One of the most frustrating aspects of being a Christian today is living amid the divisions that exist within the body of Christ. Nearly two thousand years after Jesus prayed for the oneness of we who believe in the gospel (cf. John 17:21), there is a growing market for a large number of “views” books like those in Zondervan’s “Counterpoints Series.” A wearying list of titles includes Four Views on Hell, Five Views on Sanctification, and Four Views on Eternal Security. One wonders what area of Christianity remains that does not require a “views” book to outline the positions of Christians who disagree with one another. I long for the day when Jesus prayer for our oneness will be reality. I also long for the day when the Holy Spirit will have completed His work of guiding Jesus’ followers into all the truth (John 16:13). It was with this sense of weariness and longing that I picked up Five Views on Apologetics.
Ironically, one of the first things that I learned in the book was that there even exists a disagreement among Christian apologists about where to draw the lines between their various positions. Should we follow Gordon Lewis and classify apologetic methods by the religious epistemology they employ? Should we follow Bernard Ramm’s classification into apologetic families grounded on (1) the uniqueness of the Christian experience of grace, (2) natural theology or (3) revelation? Editor Steven Cowan attempts to build a taxonomy based on argumentative strategies, but this doesn’t appear to work that well. At various times the five contributors are claiming that at least one of the others is actually a member of their camp and is not a distinctly alternative position after all. Lord, help us!
Another lesson of the book is realizing the importance of acknowledging how philosophical and theological commitments relate to our position on what is proper apologetic methodology. Craig and Habermas seem committed to a great deal of rationalistic philosophy and give much more weight to logic and reasoned argument than
Frame comes across as the one most concerned about the role of Scripture in apologetics, and strikes me as the one who is most willing to acknowledge his theological and philosophical presuppositions. For these reasons, I humbly throw my hat in the presuppositional ring as well, knowing that there are some close to me in my church likely to attack my “circular” reasoning as I do so. But I see no other way out. Every person on the planet knows that there is a God through creation (cf. Psalm 19, Romans 1:19-21). We are faced with the reality of creation before we learn to critique or defend the Christian faith. Though many millions suppress the truth of God’s existence by their unrighteousness (Romans 1:18), it is nevertheless rational to presuppose that God exists and to acknowledge that this presupposition affects every other aspect of our worldview, especially our epistemology. If a creator God exists, then the moral argument immediately comes into play. If God made us, then he rules over us and we are accountable to him. This is as far as human reasoning will take us. If we are to know any more about this God to whom we must give an account of our lives, he must reveal himself to us. So we need the Bible and we need preachers and heralds of God’s revealed truth. This is the world we live in. I applaud Frame for proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for epistemic questions and for being the only one of the five to attempt to argue primarily from the scriptures.
When comparing the examples of apologetic methodology provided in the book, again I commend Frame as the best teacher of apologetics and the one most clearly presenting the gospel. His sketch of an apologetic on pages 223-231 is worth the price of buying the book. Be aware that at the end of his sketch, he unnecessarily takes the focus off the gospel and puts it on presuppositionalism (apparently to attempt triumph via his written argument), but I would be surprised if he would go that far while talking with a nonbeliever. Feinberg offers a helpful chart of the witness of the Holy Spirit on page 157. Frankly, I chuckled numerous times when Craig repeatedly appealed to Bayes’ Theorem. This complicated probabilistic formula reminds me of a scene from The Dead Poets’ Society where a stodgy English professor attempts to chart the beauty of a poem on the vertical and horizontal bars of a graph. I don’t doubt that Craig understands and uses this theorem in his work, especially since his arguments for the resurrection are so bullet-proof. But it is absurd to imagine someone like me actually using Bayes’ Theorem in a coffee shop conversation with a nonbeliever.
Books like Five Views on Apologetics can be helpful as they create a forum for believers to interact and critique one another’s perspectives. But since they offer no resolution of the conflicts they address, they can be unhelpful as they perpetuate disagreements among brothers and sisters in Christ. Such is the book-selling world we find ourselves in. Even so, come Lord Jesus!
Five Views on Apologetics, Steven B. Cowan, Editor, Zondervan 2000
1 comment:
Thanks for the warning on this book. I have a long enough list of _fruitful_, edifying, challenging books yet to read -- and this won't be added to it.
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