Kalam argument expose? ______

SECOND, THIS BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE MUST HAVE BEEN EITHER CAUSED OR NOT CAUSED. But all events that we can observe in the universe are caused, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that there was some cause to the existence of the universe as a whole. One could object to this logic by asserting that many events are the result of random processes and thus do not seem to have causes. For example, chemical reactions are driven by random collisions of ions or molecules when the reacting agents are placed in proximity to each other. However, to say that something is the result of random action is not the same as saying that it has no cause. Random movements of ions or atoms can be explained through statistics, and their collisions (and the reactions which derive from them) can be predicted accurately.

39 What would be the difference between an event that was caused (even if by random processes) and an event that had no cause at all? ______Thus, even those events in the universe that are the result of random action can be explained, and in this sense they are still caused events. As a result, it is more reasonable to assume that the origin of the universe as a whole has a cause that can be explained (even if we do not fully know what this explanation is) than to assume that it arose without cause or explanation.

THIRD, THE CAUSE OF THE UNIVERSE HAD TO BE EITHER IMPERSONAL (CHANCE) OR PERSONAL (GOD). If the cause of the universe were impersonal (chance or random processes), it could not have had the ability to begin to create the universe consciously (simply because it was impersonal). Therefore, it must have had within itself the potential for spontaneous change necessary for the beginning of the universe. However, if an impersonal cause had this potential within itself, then it was not timeless or immutable. It would have been, in a sense, a part of the non-infinite universe. Therefore, the only possible cause of the universe was a timeless, immutable, yet personal force who had the capacity to choose to create while remaining unchanged in his own nature. In this section of the argument, what is the feature that distinguishes a personal cause from an impersonal one and makes it more reasonable for a personal cause to be responsible for the universe? ______What problems do you see in attempting to use this entire argument with an agnostic? ______How might you use elements of it during conversations? ______

40 ______This argument is useful primarily in showing a non-believer some of the difficulties involved in affirming the existence of the universe without also affirming God’s existence. As such it implies that it is more rationally consistent to accept God’s existence than to deny it. Why is this idea likely to be surprising to an agnostic? ______Because the idea of the rationality of God’s existence may be foreign to many skeptics, it is unlikely that they would be persuaded by this argument alone. We will now turn to facts about the universe itself that imply the existence of God. Evidence Which Suggests God’s Existence Classical Christian theologians have long found in the physical universe signs that point to the existence of God. Two of the most comprehensive lines of reasoning from this evidence relate to order, and to design or purpose.

THE EVIDENCE FROM ORDER. This evidence begins with the observation that the universe as a whole is remarkably harmonious in the way it fits and works together. The position of the earth at the correct distance from the sun to give an acceptable temperature range, the presence of water in all three phases (gas, liquid, and solid), and the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere are all necessary for sustaining life as we know it. The regularity of the cycles of day and night and of the seasons reveals a high degree of order. In ecosystems ranging from tropical rain forests to “barren” deserts to Arctic tundra, plants and animals co-exist in a way which preserves the balance of life, a staggering fact which illustrates the complexity of the natural order. Christians have argued that these and other signs of order imply the existence of an Orderer, of a God whose intelligence is great enough to regulate such an ordered universe. What are some other signs of order in the universe that you think convincingly point to the existence of God? ______

41 ______Other evidence closely related to the observable order of the universe is the presence of the universal laws of nature. In physics, the discovery of the law of gravity has enabled scientists to predict not only the rate of fall of objects near the earth’s surface, but also the movements of planets, comets, and other astronomical bodies. Using quantum mechanics, physicists can determine the movement of sub-atomic particles far too small to be observed with any equipment. Similar laws of order and uniformity have been discovered and are being discovered in chemistry, biology, and other sciences as well. The presence of these universal laws suggests that the entire cosmos was ordered by a supreme being who established the parameters within which it would operate. If you were to present this argument to a non-believer, what would be another explanation he or she might give for the emergence of an ordered universe. ______The above examples illustrate the fact that laws of nature are uniform throughout the universe, instead of varying from one locale to another. How does this uniformity make chance an unlikely explanation for the emergence of order in the universe? ______

DESIGN OR PURPOSE. A second line of evidence for God’s existence is the apparent design or purpose of the universe. Animals frequently exhibit highly purposeful behavior with (as far as we can tell) no knowledge of the purpose of their actions. Salmon instinctively leave the Pacific Ocean to swim up the rivers of Alaska and Canada to spawn in the gentler environment their young will require for survival. Without any learned knowledge of when or where to go, birds migrate to the same regions in order to avoid extremes of heat and cold. Whales migrate each year in order to bear their young in warm water. Bees seeking nectar to make honey pollinate flowers without the slightest knowledge that their action is critical to the survival of the flora. 42 In all these cases, there is a clear design behind the animals’ actions, but the design evidently does not exist in the minds of the animals. Furthermore, nature contains elements of design that are even farther removed from the minds of creatures than these examples. The processes of respiration in plants and animals complement each other so that the balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere is maintained. Even the water cycle betrays a clear purpose, that of providing a continual supply of water for living beings. From all of this evidence, it is natural to infer the presence of a God who has designed the universe to operate the way it does and who has implanted in animals’ consciousness the instincts necessary for their survival. One could argue, of course, that chance produced these developments simply because they are necessary for survival. This might be conceivable in the case of animals’ instinctive actions, but how do the last two illustrations render this explanation unlikely? ______The Viability of God’s Existence The above two lines of reasoning are further strengthened by a third: the need for an absolute standard of morals. In order for people to live together in harmony, we must have an agreed-on set of moral norms. In the West, these norms have historically come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. However, as contact between cultures has grown in the last several hundred years, many people have begun to believe that there are no absolute ethical standards, only norms formed by the consensus of a given community or culture. These norms, they argue, are not really indicators of what is right and wrong, but are standards adopted for convenience in order to facilitate human relationships within a culture. There are two significant problems with this understanding. The first is that if ethical standards are only matters of convenience, then a society has no real basis for criticizing someone who violates them. A person who acts contrary to his or her culture’s standards may be guilty of bad manners, but he or she has committed no wrong. The second problem is that there is a great deal more uniformity in ethical standards than one might expect. For example, virtually every culture regards murder as being wrong. Some cultures may have a very narrow definition of who is

43 a human being (limiting humans to members of their own tribe) and therefore may see nothing wrong with killing “non-humans” from other tribes, but all view murder of a “genuine” human being as wrong. What does the general consistency of ethical norms indicate about the importance of morals to viable human existence? ______What would be the result of a lack of consensus about moral standards within a culture (or what is the result of such a lack in modern Western society)? ______What does the general consistency of ethical norms indicate about the possibility of an absolute standard for morality? ______Since it appears that there is an underlying unity of ethical standards throughout the world, it is very difficult to accept an idea that this standard was simply the product of an evolutionary development and does not actually correspond to any absolute. It is more reasonable to suggest that this absolute standard derives from and reflects the character of an absolute being who is personal and moral45 In what situations do you think this argument from the necessity of morals for human life would be likely to be effective? ______What objections would a non-believer be likely to raise against it? ______

4This argument for God’s existence is developed in some detail in the first five chapters of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

44 How would you respond to the common belief that there is not actually a consensus about morality, that each person determines his or her own standards of morality and that all are equally valid? ______Assignments The thrust of this lesson has been that it is reasonable to believe that God exists, in fact more reasonable than it is to deny His existence. If this is true, then one may well ask what the need for faith is, since one can come to the belief that God exists apart from faith. What is the relationship between belief and “faith” in the Christian sense? ______How does faith go beyond belief? ______Are there any tensions between your belief in God and a sense that such belief is unreasonable? If so, how can you use the arguments in this lesson to help resolve this tension? ______Commit yourself now to seeking solutions to any other problems (not yet addressed) that might lead you to think that faith in God is unreasonable. Try to remember and write down situations in which friends of yours have failed to take the possibility of God’s existence seriously.

45 ______Pray for and look for opportunities to explain to these people the difficulties involved in denying God’s existence and the reasons they should consider the possibility that He does exist. Be ready to report the results of such conversations in your group meeting.

46 Chapter 5

THE NATURE OF GOD

Have you ever heard anyone say something like “The God I believe in would never let that happen” or “My God isn’t like that”? The word “God” can convey very different ideas to different people. To some, God is a being who created the world but then left it to run its own course. To others, God is an impersonal force present within each of us. Many people regard God as a benign grandfather who looks lovingly on all people and wants us to be happy and love each other. Others see Him as a harsh judge whom we must at all costs avoid displeasing. Because of these great differences in ideas of God, a critical task of apologetics is to demonstrate that the Christian concept of God corresponds to the way He truly is. We will do this by: 1) discovering implications about God’s nature from arguments for His existence which we covered in the previous lesson; 2) evaluating biblical aspects of God’s character to determine whether they are consistent with what we know of reality; and 3) considering the feasibility of the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. Implications Drawn from God’s Existence In the previous lesson, we considered various lines of reasoning that suggests that God exists. These arguments, if valid, do more than simply demonstrate the presence of God; they also imply certain things about His nature. Let’s take another look at these arguments. The Kalam argument includes the idea that the universe cannot be infinite because it exists in time and is adding time to the length of its existence. What does this imply about the God who caused the universe? Does He exist in time or outside of time? ______What does this indicate about God’s relationship to the universe—is He a part of it or separate from it? ______47 What does God’s separateness from the finite universe indicate about His spatial extent? Is He finite or not? ______What does God’s separateness from the changing universe imply about His ability to change? ______The conclusion of the Kalam argument is that a personal God must have caused the universe. What does this “personhood” indicate about God’s ability to interact with the universe and creatures He made? ______From the Kalam argument we conclude not only that God exists, but also that He is eternal, transcendent, infinite, and unchangeable. Because He is personal, God is able to interact with creatures even though He is separate from us and unchangeable. Some of the facts that suggest God’s existence are the order and purposefulness of the universe. What does the complexity of this order imply about God’s intelligence? ______What does it indicate about His power? ______What does the design or purposefulness of the universe suggest about God’s purposefulness? ______In the viability argument for God’s existence we saw that there seems to be a universal standard of morality. What does this imply about God’s moral nature and holiness? ______These arguments indicate that God possesses enormous intelligence and power. He is also purposeful in His actions and possesses a moral, holy nature. 48 There is a great deal we can know about God’s character from the arguments in the preceding chapter. We need to find out however, whether the Christian view of God is consistent with these qualities. Read each of the following Bible verses and write down the characteristic of God, which this verse affirms. Genesis 17:1 ______I Kings 8:27 ______Psalm 90:1-2 ______Habakkuk 1:13 ______Hebrews 13:8 ______While we could multiply scriptural references describing these aspects of God’s nature, these should be sufficient to indicate that the Christian understanding of God agrees with what we can know about Him from the evidence for His existence. Consistency of the Biblical God with Reality While the knowledge about God that we can gain from the arguments for His existence is consistent with the biblical portrait of Him, such knowledge stops well short of all that the Bible teaches about God. In fact, these characteristics could fit just as well into the concept of God that many non-Christians have about Him. How then can we demonstrate that the God who exists is specifically the God of Christianity? To do this, we must use a different line of reasoning. Instead of drawing inferences about God from observed reality, we may consider the distinctive qualities of the biblical God that set Him apart from other ideas of God. Having identified these, we can then turn to observed reality to determine whether the world as we know it is the way we would expect it to be if God did possess the characteristics the Bible ascribes to Him56 In addition to the characteristics already covered, several other qualities, crucial to the Christian understanding of God, have to do with the way

5Notice that this shift in reasoning does not constitute abandoning the criteria for truth covered in lesson two. Instead, it is an attempt to determine what Christianity teaches in one area and to subject that teaching to the tests of rationality, factuality, and viability, rather than arguing from these standards to a conclusion. Both lines of reasoning are useful, and both draw on the same criteria for truth. 49 He interacts with His creatures. We saw above that because God is personal, He can interact with creatures. But the only mode of interaction we have so far established has to do with His creation of human beings. We do not yet know (from apologetic reasoning) that He continues to interact with people. However, the Bible clearly asserts that God does interact with people and that this interaction is related to His characteristics of love (and holiness, which we have already established), sovereignty, and respect for the freedom of human beings. Of all God’s attributes, love is perhaps the most central to the Christian understanding of Him. List some Bible passages you know which emphasize that God is loving. ______God’s sovereignty, the way He directs human history so as to achieve His purposes, is a major distinctive of Christianity (separating it from many modern concepts of God which deny Him an active role in human life). What are some of the biblical events (or specific passages) that illustrate the sovereignty of God? ______God’s respect for human freedom balances His sovereignty, preventing it from becoming an absolute determinism (as in much of Islamic theology). While God directs all of history, He does so by acting through the choices people make, rather than by forcing us to act against our will. The clearest biblical example of God’s respect for human freedom is the account of Adam and Eve’s fall in Genesis 3. Read verses 1-7. In what ways might God have intervened to prevent the fall? ______

50 God’s attributes of love, sovereignty, and respect for human freedom, combined with others we have mentioned, obviously do not exhaust the Christian understanding of God’s character. However they do eliminate other ideas of God’s nature and provide a specifically Christian concept of God. Next we must answer the question of whether our world is actually the way we would expect it to be if it were governed by a God who was loving, sovereign, and respectful of human freedom. If God was loving toward people, how would you expect this characteristic to be reflected in the arrangement of the natural world to care for us? ______What evidence from the natural world might lead one to believe that God has arranged it for our benefit? ______How would you respond to objections based on the presence of natural disasters, famine, etc? Prepare to discuss this issue with your group. ______If God were loving, how would you expect this attribute to be reflected in human nature? ______What evidence can you offer to support the contention that the desire for love is one of the dominant elements of our human make-up? ______Now we will consider God’s characteristics of sovereignty and respect for human freedom. If God were sovereign over human history, a number

51 of events would happen which were unlikely by human standards but which correlated with God’s purposes as revealed in Scripture. There have been a number of these surprises in history. In 612 B.C. the mighty Assyrian empire fell to the Babylonians, as predicted by the prophet Nahum some years earlier (Nahum 1:14-2:1) and in keeping with God’s purpose to use Babylon, not Assyria to overthrow Israel (see Habakkuk 1:6). The Babylonian empire was overthrown by Cyrus of Persia in 539 B.C., who then allowed the captive people of Judah to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it. This was predicted by Isaiah more than 250 years previously (Isaiah 45:13) and was in keeping with God’s purpose to restore His people to their land after He allowed them to be taken captive for their disobedience (see Jeremiah 23:7-8). Perhaps a more convincing modern illustration of God’s sovereignty is the remarkable emergence of Israel as a nation in 1948. This emergence and the return of many Jews from all over the world to their ancestral homeland were among the great diplomatic surprises of the twentieth century. But from a Scriptural perspective, these events were not surprising at all. The return of scattered Jews to Israel was important in God’s plan for showing His favor to His special people. Read Romans 11:25-27. The “hardening” of verse 25 is the failure of the Jews to receive Christ as Messiah. What does Paul indicate about the duration of this hardening? ______What indication does he give that there will come a time when the Jewish race as a whole will receive Christ? ______How is the restoration of the Jews to their land consistent with their spiritual restoration to God through faith in Christ? ______List other events in human history that demonstrate the sovereignty of God in a persuasive way.

52 ______A person could easily object to this line of reasoning by asserting that if there really is a sovereign God, history would reveal His purposes a lot more clearly than it does. In fact, the history of the Jews has been filled with a lot more events (such as the holocaust and the persecution of Jews by Christians in the Middle Ages) that seem to undermine God’s sovereignty, than events that seem to support it. It is at this point that God’s sovereignty must be balanced with His respect for human freedom. If God possesses both attributes, we would expect to see evidence of people’s actions which apparently thwart God’s plans, as well as evidence of His purposes. With respect to the Jews, God’s willingness to allow people to act on their own can account for the persecution of the Jews, and the holocaust. These apparent setbacks do not, however, actually thwart His plan for the Jewish race. The modern restoration of the nation Israel suggests this. Consider and write down an event in your own life in which your actions or those of others seemed to thwart God’s purposes, but in which it later became clear that He was working anyway. ______How does this personal “history” bear witness to God’s sovereignty and respect for human freedom? ______The general configuration of nature and of humanity, coupled with specific events of history, seems consistent with the Christian idea of God as loving, sovereign, and respectful of human freedom. We conclude that the Christian understanding of God’s character genuinely corresponds to the way He actually is. The Consistency of the Trinity with Reality The Bible’s portrayal of God’s character is not the only way in which the

53 God of Christianity differs from other ideas of God. The most distinctive element of the Christian God is the concept of the Trinity. The idea that God is three as well as one implies that there is relationship within the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Read John 17:20-23. In this passage, Jesus describes the unity within the Trinity and prays that believers would reflect that unity. What do you understand it means that the Father and Son are “in” each other? ______How can distinct persons be said to be “one”? ______By declaring that believers can and should reflect the unity of the Trinity, Jesus implies that He is referring to a unity of relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, and not to a unity of essence (although the Members of the Trinity are also one in essence). These relationships between believers in a sense restore the kind of relationships God intended people to have before the fall. Because of the centrality of the Trinity to the Christian understanding of God, and because the biblical God intends people to reflect the relationships within the Trinity, we are able to determine whether the idea of the Trinity corresponds to reality. If God did in fact have relationship within Himself, it would be reasonable to expect that the desire for meaningful relationships with other people would be one of the most distinctive marks of human beings. Compared to other aspects of your life, such as work or hobbies, how important are your relationships with friends and/or family? ______How important are these to other people you know? ______Generalize about the importance of relationships to human beings. ______

54 ______How would you respond to the objection that some (perhaps many) people are loners and apparently do not regard relationships as being very important? ______Because of the importance of relationships to all people, it is reasonable to conclude that God is relational as well. The best explanation for God’s relationality is the Christian understanding of the Trinity, since it preserves the oneness of God while allowing for relationships within the Godhead. It should be made clear that the arguments in this lesson are not at all conclusive. Our purpose in discussing the nature of God should not be to demonstrate undeniably that God is as the Bible declares Him to be. Instead, we should seek simply to demonstrate that what we observe of reality does not rule out the Christian idea of God; in fact it correlates with that idea. Thus, we can argue persuasively that our non-believing friends should seriously consider the truth of the Christian view of God. Assignments Much of the information in this chapter concerns the way human beings reflect the character of God. How does it deepen your appreciation of God’s love for you when you recognize that He has made you to reflect the reality of who He is? ______Consider non-Christians whom you know who do believe in God’s existence. Name one or two of these, listing both the ways in which their idea of God is inaccurate, and the arguments from this chapter that you could use to correct their misconceptions. ______55 ______Chapter 6

JESUS AS GOD AND MAN

The great Hindu statesman Mahatma Gandhi held tremendous respect for the life and teachings of Jesus. In fact, he declared that were it not for Christ’s claim to be God, he could have called himself a devout follower of Jesus. Because of this claim, however, Gandhi believed he had no choice but to reject Jesus, and he remained a committed Hindu his entire life. For Gandhi, as well as for many other people, the deity of Christ is the great stumbling block of Christianity. We saw in the previous lesson that the Christian idea of God, while distinctive, is not beyond the realm of plausibility. But the idea that God could become a man while remaining divine apparently oversteps the bounds of what people are capable of believing. Hence, perhaps no aspect of Christian doctrine has suffered more criticism than its understanding of the Person of Jesus Christ. In fact, some critics have gone as far as to suggest that there never was such a person as Jesus at all. But does the deity of Christ actually overstep the bounds of what one may reasonably believe? To answer this question, we will first consider evidence from non-Christian ancient writers suggesting that Jesus was a man with tremendous influence on the first-century world. Then we will examine the internal consistency of Christ’s claims to be God with His life and teachings. Finally, we will reflect on the value of the deity and humanity of Christ for viability in life67 Non-Christian Testimony about Jesus In his Annals (section 15.44), written early in the second century, Roman historian Tacitus described Nero’s attempts to blame the great Roman

6Notice that this plan involves changing the order of the criteria for truth. The reason for this is that the question of whether Jesus actually existed is logically prior to that of the rationality of his claim to be God.

56 fire on Christians. He wrote, Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also. Roman historians very rarely mention Jewish figures in their accounts. In light of this fact and the fact that Roman procurators executed thousands of people, what does Tacitus’ mention of Christ indicate about His influence on the first-century world? ______An early second century Roman governor named Pliny the Younger wrote to the Emperor Trajan to ask advice concerning how to deal with Christians in his region. In the letter, Pliny described the Christians’ practice of singing hymns “to Christ as if to a god” (Letters 10:96.7). Since the Romans had many gods, singing hymns to one god or another would have been nothing unusual. But the phrase “as if to a god” suggests that Pliny was reluctant to ascribe deity to Christ. What happened in Christ’s life that might have made it difficult for Pliny to believe He was really a god? ______This passage shows that the Romans (at least Pliny) knew that Jesus was an earthly person whom many believed to be a god as well. The most striking reference to Jesus from the pen of a non-believer comes from the Jewish historian Josephus. Toward the end of the first century, Josephus wrote in his Antiquities (18:63-64), About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not 57 disappeared78 Some scholars suspect that the statements about Jesus being the Messiah, and that He appeared to the disciples after being restored to life, were merely added by a later Christian editor. Further, these scholars further suspect that Josephus more likely wrote what people believed about His being the Messiah and being raised from the dead. However, even without these direct statements, this account concurs with the general features of the New Testament accounts of Christ’s life. As a result, it provides striking non-Christian testimony that Jesus was substantially the man the Gospel writers claimed He was. From these comments by non-Christian writers, what can you safely conclude about the charge that Christ never even existed? ______What can you conclude about the impact He had on His contemporaries? ______The Consistency of Jesus’ Claim to be God Because of the testimony of non-Christian historians, it is impossible to deny that Jesus was a very influential man in the first century. The question is: “what caused this influence?” The Christian response is unequivocal: Jesus was so influential because He was and is God. In this section, we will consider the internal rational consistency of this response. In light of the general reliability of the Bible, demonstrated in lesson three, we will examine whether the biblical portrayal of Jesus as God is consistent with Jesus’ claim to be God. If not, then the lack of consistency would preclude us from asserting that He is God. If the claim and the portrayal are consistent, then it is reasonable to consider the possibility that Jesus is genuinely God and man. That Jesus claimed to be God is virtually undeniable if one grants the

7These and other citations about Christ from extra-biblical sources can be found in chapter five of Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith. For a good explanation of the significance of this material, see pages 196-201 of Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.

58 historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives. Look up each of the following passages and write down the divine characteristic or prerogative that Jesus claims for Himself. Matthew 9:1-7 (especially v. 6) ______Mark 13:26-27 ______Luke 11:17-20 ______John 14:1-4 ______Now look at these more specific assertions. How does each one constitute a claim to deity? John 8:58 ______John 10:30 ______John 14:9 ______If Jesus were in fact God, as He claimed, then we would expect several things to be true of His life: 1) We would expect Him to be perfect— clearly superior to other people in holiness and love. 2) We would expect Him to act in a way strikingly different from other people. His actions would reveal a purpose and a value system different from those of mere human beings. 3) We would expect Him to teach in a way that surpassed even the best of human thought and teaching.

JESUS WAS CLEARLY SUPERIOR TO OTHER PEOPLE IN HOLINESS AND LOVE. As we saw in lesson three, the Bible does not present a one-sided portrait of its characters. Even the prophets and apostles are depicted as fallible, sinful people. However, without hesitation, the New Testament declares Jesus’ perfect holiness. Read II Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15, and I John 3:3-5. What do the writers of New Testament letters affirm about Jesus? ______Look at Matthew 26:59-60 and Luke 23:47. What were people who had 59 not followed Jesus forced to conclude about His character? ______Read John 8:46. What challenge concerning His character did Jesus Himself issue? ______

JESUS SURPASSED MERE PEOPLE NOT ONLY IN HIS HOLINESS BUT ALSO IN HIS LOVE. Read the following passages and write down the segments of society that were ostracized by the Jews but to which Jesus showed love. Matthew 8:1-5 ______Mark 5:25-34 ______Luke 19:1-6 ______John 4:7-9 ______

JESUS’ ACTIONS REVEALED A STRIKINGLY DIFFERENT PURPOSE AND VALUE SYSTEM FROM THOSE OF OTHER PEOPLE. Read Matthew 21:12-13. Why did Jesus drive the merchants out of the temple area? ______What does His action reveal about the difference in what He valued and what people in general value? ______Read John 6:26-29. What was the concern of the people who sought Jesus? ______

60 What did Jesus regard as being more important that this concern? ______Read John 12:23-28. What was the ultimate purpose for which Christ came into the world? ______How is this purpose uniquely consistent with the concept that Jesus is God as well as man? ______In addition to these passages are the accounts of many miraculous signs Jesus performed in order to demonstrate His deity. Non-believers however, may not accept the miracle accounts as evidence of Christ’s deity.

JESUS’ TEACHING SURPASSED EVEN THE BEST OF HUMAN TEACHING. Read Matthew 7:28-29 and Luke 20:26. What was the people’s reaction when they heard Jesus teach or answer difficult questions? ______Take a look at Mark 8:34-38. What elements of this teaching would be difficult for most people to accept? ______Why would a human teacher seeking to gain adherents to his or her philosophy be unlikely to say these things? ______Read Matthew 5:21-48. In each of the six subject areas, what is the element of Jesus’ teaching which radically surpasses the human standard of morality? Murder ______61 Adultery ______Divorce ______Oaths ______Resistance to Evil ______Love ______In summary, it is clear that if the New Testament documents are reliable, Jesus did in fact claim to be God. Moreover, the Gospels show that He lived in a way that fulfilled three major expectations people might have of a man who was also God. Based on these realized expectations, we can say that the biblical portrayal of Christ is rationally consistent with the assertion that He is God. However, a non-believer might object that we have chosen these particular expectations simply because they are depicted in the New Testament and that the portrayal of Christ would fail to meet other legitimate expectations. In light of this potential objection, it might be useful to begin a discussion of this issue by asking the non-Christian what characteristics he or she would expect a man to possess if he were also God. You could then focus on their expectations, some of which would doubtless be the ones we have just discussed. What are some other expectations about a God-man which a non-believer might suggest and which you would need to be able to defend? ______

62 The consistency of the New Testament’s portrayal of Jesus as God concurs with the evidence that He did have a great influence on the world of the first century. Because of these arguments, a non-Christian should be willing to consider the possibility that the best way (perhaps the only way) to explain Jesus’ influence is by affirming that He was actually God. There is yet another line of reasoning to corroborate these two, and we now turn to that. The Value of Christ’s Deity for Viable Life Two important aspects of the preceding arguments are the sinlessness of Christ and the fact that His teachings include commands that are seemingly beyond our power to carry out. That these aspects make Christ unique not only point to His deity, but also demonstrate that the rest of us are sinful people, since Christ’s life and teaching would not surpass ours if we were sinless. The understanding of humanity as naturally sinful carries with it an important implication for the viability of life. Our sinfulness significantly distorts our ability both to fulfill the goals and purposes we set for ourselves and to interact constructively with other people. This sinfulness casts into doubt the possibility of our forging meaningful, satisfying lives on our own. In fact, many modern authors and other intellectuals view life with despair precisely because they perceive that humanity has failed to achieve purposeful living on its own. Perhaps you know non-believers who would object to this argument by asserting that people are not really sinful at heart. What evidence could you supply (without using the Bible) in order to demonstrate the conviction that people are marred by sin? ______Our sinfulness makes it difficult (if not impossible) for us to adopt a meaningful way of life on our own. Therefore, no purely human philosophy or religion will suffice to make life truly viable, since such a philosophy would be tainted by sin as well. Accordingly, if there is a God who wants us to have purpose in life, it is plausible that He might communicate this purpose to us by becoming a man. In that way, God 63 could communicate as Person to people, while at the same time offering a message that is divine and therefore not tainted by sin. Thus, the idea that Jesus was God and man is plausible from the standpoint of what God needed to do in order to grant humanity viability in life. One way a person could object to this argument would be to question whether God had to become a man in order to communicate a divine message to us. By what other means might He communicate? ______Why would these other means be less effective than by becoming a man? ______This argument provides a good transition to a more direct presentation of the Gospel. In addition to the reason given above, why else was it necessary for God to become a man? ______What illustrations or Bible passages would you use to explain this to a non-Christian? ______In this lesson, we have seen that the concept of Christ’s deity is, upon closer scrutiny, not nearly as much of a stumbling block as it appears. In fact, it is a stepping-stone by which one can move from simply investigation of Christianity to actual acceptance of it. The idea that Jesus

64 was God is consistent with the New Testament’s depiction of Him. It is a plausible explanation for the influence He had on His contemporaries, and it offers a reasonable solution to the problem of how fallible people can obtain a viable existence. As a result, non-believers who are seeking truth should pay careful attention to Christ’s claim to be one with the Father. Assignments We have discussed the value of God’s becoming man. Now take a few minutes to ponder the sacrifice involved in God’s assuming human form. Does this deepen your appreciation of His love for you and motivate you to greater service? If so, how? ______What are some common objections to the deity of Christ that a non-believer might raise (or which you have heard a non-Christian raise)? ______In your discussion group, discuss ways you can counter these objections. Write the arguments you develop here so that you will have them for future reference. ______

65 ______

66 Chapter 7

THE HISTORICITY OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

In May of 1985, during a debate over Jesus’ literal, bodily resurrection, atheistic philosopher Antony Flew said, The question whether, in that literal understanding, Jesus did rise from the dead is of supreme theoretical and practical importance. For the knowable fact that he did, if indeed it is a knowable fact, is the best, if not the only, reason for accepting that Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel89 In the last few lessons, we have examined several distinctive features of the Christian world-view and have found them to be reasonable. But an agnostic may admit that a belief is reasonable without also accepting it for him or herself. On the question of Christ’s resurrection, there is no room for such indecision. As Dr. Flew makes clear, if it can be established that Jesus did bodily rise from the dead, then the entire Christian system of belief is rendered not merely reasonable, but inescapably true. On the other hand, if it can be demonstrated that He did not rise, no amount of redefining can retain for Christianity any credibility. The entire belief system fails. Nearly two thousand years before Flew, Paul wrote, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (I Corinthians 15:17). In order to gain an appreciation for the centrality of the resurrection, spend a few minutes pondering an “Easter-less” Christianity. Why can Paul declare in the verse above that we would have no forgiveness of sins without the resurrection? ______

8Gary Habermas and Antony Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), p. 3.

67 Why would the message of Christianity have no force as a truth claim without the resurrection? ______In the quotation above, Flew refers to “that literal understanding” of the resurrection. Why was it so important that Jesus be raised in a body continuous with His previous existence, instead of simply surviving in spirit? ______With the importance of the issue in mind, we now turn to the question itself: Did Jesus rise bodily from the dead? The Rational Possibility of the Resurrection Many people reject Jesus’ resurrection from the outset because a bodily resurrection is clearly miraculous and they believe that the very idea of a miracle is rationally contradictory. The reasoning behind this charge goes like this: The laws of nature are, by definition, constant and uniform; they cannot be broken. A miracle is, by definition, God’s direct action in the world in violation of a law of nature. Thus, a miracle is a violation of an inviolable law and is therefore a rational impossibility. This argument assumes definitions of both the laws of nature and miracles. How could you criticize the assumption that the laws of nature are unbreakable? ______Natural laws are discovered by experimental observation of what normally happens in the natural world. It is a mistake of logic to assume that what normally takes place must always take place. In this sense, natural laws are statistical descriptions of the actual, not necessarily prescriptions about what is or is not possible. In fact, if there is a God and He is the One who has established the laws of nature, then it follows logically that He takes precedence over the laws He has established. He thus has the power to override these laws if He so

68 chooses. Since God intended the laws to govern the universe in all normal circumstances, it is unlikely that He would choose to circumvent them very often. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assert that He occasionally does so when His purposes warrant it. What would be the inconsistency of declaring that God established natural laws that even He cannot break? ______In addition to God’s general prerogative to override the laws of nature on occasion, another argument supporting the possibility of the specific miracle of the resurrection centers on the Person of Jesus. If He actually were God, as we discussed in the previous lesson, then it would not really be surprising that He would have risen from the dead. In fact, the surprising thing is not that He rose, but that God could die at all! As a result, the resurrection is more consistent with the assertion that Christ is God than is the conclusion that He died and did not rise. How would this last argument be useful in convincing a skeptic to take the possibility of the resurrection seriously? ______One could object that this simply trades one problem (that of the resurrection) for another (that of how God could die). If someone raised this objection, how could you use the opportunity to explain the entire Gospel more fully? ______The Factual Basis for Jesus’ Resurrection It is a given that the message of Jesus’ resurrection was the central

69 feature of the apostles’ preaching and teaching. (See, for example, Acts 2:22-32, 3:11-16, 4:1-2, 4:33, 10:39-41, 13:26-31, and 17:2-3.) There are several possibilities to account for this prominence. 1) Either the New Testament accounts are legends, in which case Christ was not raised and the apostles did not really preach a message of His resurrection; or such preaching actually took place. 2) If the preaching of the resurrection actually took place, either the apostles knew this was a lie and were deceiving others, or they believed their own proclamation. 3) If the apostles believed that Christ rose from the dead, either they were deceived themselves, or He actually did rise from the dead. We will first consider each set of possibilities, and then examine other theories that seek to discredit the resurrection.

ARE THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNTS MERELY LEGENDS ABOUT WHAT THE APOSTLES TAUGHT, BASED ON A LATER BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION? This possibility is unlikely on several counts. The most obvious is that the New Testament books were written during the lives of the apostles. For example, Acts was written just after the middle of the first century A.D., within a generation of Jesus’ crucifixion and around the time Peter and Paul were martyred. Because of this early date, there was not enough time for a legend about Jesus’ resurrection to have arisen, and there clearly was no time for a mistaken legend about what Peter and Paul preached to have arisen. If someone had presented a false version of what the apostles preached at this time, why would this version have failed to gain acceptance? ______A second reason this is unlikely is that the New Testament books do not bear the marks of legend, but of genuine history. From what you have learned in lesson three, what are some characteristics of the New Testament documents which suggest that they record accurately what the apostles actually preached? ______70 ______Therefore, it is very unlikely that the New Testament accounts of the apostles’ preaching are legendary. Peter, Paul, and others actually preached that Jesus rose physically from the dead.

WERE THE APOSTLES DELIBERATELY DECEIVING OTHERS WHEN THEY PROCLAIMED JESUS WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD? People have frequently maintained the truth of something they knew was false because they believed the lie would be beneficial to them. However, belief in Christ’s resurrection was not very beneficial (humanly speaking) to the apostles and other believers. Read each of the following passages and note down the suffering endured and the reason for it. Acts 5:27-41 ______Acts 7:51-59 ______Acts 12:1-2 ______II Corinthians 11:23-29 ______Revelation 1:9 ______In addition to the martyrdom of James described in Acts 12, Church tradition affirms that all of the other apostles except John were put to death for their faith (and John probably died in exile for his faith on the

71 island of Patmos). Several of the apostles, such as Peter and Paul, suffered repeated, sometimes lengthy imprisonments for their faith before being executed. During such times, they would have had ample opportunity to reconsider their teaching and renounce it to avoid execution if they knew it was not true. What does this imply about the possibility that the apostles were deceivers? ______We may conclude that the apostles and other prominent Christians of the first century believed Jesus did rise from the dead.

WERE THE APOSTLES THEMSELVES DECEIVED ABOUT CHRIST’S RESURRECTION? There are two main problems with this possibility. The first is the apostles’ own predisposition against belief in Christ’s resurrection. The second is the growth of the Church in Jerusalem. Read Matthew 16:21-23. In what way was Peter’s concept of the Messiah mistaken? ______Take a look at Matthew 28:16-17. How could some apostles doubt the resurrection even when Christ appeared to them? ______Now look at Luke 24:9-12. Why would the report of Christ’s resurrection have seemed like foolishness to the apostles? ______

72 _ Why did Peter still wonder what had happened even after he saw the empty grave clothes? ______From these passages, summarize the apostles’ initial attitude toward the possibility that Jesus could rise from the dead. ______Despite this attitude, these same men were later willing to suffer and die for the message that Christ rose from the dead. What does this change of attitude imply about the possibility that the apostles were deceived? ______The second major reason the apostles were unlikely to be deceived concerns the growth of the Church in Jerusalem. According to Acts, the apostles began preaching Christ’s resurrection in the city in which He died only six weeks after the crucifixion. (As you explain these ideas to your friends, it might be a good idea to remind them of the reliability of the Bible in matters of general history, as discussed in lesson three.) In light of the renown Jesus had achieved during His ministry, many people in Jerusalem would have known of His crucifixion and the location of His tomb. At the very least, the religious leaders (who had the most to gain from disproving the apostles’ teaching) would have known where the tomb was. Since this was the case, what could the religious leaders of the Jews have done in order to silence the apostles’ claim that Jesus had risen from the dead? ______73 _ According to Acts 5:27-41 (which you read earlier), what did the Jewish leaders do to silence the apostles? ______What does this action reveal about the religious leaders’ inability to produce Jesus’ dead body? ______Instead of the apostles’ teaching being refuted by the evidence of Jesus’ body, their message apparently found fairly widespread support, since thousands of people were added very quickly to the fellowship of disciples. (See Acts 2:41, 5:14, and 6:1a.) If Jesus had not risen from the dead, the evidence that could have refuted the apostles’ message should have been readily available in Jerusalem. The fact that the Church grew rapidly in that city adds to the facts already assembled to lead to the conclusion that the body of Jesus was not present. The tomb was genuinely empty and Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. As we conclude this overview of the factual adequacy of belief in Jesus’ resurrection, it is important to note a few of the alternative theories that people who deny the resurrection have proposed. These may be familiar to some of the people with whom you discuss the resurrection, so it will be helpful for you to be acquainted with them as well. The first of these is the “Passover plot” theory, which asserts that the apostles stole Jesus’ body and then claimed that He had risen from the dead. From the discussion of possibility two above, what argument could you give to show that this theory is very unlikely? ______74 In light of the apostles’ initial attitude toward a possible resurrection, how likely would they have been to think of stealing Jesus’ body and announcing that He had risen? ______A second alternative theory is the “swoon theory,” which claims that Jesus did not really die. He merely fainted on the cross and later revived in the tomb to present Himself alive to the apostles. This theory allegedly accounts for the apostles’ confidence that He had actually risen because they saw Him alive. Read John 19:31-37. The breaking of the criminal’s legs was designed to prevent him from raising himself slightly to get air. It promoted faster suffocation and a quicker death. Because the soldiers did not break Jesus’ legs, what may we conclude that they perceived about Him? ______What additional detail in the passage makes clear that He was already dead? ______Even if Jesus were still alive when He was placed in the tomb, it is virtually unthinkable that He would have regained sufficient strength to remove the stone from the entrance, slip away without disturbing the guards, and appear to the disciples in such vigor that they believed He had conquered death. A third theory holds that the women went to the wrong tomb on Sunday morning, and subsequently everyone else did also. But this theory is also very problematic. In the first place, there is the question of why there would be unoccupied grave clothes in any tomb. Second, even if the women went to the wrong tomb, it is practically inconceivable that the apostles, Joseph of Arimathea, the Jewish leaders, and various other people, Roman and Jewish, could all have been misled about which tomb 75 was correct. The most important problem with this objection concerns the basis for the apostles’ conviction that Jesus rose. Look again at Luke 24:9-12. Could the empty tomb alone have convinced them that Christ rose from the dead? Clearly the evidence that convinced them was much stronger than this. Based on these arguments, we may conclude that no other theory can adequately account for the facts surrounding the empty tomb. The most reasonable explanation is that which the Scriptures offer: “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28:6). The Viability of Jesus’ Resurrection There is a sense in which humankind’s struggle for viable, meaningful existence is a battle against a host of enemies. Misfortune, illness, accidents, and other setbacks frequently seem to be not simply circumstances but conspirators bent on defeating our efforts at gaining happiness and fulfillment in life. The greatest of these foes, and seemingly the most capricious, is death. There is scarcely an adult whose life has not been scarred by the unexpected death of one close to him or her, and many people not yet in adulthood have known the pain of losing a close friend or relative. As a result, any world-view that claims to help people find meaning in life must have answers to the questions that death raises. And while most religious world-views do offer some explanation for death, few deal with it in a convincing fashion. Some sugar coat death. Others attempt to deny its seriousness. Still others hold out the promise of a better life in a better world after death, but they offer little to support such an outlandish claim. Christianity addresses the problem of death without any attempt to gloss over its tragedy. Look up I Corinthians 15:54-57. What are the words Paul uses in this passage to describe death? ______What impression do these words give about its power and tragedy? ______

76 ______What sort of victory do believers have over death? ______Who is the source of this victory? ______Christianity’s realism in facing death is coupled with the confident assertion that its power is not permanent. Death will not have permanent victory over believers, because there will come a day when God will destroy its power and raise us to new life. Now turn back to I Corinthians 15:20-25. What is the basis for the victory over death that God promises us? ______Is life meaningful and viable? No world-view can answer this question “yes” without being able to address the darkness of death. The answer of Christianity is not simply an unsubstantiated promise but a startling historical assertion—Christ rose from the dead. Because Jesus has been raised, we too will be raised. Those who trust in Him will share in eternal life together with Him. Death has been conquered, and thus the darkest shadow cast over the possibility of viable human life is now gone. In a society where the question of death is so carefully avoided, how can bringing it up in a conversation help people consider the viability of life? ______What is the major difference between the Christian solution to the problem of death and that which most people you know adopt? ______How would you point out that the Christian solution is more viable? ______77 Assignments Summarize the major arguments for the resurrection in one sentence each, so that you will be able to remember and use them. ______What is the major apologetic significance of the fact that Christianity’s dominant idea, the resurrection, is one that is so vulnerable to historical investigation? ______How would you capitalize on this significance in a conversation? ______

78 Chapter 8

RESPONDING TO COMMON OBJECTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY

We have seen in the last five lessons that Christianity’s claim to truth is extremely strong. Its internal consistency, the viability for life it offers, and its ability to stand up to the evidence of history, all virtually demand that a person seeking truth take the Christian faith seriously. If this is true, then we need to ask why so few people do take Christianity seriously. Part of the answer lies in the reality that many people have only a limited knowledge of Christianity. Most have never seriously examined the faith to determine whether it is true. Further, their opinions about the Bible’s trustworthiness and the claims Christians make are based more on popular sentiment than on actual investigation of the Christian faith. Our responsibility to such people is to bring them lovingly to the heart of true Christianity, encouraging them to consider the claims of Christ more carefully than they have before. Still other people refuse to take Christianity seriously because they object to some of its major features. These objections frequently center around the way a claim of Christianity apparently conflicts with an obvious fact of our experience. In this lesson, we will consider three of the objections non-believers most commonly raise. The Problem of Evil The cover of Time magazine’s June 10, 1991 issue consisted of a dark gray background with the single word “Evil” written in large black letters across the page. The cover and the article accompanying it illustrate how prominent in the modern mind is this most perplexing of all questions: how can we explain (and more important, live with) the enormous amount of evil in our world? This question constitutes perhaps the most common objection to Christianity. It runs as follows: Christianity asserts that God is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing. If this understanding is

79 consistent, God is able to destroy evil, wants to do so, and knows how to do so. We observe however that evil is commonplace. According to this reasoning, what could one conclude about God’s actual power, love, and knowledge? ______What would then be a logical conclusion about the validity of the Christian understanding of God? ______This is a very serious objection, one that no Christian can afford to take lightly. However, there are two major problems with it. First, it assumes that the presence of evil in the world implies God is not combating it. Instead, God may be fighting evil and may in time eliminate it. This in fact, is exactly what Christianity asserts God is doing. Read Revelation 21:1-5. What indications does this passage give that God will ultimately destroy evil altogether? ______Now turn to Revelation 22:1-5. What does the reference to the lack of a curse (v. 3) indicate about the presence of evil in the eternal kingdom? ______Scripture completely answers the problem of God’s apparent impotence and ignorance concerning how to fight evil. However, what might a non-believer infer about God’s love from the fact that He has not yet overcome evil? ______There are two ways to explain the presence of evil while still affirming 80 that God is good and loving. One is by asserting that evil is the result of legitimate choices made by human beings, choices whose evil consequences God recognized but did not prevent. If God were to overrule choices people make which have evil consequences, what would that imply about the nature of humanity? ______It is more loving of God to create people who have choices with genuine consequences than it would be to create a world of robots who had no choice but to do His will. This explanation upholds God’s love while still accounting for evil as the consequence of our actions. Another way to explain the existence of evil is to recognize that God frequently uses even evil circumstances for a good purpose. The greatest example of this is the cross itself: Jesus suffered immeasurably, in spite of His perfect innocence. Yet the purpose was an incomparably good one: bringing salvation to sinful people. Most Christians can point to events in their own lives which were evil in themselves, but which God used for valuable purposes. Thus evil can be consistent with the plans of a loving God who is working for greater good and the eventual abolition of evil. List one or two events in your life which involved evil or suffering but which God used for a good purpose. ______How might you use these events as a powerful testimony to a non-believer struggling with the problem of evil? ______The second major difficulty with the problem of evil is quantitative: how

81 much evil is too much evil? One could argue that if there were no God (or if He were not fighting evil), there would be much more evil in our world than there is now. In fact, some world-views that hold that all is evil and meaningless have great difficulty explaining why there is so much good in the world. How could you use this reasoning to turn the objections of a skeptic into an argument for the truth of the Christian understanding of God? ______We conclude that the objection to Christianity based on evil, while significant, does not undermine the validity of Christian faith. In fact, Christianity offers a plausible explanation for the facts of evil and good in the world, as well as the promise that God is working to defeat evil ultimately. Any other world-view that claims to be valid must offer a more convincing explanation of these facts, since the problem of evil is inherent in most views of the universe, not simply in the Christian view. Therefore, encouraging a non-believer to explain his or her explanation of the problem of evil is an excellent way to begin comparing world- views. How could you use the problem of evil to move from the defensive apologetic task to the offensive one of exposing the weaknesses in other world-views? ______The Claim that Christ is the only Way to God Some non-Christians point out that there are millions of devout adherents to other religions and assert that Christ’s claim to be the only way one can reach God is therefore untenable. This objection fails to understand properly the Christian concept of God and the means by which one gains acceptance before Him. Why is sincerity alone an inadequate basis for acceptance in God’s sight? ______

82 ______How would a god who accepted people solely on the basis of sincerity in what they believed be different from the God of the Bible? (Which main attributes would be lacking?) ______List a few famous people who were very sincere and committed to their ideas, but who were obviously wrong in what they believed. How could you use these examples to show a non-believer that sincerity is not a sufficient basis for acceptance before God? ______We may also explain the true basis of God’s acceptance: Jesus Christ’s suffering on the cross in our place. Salvation is completely an act of grace on God’s part toward people who do not deserve His favor. As theologian R. C. Sproul points out, the marvel is not that God was so narrow-minded as to provide only one way; the marvel is that He was so gracious as to provide any way at all910 Another objection to the exclusivity of Christianity is based on the fact that millions of people never hear of Christ and thus cannot choose to trust in Him. This objection reveals a compassion for all the world’s people and a legitimate concern that if Christianity shares no similar compassion, it can hardly claim to be true. It is important to commend such compassion in our non-believing friends. In dealing with this objection, we need to make clear that according to the Bible, there is no one on earth who is without knowledge of the biblical God. Spend a few minutes studying Romans 1:18-32. What does this passage affirm all people can know about God from creation itself? ______

9R.C. Sproul, Reason to Believe (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1978), p. 46.

83 ______How should all people respond to this revelation (see especially verse 21a)? ______How do people respond? ______From this passage, it should be clear that God does not reject those who never hear because they do not trust in Christ, but because they reject the revelation of Himself that God does give them. The Bible seems to imply that if a person does respond to the revelation God gives him or her through creation, God will bring the message of Christ to that person. Acts 10 describes a Roman military leader named Cornelius who had no prior knowledge of Christ but who believed in and worshiped God. Read through the chapter quickly, noting the events that led to the conversion of Cornelius and his family. What is the basis of the angel’s command to find Peter and bring him to Cornelius (verses 4 and 31)? ______How might Cornelius’ experience soften the apparent harshness of the claim that those who never hear of Christ cannot be saved? ______In today’s context, how might God bring the Gospel to a person who was seeking Him? ______84 We see that it is not valid to object to Christianity on the grounds that it implies God lacks compassion for most of the world’s population. God gives some revelation of Himself to all people, and it seems that He also brings the message of Christ to those who do respond to this general revelation. Christianity’s exclusive claims stem not from an indifference to most people, but from a genuine chasm between sinful people and a holy God, a chasm that can be bridged only by the cross of Christ. The Problem of Hypocrisy A third common objection to Christianity concerns the problem of hypocrisy. Non-believers frequently assert that there are many people who profess to be Christians but who make no discernible effort to follow Christ in their daily lives. They argue that any world-view that breeds such hypocrisy is not very likely to be true. This is perhaps the most serious charge against Christianity. When our non-Christian friends raise it, we should not gloss over the problem, but should frankly admit that there are hypocrites in the churches, and that their presence significantly discredits the Christian message. This objection does not deal a death blow to the validity of the faith, however, since Christianity does offer an explanation for the presence of hypocrisy in the Church. Take a look at Galatians 5:16-26. What does verse 17 indicate about the activity of a person’s sinful nature even after he or she becomes a Christian? ______Why does Paul need to exhort believers to live according to the Spirit instead of the sinful nature? Why isn’t this natural after one is a believer? ______What does the continued activity of one’s sinful nature imply about the possibility of continued hypocrisy? ______

85 How might a genuine believer slide into a pattern of persistent sin and hypocrisy? ______While continued or willful sin is not acceptable in a believer, Christianity offers a convincing explanation of how it can arise. Christianity is able to explain the presence of hypocrisy within its ranks better than world- views that assert the basic goodness of people. While Christian teaching can explain continued sin, the amount of damage hypocrisy does to Christian witness can hardly be overestimated. If we are to be effective apologists and witnesses, we need both to explain why it happens, and overcome its effect on the objector’s perception of the Christian faith. The way to do this, of course, is through the testimony of our own lives. Spend a few moments now thinking about non-believers to whom you have been witnessing (or with whom you would like to share your faith). Are there aspects of your own life that would appear to them to undermine the truth of Christianity? List these here. (You will not be asked to share this information with your group.) ______Prayerfully resolve now to work on these areas and to seek accountability with other Christians about them. It is unlikely that any amount of rational argumentation will be able to undo the negative effect hypocrisy will have on your witness. In this lesson, we have seen that Christianity is able to account for some thorny problems that are very damaging to other world-views. Indeed, one of the strengths of Christianity’s claim to truth is that it can explain a great breadth of diverse experience. Thus (as we have seen in the case of the problem of evil), objections to Christianity which may appear insurmountable, actually constitute a bridge by which we can challenge other world-views to offer explanations of problems as convincing as 86 those which Christianity offers. With this bridge in mind, we will next turn to the offensive task of exposing the weaknesses in other world- views. Assignments As you continue speaking with friends about Christ, pay attention to the nature of their objections to Christianity. If they charge Christianity with the inability to explain evil, hypocrisy, or some other aspect of experience, resolve to challenge them to come up with a better explanation from their own world-view. Be ready to report the results at your next group meeting. Many times, people raise objections to Christianity not because of serious problems they have with it, but as smoke screens to hide an unwillingness to commit their lives to Christ. What are some of the reasons for this unwillingness, behind which people might be trying to hide, by raising objections covered in this lesson? ______How might you expose the deeper issue behind the smoke screen without embarrassing your friends? Be prepared to discuss this with your group. ______

87 THE OFFENSIVE TASK:

RESPONDING TO OTHER WORLD-VIEWS

88 Chapter 9

THE ABSENCE OF GOD: ATHEISTIC MATERIALISM

In a well-known essay entitled “A Free Man’s Worship,” early twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell writes that the scientific view of the universe is so firmly established as to be virtually indisputable. By the scientific view, Russell means the idea that the universe has arisen by chance processes and will eventually be destroyed by these same processes. Life, including human life, is a cosmic accident, and there is no higher intelligence than humanity. From this assumption, Russell attempts to argue for the value of human life on its own terms, apart from any reference to a divine being or an afterlife1011 Russell’s words aptly capture the spirit that has pervaded much of the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has been (and in many cases, still is) widely believed that science alone is the foundation for all knowledge and that religious belief is merely superstition, a vestige of a pre-scientific age. The only genuine option for “a humanity come of age” is to discard the shackles of belief in God and to pursue meaningful human existence without any supernatural help. This spirit has been felt not only in the scientific mentality of the Western world, but also in the aggressive atheistic propaganda that the former Soviet Union and its allies disseminated. Through the rise of both secular capitalism and atheistic communism, this spirit has found its way into many countries of the Developing World as well. As a result, atheistic materialism (also called naturalism or even secular humanism) has become a pervasive view that one will encounter in most parts of the world. Even though its influence in the United States declined somewhat in the 1970’s and 1980’s, this world-view is still very influential and is of great importance to the apologist. In this lesson, we will examine the central premises of atheistic materialism and consider some of the problems with its claim to be true.

10Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I am not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p. 107.

89 Major Elements of Atheistic Materialism The central feature of this world-view is that the cosmos is a closed system with no external forces (such as a divine being) acting upon it. This means that the physical universe accessible to scientific investigation is all that exists and consequently, that science is the foundation of all truth. Naturally, the idea that the universe is a closed system implies that all alleged knowledge that cannot be verified scientifically (such as religious belief) is false. To evangelicals, this central idea would seem to lead to an incredibly hopeless and negative world-view. It is important to remember that to many people, atheistic materialism holds out great promise as a positive view of life. How might a belief that nothing exists beyond the material world make people proud to be human? ______Why might the view that science is the source of all knowledge offer people hope for the future of the world? ______Atheistic materialism’s strength lies primarily in its view of the dignity of humankind. People hold the supreme place in the universe. We are the crowning result of the processes that led to the evolution of the present world. Therefore value and purpose in life do not come to us arbitrarily from some external power; they are the product of what we as human beings create. Morals are behaviors that people determine are beneficial to the human race. The hope for a better world depends solely on our ability (with the help of scientific investigation) to resolve the problems of our present existence. What is attractive about the belief that our destiny as people lies solely in our own hands? ______In view of your answers to the previous questions, what elements of Christianity would constitute the greatest barriers to a person who is 90 attracted to atheistic materialism? ______Despite the dignity it ascribes to humanity and the promise it holds forth for the solution of the world’s problems through scientific discovery, there are significant difficulties with atheistic materialism. The question any honest person must ask of a world-view is not simply “Is it appealing?” but “Is it true?” In seeking the answer to this question, we will examine materialism in light of the criteria for truth established in lesson two. Rational Difficulties with Materialism Within the central premise of atheistic materialism lies a fundamental, yet frequently overlooked, inconsistency. This world-view asserts that anything that cannot be verified scientifically cannot be true. However, this statement itself is not a scientific statement and cannot be verified scientifically. An alleged supernatural reality outside the realm of science is (by definition) something about which science can give no information. Therefore, scientific investigation is incapable of determining that such reality does not exist. Hence, at the same time that materialism denies the truth of anything inaccessible to scientific verification, it affirms the truth of something not accessible to such verification (namely, the statement itself). In light of the limitations of science regarding the supernatural, what should a scientist’s attitude toward the possibility of a non-material reality be? ______It might appear that by declaring the supernatural realm to be beyond the scope of science, I am contradicting my own statements in lesson four that there is much evidence from the natural world to suggest that God exists. However, in that lesson we were not examining God Himself scientifically, but were considering ways in which the existence of a supernatural realm is supported by its effects on the observable natural world. While science can uncover evidence about the universe which is 91 best explained by the idea that there is (or is not) a supernatural reality, it cannot make categorical statements about that reality without overstepping the bounds of its own sphere of investigation. How does the inconsistency of atheistic materialism’s premise cast into doubt the entire system of belief? ______In light of materialism’s appeal to people’s pride, what makes us unwilling to admit the possibility of a reality whose existence we cannot determine scientifically? ______Bear in mind that this inconsistency of atheism does not “prove” that there is a supernatural reality; it simply implies that one cannot prove scientifically that there is not one. In a conversation, how might you point out this problem with atheism while still maintaining respect for the atheist’s views? ______Factual Inadequacies of Atheistic Materialism One of the greatest boasts of materialism could be the degree to which it fits the facts of the universe. It is based on the findings of science, which of course gives careful attention to facts and their proper interpretation. However, one very prominent bit of evidence which atheism must explain is the virtually universal belief in a spirit world. In all ages and all areas of the world, people have believed in the existence of a god or gods, as well as in demons and other spirits. There is little consensus concerning the number of supernatural beings, their relative strength, their character, or even whether they are good or evil. Nevertheless, most people in all cultures have believed in a reality that transcends what can be observed or measured. If a world-view is to reject categorically the existence of this realm, it must offer a very good explanation for the origin of such belief.

92 Materialists argue that belief in a supernatural world is simply an illusion, a product of humanity’s desire for a greater being (or beings) that can offer protection, assistance, or comfort. They point out that many more people reject such belief today than in previous history. This fact, they argue, shows that belief in a supernatural realm is a primitive belief, one that is disappearing as the world becomes more educated and scientific. However, this claim does not explain the facts very convincingly. The decrease in belief in a supernatural realm is due largely to the active propagation of scientific, materialistic views in order to promote technological progress. In contrast, belief in God has been and is common among groups of people who have had no contact with each other, people who could not have received their views from someone else. How does this difference in the origin of atheistic and theistic views lend support to the idea that there is a supernatural realm? ______Furthermore, the argument that belief in the supernatural is an illusion is not persuasive. One could just as easily assert that disbelief in divine beings is an illusion born out of a desire to escape any distasteful demands that a god or gods might make upon a person. What potential problem could arise in an apologetic discussion since both the atheist and the Christian have an explanation for the fact of belief in a supernatural realm? ______Another factual difficulty with materialism concerns its assertion that humanity can solve the world’s problems through scientific discovery. As the twentieth century has unfolded, it has become more and more apparent that technological advances have generated a host of difficulties which science cannot resolve. Medical advances have done tremendous good for the world, but the ethical questions to which they have given birth are many and serious. Science has given humankind tremendous control over the environment, but the misuse of this control has led to grave doubts about our ability to 93 maintain the environment in such a way that it can still sustain the balance of life. The power derived from atomic fission can be used to generate needed electricity, but it can also be used to destroy millions of lives in an instant. In these and other ways, science has increased our power, but it has not provided the ethical structure needed to govern the use of that power so as to guarantee a better life for all people. What important element is missing from an ethical structure that is based solely on science? ______How does this lack undermine atheistic materialism’s claim that science can provide solutions to the world’s problems? ______Viability Problems with Materialism In lesson four we learned that it is very difficult to live authentically without a standard of shared morals and values, and that there is no basis for such a standard apart from the existence of God. While this is a problem for all non-theists, it is especially acute for the atheistic materialist, who holds that human life is nothing more than a cosmic accident, the result of a lengthy process driven only by chance. If the materialist world-view is true, there is not only a lack of absolute basis for morals. There is also little reason for people to follow the morals that are common to a given society. If people are simply fortuitous accumulations of molecules, it seems that one would feel no compulsion to consent to agreed-on morals or even to common courtesy, unless it were directly profitable for that person to do so. Many materialists, recognizing this implication of their position, have rejected all sense of morality in favor of a creed that people should do only that is beneficial to themselves, without regard for a consensus of ethics or morals. What problems do you see arising if everyone lived with such a lack of moral standards? 94 ______If atheistic materialism is true, the viability problem is not simply one of relating to other people. What basis is there for considering one’s own life valuable or for acting in one’s own best interests? ______How does this difficulty undermine materialism’s professed belief in the dignity of humankind? ______It may be possible to live without considering other people’s lives to be of value, but virtually all people agree that authentic living is impossible if one ascribes no worth to his or her own life. Nevertheless, we see that atheistic materialism has no solid basis for ascribing genuine worth to any human life, a fact which gives this world-view tremendous difficulties in promoting viable human living while being true to its own principles. Excursus: Creation and Evolution In spite of the rational, factual, and viability difficulties with atheistic materialism, many people believe that it has one point overwhelmingly in its favor: the “fact” that we have evolved from lower life forms. It is “indisputable” that all life on earth comes from a common ancestor through a process of upward evolution, which occurred over millions of years. Given that so many people today accept this understanding as a fact, how do you think they are likely to regard Christians who reject the idea of chance evolution? ______

95 ______The belief that evolution is indisputable, and that those who reject it are completely irrational, may be so deeply ingrained in the minds of some non-believers that they have difficulty actually looking at the evidence for or against evolution. We need to be aware of this and proceed patiently when discussing such a volatile issue. The subject of creation or evolution has filled many volumes in the last twenty years, and it is impossible even to summarize the arguments here. Any Christian bookstore will have a number of books on this subject, and you may consult some of these for information on the debate. Nevertheless, three points should be kept in mind as we enter any apologetic discussion about creation and evolution. First, this issue is not and should never be made a decisive barrier preventing a person from trusting in Christ. There is intense discussion among Christians about whether the Bible actually teaches a literal six-day creation. A number of genuine Christians believe that “theistic evolution” (in which God created people by ordaining and controlling a lengthy evolutionary process) is compatible with biblical teaching. Most of us reject this idea, but we should remember that a person need not accept our under-standing of Genesis 1 in order to become a Christian. For a non-believer, the issue should be that of whether God or chance was responsible for the emergence of people, not how that emergence took place. How could excessive emphasis on creation and evolution detract from what an atheist needs to know in order to become a Christian? ______How could a non-believer use this issue as a smoke screen to avoid facing more important issues? ______Second, rejection of chance evolution does not mean rejection of the principle of natural selection or imply that all species are absolutely fixed. It is perfectly consistent for a Christian to agree that Darwin’s fifteen species of finches on the Galapagos Islands evolved from a single 96 kind of finch through a process of natural selection. What Genesis Ch. 1 teaches (according to the traditional interpretation) is that God created the various kinds of animals in six days; it never implies that each of these “kinds” could not have developed into a number of closely related species. This kind of development is called “micro-evolution,” as distinguished from “macro-evolution,” which asserts that all of life evolved from a single form. Part of the reason non-believers see creationism as irrational is that there is a great deal of evidence for micro-evolution. Given a sufficient degree of isolation, members of one species can evolve into groups significantly different (which we would then call separate species) in a relatively short period of time. If Christians mistakenly reject this kind of development, it is not difficult to understand why non-believers would view us as irrational. How could an explanation of the difference between micro- and macro-evolution be helpful in a discussion with a non-believer? ______Third, there is a great deal less certainty in the scientific community about macro-evolution than most people realize. Darwin’s formulation of the theory of macro-evolution constituted a logical leap from the evidence of micro-evolution to the possibility of evolution from one major group to another. He admitted in his book The Origin of Species (published in 1869) that one would be foolish to accept the theory of macro-evolution based only on the fossil evidence then available. Nevertheless, he maintained that as more fossils were discovered, the theory would be confirmed. However, recently published books such as Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (written by Michael Denton, an Australian medical researcher who is not a Christian) indicate a lack of confidence on the part of many that Darwin’s optimistic prediction is being realized. In fact, some people in scientific circles are suggesting that there is less evidence to confirm the theory of macro-evolution now than when Darwin was alive. These voices are hardly a majority, but they do suggest that chance macro-evolution is not nearly as indisputable as people once believed. As a result, non-believers who are seeking truth seriously should be willing

97 to consider the biblical alternative that God, not chance, is responsible for the origin of humanity. Assignments We have seen that atheistic materialists generally consider their world- view to be the only one that is rational (as opposed to superstitious) and scientific. Because of this, it is often difficult for adherents of this view to take rational or factual criticism very seriously. (The idea that one is rational can be a very emotionally-held belief!) Therefore, it is important that we be as respectful as possible when we offer criticism of atheism. List some guidelines that could help you avoid turning a discussion into an emotional argument over this issue. Discuss these with your group. ______Compare the ideas we have considered in this lesson with the arguments for God’s existence in lesson four. From these two sources, compile a list of what you believe to be the most useful arguments against atheism and for theism. Learn these so that you will be comfortable sharing them with non-Christian friends. ______

98 Chapter 10

THE ABSENCE OF ABSOLUTES: RELATIVISM

In 1791, the new United States ratified ten amendments to its constitution in order to guarantee its citizens a number of rights. The first of these amendments began with what was then a shocking statement: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”12 With these words, the American people gave formal expression to a new idea, that of toleration within a country for different religious beliefs. In the intervening two hundred years, the idea of religious tolerance has come to be associated with more than simply respecting people’s right to disagree in their world-views. It has become associated with a widespread belief that many religions and philosophies are equally valid, that there is no one world-view that is true for all people. This belief has given rise to a specifically modern way of looking at the world, namely relativism. In fact relativism, the uncritical acceptance of numerous world-views, has become a kind of world-view in its own right. In the last lesson, we saw that atheistic materialism is a direct attack on Christianity (and on all forms of spirituality). Its fundamental premises are diametrically opposed to those we profess. In contrast, relativism claims not to attack Christianity at all but to embrace it. In fact, many people who consider themselves Christians are actually relativists: these people hold that Christianity is true for them, but that other creeds are genuinely valid for other people. What major feature of Christianity makes it completely inconsistent to hold this attitude? ______Despite its uncritical stance toward our faith, relativism constitutes just as great a hindrance to genuine trust in Christ as atheism does. Further, relativism is much more common than strict atheistic materialism is, and

99 therefore it is a very important outlook for us as apologists to understand. Major Elements of Relativism Unlike atheism, relativism is not a specifically articulated world-view. Thus, its major elements usually find expression through attitudes of uncritical tolerance and acceptance, rather than through explicit statements of belief. But if we are to engage in meaningful dialogue with relativists, we need to examine the ideas that underlie these attitudes. The central idea behind relativism is that there is no absolute truth. What is true for one group of people in a particular time and situation may not be true for other people in other circumstances. This idea has arisen largely because of increased contact between cultures in recent centuries. People desire to acknowledge the value of other cultures’ world-views while still justifying continued adherence to their own. Moreover, relativists argue that it is the act of believing itself that gives meaning to life, not so much the content of the belief. What does this central idea of relativism imply about the reason for accepting people of other world-views? ______In contrast, what is the Christian’s basis for acceptance and tolerance of others? ______As believers, we show acceptance to others with the genuine hope that our interaction will lead them to recognize and accept the truth of Christianity. How is this hope different from the relativist’s goal in accepting people of other world-views? ______This difference highlights the alleged strength of relativism: its promotion of harmonious interaction between people. It is much easier to deal with other groups of people with compassion when one believes their outlook on life is just as valid as one’s own, than it is if a person

100 believes others are fundamentally mistaken about the nature of reality. In light of the history of religious wars and other bitter conflicts over world-views, what is appealing about the relativist’s position? ______In addition to promoting unqualified acceptance of others, relativism is also attractive because it makes it easy for a person to accept himself or herself. Just as there is no need to encourage others to change their outlooks on life, there is no need to examine one’s own world-view, life, or actions carefully. Whatever one believes, and thus whatever one does, is “true” for him or her. According to this aspect of relativism, what is the ultimate standard for any given person’s beliefs or actions? ______This leads directly to another important feature of relativism: the privatization of everything having to do with world-views or religions. If there is no absolute truth and all ways of looking at the world are equally valid, then a person’s own religion or philosophy is purely a private matter. It is indeed true, but is also something that concerns only the person who holds it (or perhaps a group of people who hold to the same ideas). It is definitely not something that one should attempt to persuade others to adopt, since they have their own (perfectly acceptable) world- views. What element of Christianity renders such privatization of our faith an unacceptable option? ______List some biblical commands that require us to make our faith a public matter. ______

101 ______Because relativism is rarely articulated, few people would admit (or even recognize) that they hold the beliefs we have just examined, and virtually no one would identify himself or herself as a relativist. Instead, people identify with one particular religious (or non-religious) outlook, usually the one that their family members espouse. At the same time, they insist that they are not “dogmatic” or “fanatical,” a disclaimer that usually implies that they believe other creeds are valid for others, just as theirs is for them. Few relativists think carefully about the ideas which underlie their attitudes, and one of our tasks as apologists is to help people understand these ideas and their implications. We will now turn to these implications as we consider the problems inherent in relativism. Relativism’s Rational Inconsistency Like atheistic materialism, relativism is based on a rational contradiction. The statement, “there is no absolute truth,” is an absolute statement. In order for all world-views to be equally valid, this statement must be true at all times and in all respects. But if it is true, then there is one absolute truth, the statement itself. Therefore, relativism is forced at the same time and in the same respect to deny and to affirm the existence of any absolute truth. What does this inconsistency within relativism indicate about the possibility that there are absolute truths in the universe? ______How does this possibility actually lend credibility to a world-view such as Christianity that emphasizes absolute truth? ______If a relativist becomes convinced that it is rationally impossible for there 102 not to be absolute truths, his or her next question is likely to be that of how one can know what these absolute truths are. This question affords an excellent opportunity for us as believers to explain our beliefs about the source of truth. However, many relativists will remain unconvinced by our claim that their world-view is rationally impossible. They frequently seek to resolve the rational problem by asserting that there are absolutes in the physical realm of science and nature, but that in matters of religion and world- views there are no absolutes. This modified form of relativism may avoid being strictly contradictory, but it faces several significant problems in the realm of factual adequacy. We will now consider some of these problems. The Factual Inadequacy of Relativism As we examined the criteria for truth in lesson two, we learned that factual adequacy involves not simply offering some explanation for the facts, but explaining them well. Relativism, even in its modified form mentioned in the preceding paragraph, fails to explain the facts of the world in a convincing manner. There are two areas where this failure is most apparent. The first concerns modified relativism’s insistence that there are no absolutes in spiritual matters, even if there are absolutes in the physical realm. From our discussion of the order of the universe in lesson four, what are some of the natural laws that are universally true? ______What was the inference we drew from the presence of these laws? ______Instead of drawing the conclusion that there is a God (an absolute) who has established these natural absolutes, relativism concludes that the spiritual realm is completely different from the physical realm and has no absolutes. What reasons can you give for arguing that relativism’s conclusions do not fit the facts as well as those theists draw from the presence of natural absolutes?

103 ______Keep in mind that this argument does not prove that relativism fails to fit the facts. Its explanation is possible, but certainly not the most likely explanation. A more serious factual problem with relativism is its failure to explain the diversity of religious and philosophical ideas. We saw in the previous lesson that atheism has difficulty explaining the existence of belief in the supernatural. Relativism, in turn, struggles to explain adequately the differences between various ideas of the supernatural. If all world-views are equally valid, as relativism asserts, then this implies that all of them fit the facts of our existence equally well. But different views assert completely irreconcilable things about the world. Some claim that there is no God at all, others that there is one God, others that there are several (or many) gods, and others that everything is God. Some world-views consider all of life to be caught up in suffering, others see suffering and evil as non-existent illusions. Some define life in exclusively physical terms, others deny the existence of the physical realm altogether and see life as purely spiritual, and still others combine physical and spiritual elements. Clearly, these ideas cannot all fit the facts equally well. In fact, they cannot all fit the facts at all. In each of the sentences above, no more than one of the options can be true. (It is of course possible that they are all false and some other option is true, but they cannot all be true.) A world- view that claims that all outlooks on life fit the facts well is one which itself completely fails to fit the facts. Think for a moment about people you know who have told you that all religions are basically the same or that different philosophies are valid for different people. Write down specific religions or world-views which directly contradict each other and which you think might be helpful in convincing these people that all outlooks cannot be equally valid. ______104 ______Viability Problems with Relativism Relativism’s strongest claim to truth comes in the realm of its viability for life, since it allegedly promotes harmonious relationships between people. However, closer examination reveals that here too, relativism encounters serious problems. It is probably true that considering a number of world-views to be equally valid promotes peaceful relationships between people if each of the world-views in question encourages treating other people well. For example, if a society were composed of Christians, Jews, and traditional Chinese, interaction between the people might proceed quite harmoniously. But this would result because all three of these outlooks encourage respectful treatment of other people, not because of the belief that all world-views are equally valid. The co-mingling of people from these philosophies would work well because of the similarity of their outlooks on the issue of how to treat other people, not because each of the outlooks is equally valid in all ways. However, when people of more radically different views make up a society, regarding other people’s outlooks as equally valid does not succeed in promoting harmony and peace. During the Middle Ages, many people in Western Europe believed that their religious duty required them to kill those who disagreed with them (through the Inquisition and the Crusades). In this century, there are those who favor killing of people from unwanted segments of society, and there are many who believe that they are justified in doing whatever is necessary to promote their personal goals, no matter what harm they do to others in the process. If the rest of us regarded these outlooks to be as valid as ours, it would hardly promote better social interaction between people. A relativist might counter that these are extreme positions and that most people do not hold them. If we reject a few philosophies that are obviously wrong, the majority that remain are of equal validity. (In fact, this is what most relativists actually believe.) How does this statement constitute a departure from relativism’s professed belief? ______

105 What would one need in order to distinguish the majority of world-views that are valid from the few that are obviously wrong? ______Thus, in order to promote harmonious human interaction, the relativist is forced to deny relativism and rely on a few absolute standards so as to be able to distinguish valid from extreme world-views. (This is in keeping with what we learned in lesson four about the necessity for moral absolutes.) A relativist would not acknowledge nearly as many absolutes as Christians believe there are, but the fact that any absolutes are necessary in the moral and spiritual realms means that one cannot live consistently with the implications of relativism. Final Thoughts on Relativism We have seen in this lesson that relativism stands up very poorly to the three tests for truth we have adopted. Pure relativism is self-contradictory, and modified relativism is unable to account effectively for the facts about different world-views. Moreover, the form of relativism that asserts that many (not all) world-views are equally valid is forced to abandon its relativistic premise in order to distinguish between world-views and foster viable living. Because of this, it is important for us to consider more carefully what prompts so many people to adopt relativistic ideas. We have seen that relativism is expressed mostly through attitudes of uncritical tolerance for other people. What desire or feeling prompts many to adopt these attitudes? ______Two of the attitudes that are most odious to modern people are exclusiveness and self-righteousness. The desire to avoid any semblance of these may have a great deal to do with people’s desire to accept others without reservation. Also, compassion for others (the same compassion which leads people to object to Christianity for its sending people to hell) 106 lies close to the heart of many relativists’ desires. If we recognize that people to whom we are speaking are motivated by these desires, we need to do more in an apologetic discussion than convince them of the problems with relativism. We need also to commend them for their sensitivity to others and to assure them that our insistence on absolute truth does not derive from self-righteous exclusiveness or a lack of compassion for others. What major truths of Christianity can you use to show that we are not self-righteous in our ideas? ______What truths can convince others that Christianity is not based on exclusiveness of lack of compassion? ______Assignments Because relativism is so rarely articulated, it is one of the subtlest challenges to Christianity. This week pay attention to things people say which reflect a relativist outlook. Write these down in the space below, and discuss them with your group in order to understand better how relativism pervades our culture in ways we might not realize. ______As we have seen, most relativists actually do admit the presence of at least a few absolutes in the natural and moral spheres. What questions 107 could you ask to enable a relativist to understand the basis for the absolutes he or she accepts? ______What suggestions could you make in such a conversation in order to help the relativist see the true source of absolutes, God Himself? ______

108 Chapter 11

“GOD” AS AN IMPERSONAL FORCE: PANTHEISM

“May the force be with you.” In 1977, George Lucas’ movie Star Wars burst upon the entertainment world with an other-worldly cast of characters and award-winning special effects, setting new records in box office receipts and shaping the future course of the film industry. But the movie’s importance was hardly limited to its entertainment value. The main “character” in Star Wars and its two sequels was not Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, or even Princess Leia. The most important “character” was “the force,” a universal entity pervading the entire cosmos. Those who were in touch with the force gained extraordinary power. This force was impersonal and neither good nor evil. (Darth Vader gained just as much power from “the dark side of the force” as Luke did from the bright side.) Through its emphasis on “the force,” Star Wars reflected (and in many ways helped to shape) American society’s shift away from materialistic and relativistic world-views to one with a greater spiritual dimension. In this shift, Lucas and many others began taking their cue not from Judeo-Christian spirituality, but from the ancient religions of the East that are lumped together under the term “pantheism.” At one time encountered largely by missionaries and scholars of Asian culture, Eastern pantheism has now become a prominent view throughout the West as well as East. Thus, as apologists we are likely to encounter its ideas frequently. In this lesson, we will consider the features common to all pantheistic world-views, the distinctives of the two major Eastern forms, Hinduism and Buddhism, and the Western form known as New Age consciousness. Features Common to all of Pantheism The word “pantheism” comes from the Greek words for “all” and “god.” This world-view asserts that all things in the universe are actually one and that this oneness of everything is ultimate reality or “God.” (We shall see that not all varieties of pantheism use the word “God” to describe this 109 reality.) This one is impersonal and eternal; it is all that ever has existed or ever will exist. What are some ways the pantheistic idea of ultimate reality is different from the Christian one? ______Because all of reality is one, according to pantheists, the soul of each person (called Atman) is identical to the soul of the entire universe (called Brahman). However, it is possible for some things to be more one than others, and humanity’s problem is that most people do not fully realize the oneness of Atman and Brahman. Accordingly, each person’s quest is to realize or actualize his or her oneness with the universe, which is one. When a person does this, he or she passes into a state of perfection that is beyond personality, beyond knowledge, and beyond the distinction between good and evil. It also transcends time, since in Eastern thought time is cyclical and virtually meaningless. In John 17:22, Jesus prays that believers would be one, just as He and the Father are one. What is the difference between the kind of unity we are to have with God and with each other, and the unity that is the goal of a pantheist? ______Pantheism asserts that realizing union with the oneness of the universe is a matter of technique, not of knowledge. As a result, all religions or philosophies ultimately lead to such union, although of course some ways are better and faster than others. (In this way, pantheism has similarities to relativism.) Regardless of one’s path, however, actualizing union with the cosmos takes many lifetimes to complete. Pantheists believe that at death one’s personality is extinguished, but the impersonal soul or Atman is eternal. This Atman is reincarnated as another living being and continues to undergo life, death, and reincarnation until it 110 achieves union with Brahman. The goal of each individual life, then, is to increase in karma (a measure of the union achieved by one’s past actions) so as to be closer to union with Brahman in the next life. How might the idea of reincarnation affect a person’s sense of responsibility for his or her actions in this life? ______How is this idea different from the Christian understanding of human responsibility? ______Why might the idea that “God” is an impersonal force uniting the universe be appealing to people? ______What is attractive about the idea of karma and reincarnation? ______The Distinctives of Hinduism Hinduism is the dominant religion of the Indian sub-continent and claims over 600 million adherents worldwide. On the surface, it might appear to be polytheistic because of its belief in over 4000 gods and divine spirits. Nevertheless, in Hinduism these gods are simply manifestations of the Brahman of the universe; they have no separate existence. In Hinduism, as in all of pantheism, ultimate reality is perceived as being beyond good and evil. However, Hindus hold strongly to the idea that evil is very real and is a definite hindrance to the achievement of union with Brahman. They believe in retribution for all evil committed, and this retribution is so extensive that it often requires many lifetimes to be paid. As a result, all suffering is believed to be the result of evil committed in previous lives. Forgiveness is impossible in Hinduism. What problems do you see with the idea that all suffering is the result of 111 individual sin, whether in this life or a previous one? ______How is this understanding different from that of Christianity? ______Perhaps the most obvious distinctive of Hinduism is its fixed caste system. In this system, a person’s place in society and the options available to him or her in choosing an occupation and a spouse are determined at birth by his or her caste. The caste system gives rigid structure to Hindu society; and while many prominent Hindus (among them Mahatma Gandhi) have argued that it is not an essential part of Hinduism, Hindus as a whole have staunchly resisted any efforts to reform or eradicate it. What problems does the caste system present in light of the idea that everything in the universe is actually one? ______The Distinctives of Buddhism Buddhism is one of the dominant religions in China, Japan, and other parts of East Asia. It is also becoming quite popular in the West because it is believed to be more scientific and less superstitious than other Eastern religions. It emerged through the life of Guatama the Buddha (probably born in 562 B.C.), whose views represented a purification and adaptation of traditional Hinduism. Buddhism describes the ultimate reality of the universe not as God but as nirvana, a state of perfect peace brought about by full realization of oneness with the cosmos. As a result, Buddhism is in a sense atheistic, although nirvana does correspond to the “one” which goes by the word “God” in other forms of pantheism. The major feature of Buddhism is the belief that human experience is

112 completely bound up in suffering, and that suffering is the result of desire. Thus, the way one brings suffering to an end and achieves nirvana is by abolishing the sense of individual identity so that there will be nothing that can feel desire or suffer. As a result, nirvana is the complete extinction of identity through absorption into Brahman. Because Buddhists profess no god or higher reality apart from nirvana, this ideal of extinction is one that people must achieve solely on their own. If life really did consist only of suffering, what would be attractive about the idea that the highest goal is complete extinction of the self? ______What appeal would the belief that this is solely by self-effort hold to a modern person? ______What problems do you see with the belief that desire always leads to suffering and should be eliminated? ______The Distinctives of New Age Consciousness New Age Consciousness is a composite of Eastern pantheism and Western materialism that is becoming exceptionally popular in the West. Like Buddhism, it rejects the idea of God, but instead of seeking to abolish the self, it regards the Self as ultimate reality. The “one” of the universe is an all-pervading Self with which each person’s self is identical. From atheistic materialism, New Age consciousness borrows the hope for an evolutionary ascent of humanity. However, it defines this as the hope of a radical change in human consciousness brought about by union with the Self of the universe. When such union takes place, a New Age of human life will be ushered in. The way one achieves union with the Self of the cosmos is by turning

113 inward to get in touch with one’s own inner self, which is actually the Self. The goal of such inward attention is the achievement of an altered state of consciousness that will give one peace with the universe and will anticipate the New Age of humanity. In order to produce this altered consciousness, many people use meditative techniques borrowed from the East, Western occultic techniques, and sometimes hallucinatory drugs. In keeping with its Western nature, New Age Consciousness does not emphasize the idea of reincarnation as strongly as Eastern pantheism does. Nevertheless, this idea is present in the belief that death is simply one of the many altered states of consciousness through which one passes. At death, one is reincarnated (a new and different consciousness) and continues the task of getting in touch with the cosmic Self and gaining harmony with it. Why would the idea of ultimate reality as a “Self” be especially likely to appeal to the Western mind? ______What potential pitfall lies in the belief that ultimate reality is accessible only through an altered state of consciousness? ______In the process of answering the above questions, you have hopefully become familiar with a number of the problems with each of the three varieties of pantheism we are considering. We will now look at pantheism as a whole in light of the rational, factual, and viability criteria for truth. Rational Difficulties with Pantheism The central idea of pantheism, that all is one (whether that “one” is construed as God, as nirvana, or as Self), cannot be affirmed without contradiction. If every existing thing is “the one,” then the pantheist must declare either that he or she is the one (as is usually done) or that he or she does not exist. The second of these is self-contradictory because one cannot make the statement that one does not exist unless one does actually exist. The first possibility makes “the one” to be personal since 114 the human being who makes the statement is personal. However, this is inconsistent with pantheism’s assertion that ultimate reality is impersonal. Furthermore, the idea that all is one becomes rationally meaningless when a person considers what must be encompassed within this “one.” Ultimate reality is beyond morality, yet it includes both good and evil. It is infinite, yet it includes all the finite objects of our experience. It is the total harmony of the universe, yet it includes within itself war, hatred, cruelty, and other elements of the disharmony between people. Nothing can meaningfully possess mutually exclusive characteristics, and to say that “the one” encompasses everything, including opposites, is to say nothing meaningful about ultimate reality at all. What do these considerations indicate about the rational possibility of undifferentiated oneness? ______A pantheist would likely respond to these arguments by asserting that rational consistency does not apply to ultimate reality, since “the one” is beyond knowledge and reasoning. People realize their union with “the one” not through knowledge, but through mystical meditation or other techniques. Does such an idea offer any way of checking the reality of the union allegedly achieved? Why or why not? ______What does this potential for self-deception imply about the rational credibility of the pantheistic world-view? ______Factual Difficulties with Pantheism Pantheism has great difficulty explaining one of the most basic elements of human existence, people’s sense perceptions. We perceive the universe in terms of distinctions: we distinguish colors, shapes, aromas, tastes; we recognize the difference between hot and cold, between living and non-living beings, between animals and people, between men and 115 women. Perhaps most important, we are conscious of the difference between ourselves and everyone/everything else. In fact, the very existence of perception and consciousness appears to depend on the presence of genuine distinctions. However, if all reality is ultimately one, then why do we perceive these distinctions? A pantheist would argue that they are illusory and arise from our failure to recognize (or actualize) our union with “the one.” What further question could you ask the pantheist who gave this response? ______Why does this response fail to adequately explain the origin of our perceptions? ______In addition to our sense perceptions, most other elements of human experience must be discounted in a pantheistic world-view. For example, the differences between joy and suffering, happiness and sadness, health and sickness are all illusory if there is no distinction in reality. As apologists, we are forced to ask the pantheist whether the idea that most of what we perceive is an illusion is really a sufficient way of explaining the facts of human life. Viability Problems with Pantheism Pantheism’s difficulties in explaining the evidence of the universe lead to related problems of viability for life. Is it really possible to live with the belief that the world is completely different from the way one perceives it? Such a belief would likely lead a person to a complete inability to trust his or her own senses and thought processes. How would such an inability hinder a person’s ability to function in matters of everyday life? ______Furthermore, the belief that all is one leads to the idea that union, not

116 relationship, is important. What attitude would a consistent pantheist likely have toward his or her relationships with other people? ______What basis would he or she have for seeking the welfare of other people? Is this an adequate basis? ______Perhaps the most important aspect of a world-view’s viability for life is the sense of meaning and purpose it gives people. Pantheism sees humanity’s purpose as the attainment of union with the ultimate reality of the cosmos. But if a person (or more properly, his or her Atman) already is that ultimate reality, what motivation is there to strive to attain union with that reality? If a person’s lack of complete union with ultimate reality is actually an illusion, what does this imply about his or her lack of karma? ______Since this is the case, what true motivation is there to seek more karma from one life to the next? ______We may conclude then, that the idea of gaining harmony with the universe is certainly an attractive one that could give some purpose in life. Nevertheless, the conception of reality as impersonal, undifferentiated oneness not only fails to give motivation for meaningful living, but also makes normal interaction with other people needlessly difficult. When examined carefully, the purpose for living which pantheism offers its adherents is ultimately a hollow one. Assignments Pantheism is rarely found in its pure form in the West, but many elements of it are common in our culture. As you read the newspaper, watch television, and talk with people this week, pay attention to the way popular culture reflects aspects of pantheistic or New Age thought. List

117 the elements that you think are most commonly found in your area. ______Because many people adopt only parts of the pantheistic philosophy into their world-views, they frequently do not realize the implications of their beliefs. What strategy would you use to show people the logical implications of the pantheistic ideas you have listed above? ______

118 Chapter 12

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: APOLOGETICS IN ACTION

Once while I was in the early stages of writing this course, I was talking with a good friend of mine about apologetics. During our conversation, he commented, “Apologetics is not something you can learn from a book. It’s something you have to learn by doing it.” To a large degree, my friend was right. You have now spent twelve weeks working through this book: learning facts and principles, answering questions, and discussing information with other members of your group. But you have not learned apologetics from this book, nor will you learn it from any other book on the subject you might read. If you are learning apologetics, you are learning it by doing it: by taking the initiative to talk to non-Christians about your faith, by putting into practice the information in this course, and by gaining experience and confidence in your ability to discuss various world-views intelligently and to defend Christianity. It is my prayer (and the prayer of others connected with this project) that you are learning apologetics through the process of taking this course. This is the reason a number of the assignments in the course have concentrated on your actually doing apologetics: you’re defending elements of Christianity to which your friends object and responding to world-views which your acquaintances hold. Now, as we conclude the course, we will look back at the progress you’ve made at putting apologetics into action and will make a few suggestions that might be of benefit as you go on from here. Gauging Progress in Apologetics Spend several minutes thinking about the people with whom you have talked about the material covered in this course. (You may want to look back at the assignments in which you have listed their names.) Choose one person with whom you have talked several times about different topics related to Christianity and other world-views. As best you can, answer the following questions about this person. (If you have not talked

119 with anyone at much length about Christianity, it is certainly not too late to begin now. Resolve to do so, and this assignment will be more meaningful to you at a later time.) What is the person’s name? ______How close of a friendship do you have? ______What was the person’s world-view at the time you began taking this course? ______What changes (if any) have you seen in this person’s world-view as you have talked with him or her? ______What arguments seem to have been most effective in leading this person to consider Christianity seriously? ______What setbacks have you experienced which seem to have led this person farther away from faith in Christ? ______If there have been times when things you have said have made this person hostile toward Christianity, what has prompted this hostility? ______If you think it would be helpful, you may want to answer these questions for other people with whom you have spoken as well. We will return to 120 these questions in the following sections of this lesson, as we consider important things to remember while putting apologetics into action. Forfeiting the Home-Field Advantage I once read a book that was designed as an apologetic against Islam. A major section of the book attempted to show the historical inaccuracies in the Koran, but in most cases the author was content simply to show that the Koran describes the same events differently from the way the Bible does. Such illustrations demonstrate the inaccuracy of the Koran only to someone who already accepts the Bible’s description of the events as accurate! This author’s approach was similar to that of a sports team issuing a challenge to another team but insisting that the competition be held on its own home field, in the environment in which its players are most comfortable. As Christians, our tendency is to discuss world-views from the perspective in which we are at home. We tend to assume, rather than to demonstrate, the reality of the supernatural, a monotheistic framework, the reliability of the Bible, etc. In doing so, we are giving ourselves the home-field advantage, a tactic that often makes non-believers defensive or hostile from the outset. Look at what you wrote above about what caused hostility toward Christianity. How much of this hostility can be attributed to your insisting on a perspective which includes elements of Christianity the person did not accept? ______In order to be more effective as apologists, we need to forfeit our home-field advantage and attempt to adopt (at least for the sake of argument) the perspectives of the people with whom we are talking. There are three major ways to do this.

WE CAN ENGAGE OTHER WORLD-VIEWS AT THEIR STRONG POINTS, NOT AT THEIR WEAK POINTS. Non-believers frequently attack Christianity at areas where they believe it is weak. They criticize alleged miniscule contradictions in the Bible or the failure of professing believers to live up

121 to the standards of their faith. These are significant criticisms, ones that (as we have seen) we should be prepared to face. Nevertheless, it can make a tremendous impression on a non-believer if we do not use the same approach with respect to his or her world-view. Instead, we can discuss aspects of a given world-view that its adherents believe are its greatest strengths, such as materialism’s concept of human dignity or Buddhism’s pride in its rational, scientific nature. By showing the weaknesses in even these elements, we are more likely to enable a non-believer to see the need for reconsidering what he or she believes. What do you think are the major strengths of the world-view that the person you describe above accepts? ______How much of your discussion with this person has focused on these aspects of the world-view? ______What are some ways you can focus more on the strengths of his or her world-view in the future? ______

WE CAN ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT IS TRUE IN OTHER WORLD-VIEWS. In a famous statement from Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis declares, “If you are a Christian, you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through... But of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong.13” What he asserts about religions is true of all world-views. That Christianity is irreconcilable with other world- views does not mean that it is completely different from them on every point In fact, virtually all world-views will have some claims that are in agreement with those of Christianity. When we engage in apologetics, we should be alert to recognize and mention areas where we are in agreement. This helps to communicate respect for our friends’ outlooks on life. Uncovering the areas of 122 agreement also gives us common ground from which to continue discussions. What aspects of the world-view of the person you have mentioned above are substantially in agreement with your own? ______How can these areas of agreement serve as bridges from which to argue more persuasively for the truth of Christianity? ______

WE CAN CRITIQUE OTHER WORLD-VIEWS WITHOUT EXCESSIVELY COMPARING THEM TO CHRISTIANITY. In some cases when we are dealing with questions of factual adequacy, it is necessary for us to compare world-views to see which offers a better explanation for certain facts. (For example, one can hardly discuss the problem of evil without comparing how different world-views explain it.) But in most instances, it is possible to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a world-view without reference to others1114 By doing this, we as apologists force ourselves to take other world-views seriously and to consider them from within their own framework (on their home field). Furthermore, if we critique a person’s world-view from within, that person is likely to see our criticisms as genuine problems. In contrast, if we critique a philosophy solely from the perspective of Christianity, we are likely to create an impasse: the person with whom we are talking may simply declare that we believe one thing and they another, without actually considering which belief is more reasonable. In your conversations with the person you described above, how seriously have you tried to understand and critique his or her world-view from within?

11Please note that this suggestion applies only to the offensive task of apologetics, that of exposing the weaknesses in other world-views. When we are explaining or defending Christianity, we should use comparison to make sure people understand the difference between our faith and other options.

123 ______By these three means, we can help insure that we engage our friends’ world-views on their own terms rather than ours, an effort that can improve both the respectfulness of our conversations and the effectiveness of our witness. Persistence and Prayer As you have shared with people while you have been taking this course, you may have had the privilege of seeing someone come to Christ. Or you may have seen someone make significant progress toward embracing Christianity. But perhaps your conversations have been less successful, and you have seen little apparent progress. If the latter represents your experience, how has this affected your attitude and your desire to continue engaging in apologetics? ______Some people are able to continue faithfully telling others of Christ despite apparent lack of success. Others are easily discouraged and feel as if they want to stop trying. Whether you normally feel one way or the other, chances are good that there have been or will be times when you feel that people are not going to change and there is no point in continuing apologetics. When you feel this way, it is important to remember one of the characteristics of apologetics we learned in lesson one. Apologetics is not a fool-proof means of bringing people to faith. (There is no such thing.) Rather, it is an instrument that the Holy Spirit can use to bring people to Himself. If the Holy Spirit is not at work in a person’s life, apologetics (or any other form of evangelism) will be ineffective. Accordingly, it is critical to be faithful in praying for people as well as in talking to them. Pray that the Holy Spirit would convict people of the truth of Christianity, even as you attempt to persuade them of that truth. It is equally important to be persistent, even over long periods of time. There is no one whom God cannot bring to Himself, no matter how far a person is from Him initially. I have seen a few people become believers 124 out of backgrounds that were extraordinarily hostile to our faith; and you will too, through persistence and prayer. Think about non-believers who are among your best friends or close relatives. Are there some for whom you have lost hope, believing that they could never become Christians? If so, resolve now to begin praying for them and looking for opportunities to talk with them (again?) about Christ. Making the Issue Clear In this course we have covered a great number of ideas and arguments from a broad spectrum of human experience. In the face of such variety, it is easy to become so absorbed in these ideas that we lose sight of the central purpose of apologetics: bringing people to faith in Christ. As you think back over conversations you have had with non-Christians, are there any ideas that have dominated the conversations more than you think they should have? If so, what are they? (You may need to be aware of a tendency on your part to steer conversations too much toward a particular issue.) ______One of the difficulties of engaging in apologetics is determining when an issue is important enough to pursue at length in a conversation and when it is not. A good way to make this determination is to ask yourself whether the issue you are discussing is actually keeping the person from believing, or whether it is merely a smoke screen to avoid discussing a deeper issue. In order to help yourself answer this question, it may be useful to think about it in light of three other questions: 1) Does this person believe in the existence of God, and how does he or she envision His character? 2) What does this person believe is his or her standing before God? 3) How does this person believe one goes about achieving harmony with God (or purpose and meaning in life)? If a given issue contributes to answering one of these three questions, it is worth pursuing. If not, then it might be better apologetically to focus the conversation on other issues.

125 These questions help make the central issue of apologetics clear by identifying the main features of a non-believer’s outlook on life. Moreover, they also highlight the major distinctives of the Christian faith. Only Christianity asserts the existence of a God from whom we are so far removed that we cannot achieve fulfillment (or acceptance before Him) by our own efforts. No other world-view proposes a solution to the problem of human fulfillment as radical as asserting that God and man needed to be united in the Person of Jesus Christ in order to make us acceptable to God. After all facets of various world-views have been analyzed and critiqued, there remains Jesus’ fundamental question combining both of these distinctives: “Who do you say I am?” This is the question that we as Christians offer to the world. The arguments and theories we have considered in this course are simply tools to help us bring people to the point of facing this question honestly and openly. Our prayer and our hope is that through the Holy Spirit’s action and our efforts, many more will be able to answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”.