Exploring Approaches to Apologetics CA513 o Apologetics t ... · youth leader’s logical starting...

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics

Transcript - CA513 Exploring Approaches to Apologetics © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 16 of 24CA513

The Verificational Approach I

Exploring Approaches to Apologetics

As we begin this morning, think of the teaching of Paul in Romans 10:13-15. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then can the call on one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” This passage indicates the indispensability of people hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in order to be saved.

Our Father in heaven, we pray that You will enable us to see the importance of making clear the truth of the Gospel in order that people might be saved. For their sake and the sake of Your kingdom we pray, amen.

Reviewing the approach of Christian Mysticism, consider how it would be presented to Jane who lost her faith in college. If Jane’s pastor or youth leader were a Christian Mystic, what approach would they take? Of course, before one begins the logical reasoning of any of these approaches, one would seek to establish a context of friendship evangelism as far as possible. Only after that would one begin reasoning from the logical starting point chosen. So then Jane’s youth minister would not appeal to evidence or argument whether inductive or deductive. None of the apologetic approaches studied would be considered effective until she converted to Christ. From this mystical approach, a youth leader’s logical starting point and primary task with Jane is to witness to his or her own direct, rationally intuitive experience of God through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. So he or she would witness as meaningfully and accurately as possible. “Once I was blind, now I see.”

The counselor might speak of his or her sense of alienation from the architect of the universe that turned to one of reconciliation and peace. Or one might describe his or her previous inability to break sinful habits in contrast to the liberation from addictive

Gordon Lewis, Ph.D. Experience: Senior Professor of

Christian and Historical Theology, Denver Seminary, Colorado.



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conduct experienced through faith in the risen Christ. In addition, the counselor as a Christian mystic might depict the inescapable feelings of guilt that have been replaced by the good news of justification by faith, including the forgiveness of all sins—past, present, and future—and the imputation of Christ’s perfect righteousness. The hope is that the witness to one’s own experience of reconciliation, redemption, and forgiveness through faith in Christ may evoke in Jane a desire to have a similar experience, and all of that as a gift through faith in Christ’s atonement by the renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Only after Jane does have a Christian mystical encounter, a personal experience of fellowship with God the Father and with His unique Son, Jesus Christ, will she be able to assent to the coherence of a Christian worldview. Then one can help her develop a Christian philosophy of life and answers to the non-Christian philosophies at the university.

How then should we evaluate the Christian mystical approach? Young and Barrett must be commended for stressing a distinctive aspect of experience that the other apologists have not made as explicit. The personal experience of Christians is part of the data of human experience for which any philosophy must give account. The approach gives more explicit recognition through the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, although it fails to focus on the Spirit’s attestation of evidence and argument as a means to conviction of sin and conversion to Christ.

In calling sinners to Christ and convicting them of their sin and guilt, the Spirit uses the presentations of human evangelists and apologists, and he uses those that make sense. The Christian mystical approach has not given this instrumentality of the Spirit sufficient recognition. But giving one’s testimony is an easier approach to use than the amassing of extensive historical evidence or tracing intricate logical arguments. A Christian mystical approach also combines experience with the occasion of biblical study. Furthermore, this refreshingly personal approach is more likely to be listened to in the world of television testimonials to many different products. So every defender of the truth of Christian claims should be prepared to give a personal testimony of what faith has meant in his or her experience.

Furthermore, Young and Barrett have sought to defend a distinctive emphasis of evangelical Christianity, personal conversion to God through faith in Christ, and they note that



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twentieth century people are not satisfied with a merely mediated knowledge of God. People today, as always, deeply desire an experience of transcendent, unchanging reality of God. They desire a manifestation of God in their own spirits. They are, as Augustine said, “restless until they find their rest in God.” Although personal experience of God is crucial, Barrett has opened himself to unnecessary misunderstanding by using the designation mystic or even Christian mystic. The term mystic in the history of thought usually means a totally noncognitive experience of oneness with an impersonal ultimate like the forest. It would have been wiser to have spoken of a person-to-person encounter or an I/Thou relationship. Or one who favors this view might use the biblical terms of fellowship and communion with the personal God on the ground of the atonement of the Messiah and the power of the Holy Spirit.

The problems are not just with wording, however. Young and Barrett do not seem to have adequately highlighted the conceptual truth that leads to a Christian conversion. An immediate experience that is salvific begins with knowing that God is and is living and active (Hebrews 11:6). It begins also with knowing one’s morally lawless life is under the sentence of death physically and spiritually. Sinners must hear of the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They must believe that Good News and trust the living Christ who graciously saves through faith alone.

Next, I am concerned about the Christian mystics’ priorities. Barrett expresses a thought often met in devotional literature—the actual presence of God in human life; that is, genuine contact with God is of more importance than our rational explanations of it. But we need not choose for experience over thought or thought over experience. We need both. Why not say then that among all of life’s experiences none is more important than experience of God, and among all the mind’s beliefs, none is more important than believing the truth about God. It is as important that the truth of the Word tests the spirits as that the Holy Spirit attests the truth of the Word. There is no self-authenticating experience. The experience does not come with a tag on it. The question is whether the claims made on the basis of an experience by a Christian are true or false by some objective criteria.

The primary issue in apologetics that Gordon Clark noted is not who decides, but on what grounds a decision can legitimately be made. Is the ground of the most momentous decision in life



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just the fact of the experience? Many statements sound like the experience itself confirms its validity as we read the Christian mystics, but what does it mean to say that anyone who claims to have experienced Jesus Christ has a redemptive experience of God? In some contexts, Barrett claims that the certitude resulting from experiences of either God’s first or second work of grace is immediate or non-inferred, instantaneous, compelling, complete, and self-validating. Those are not the only strong words he uses. He also claims that the certitude of a Christian mystical experience is impregnable, unshakable, imperturbable, unchallengeable, indubitable, and permanent. Is the claim of self-authentication of an experience a sufficient ground for the ultimate decision? Although these amazing claims make it seem sufficient, on Barrett’s own admission in other contexts, the experience as such is not sufficient; it is not sell-validating. In those other contexts, Barrett admits that intuitions need to be checked and supplemented because it is easy to claim as an intuition, a hunch, or feeling that does not pan out in the whole of life. So the true mystic, he says, “insists that his intuitions should be tested by other experience and the Word of God.”

Furthermore, intuitive apprehension should not be regarded as assured knowledge until it has been verified by observation and reason. How can one and the same experience be unchallengeable and in need of confirmation? It cannot be both self-authenticating and in need of further authentication. If, as Barrett says, the Christian mystical experience requires confirmation by a noncontradictory and adequate account of the relevant evidence, the experience itself cannot be as determinative of a whole worldview and way of life as he claims. It seems that in itself the experience is no longer the “foundation stone” to settle the issue of conflicting truth claims in this pluralistic world. Rather, experience becomes a part of the evidence for which we need a coherent account. We will look for an approach that includes the strengths of witness to one’s own personal experience, the sense data of the empiricists, the categories and principles of the rationalists, and the starting point of the presuppositionalists. But this will need to be done in a way that does not result in a buzzing, blooming mass of confusion, but a coherent world and life view.

This brings us to the final Roman numeral in our outline, “The Approach of Edward John Carnell.” Carnell’s apologetic, and let me spell that—it’s C A R (not O R) C A R N E L L. Carnell’s apologetic will be given more thorough consideration than



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the other approaches for several reasons. It merits more extensive consideration because of its complexity. The other approaches utilize a single line of thought—empirical, rational, presuppositional, or mystical— and Hackett’s employs a dual approach as Rational Empiricism. But Carnell’s approach is at least five-fold. It not only incorporates the strengths of the others we have studied, it also adds unique contributions from Carnell’s entire volume on values, another work on ethical norms, and a third on psychological phenomena. We may add the phenomena of personal Christian experience of God also. I will seek to introduce his approach then by interspersing his thought with his life experiences through the remainder of this lecture and the next.

Destined to become one of the leaders in the rise of Evangelicalism in the twentieth century, Edward John Carnell was born in 1919 in Antigo, Wisconsin. He was the son of a Baptist pastor who had had come to the United States from England and had studied two years at Moody Bible Institute. Though a confirmed fundamentalist, Herbert Carnell deplored the acrimonious debates between fundamentalists and liberals in the meetings of the Northern Baptist Convention.

Think now of the educational influences in Carnell’s life and how thoroughly he did his homework as a student. After an unimpressive record in high school, Edward Carnell enrolled at Wheaton College from 1937-41 where his academic abilities were awakened by a professor of philosophy, Gordon H. Clark. In his Introduction to Christian Apologetics, Carnell would later acknowledge an incalculable indebtedness to his former professor, Dr. Clark at Butler University, whose spiritual kindness, fatherly interest, and academic patience made the convictions which stimulated the pending of this volume possible. Clark defended Christianity primarily by exhibiting its logical consistency and displaying the contradictions in other systems. Although Carnell also included empirical and existential data among the criteria of truth, he never abandoned Clark’s emphasis on the law of noncontradiction.

During his Th.B. and Th.M. studies at Westminster Theological Seminary (1941-44), Carnell came under the influence of Cornelius Van Til. In his Introduction to Christian Apologetics, Carnell also paid tribute to Van Til’s stress on Trinitarianism as the solution to the philosophical problem of the one and the many. In addition, Van Til had pointed out to him the impact that



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presuppositions have upon all of our thought about experience, but Carnell could not agree that these presuppositions are too ultimate for critical examination and testing. Rather, Carnell considered them hypotheses to be either verified or falsified by evidence. In content, his logical starting point was identical with Van Til, the God of the Bible, but the view that Carnell simply followed in the stream of Dutch presuppositionalists that include Van Til, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Dooyeweerd does not adequately take into consideration the distinction he drew between untestable presuppositions and hypotheses that need to be verified.

As a student at Westminster, Carnell was also influenced by the writings of its cofounder, New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen. Carnell echoed Machen’s affirmation that at no point is faith independent of the knowledge upon which it is logically based and with Machen he indicted the Hegelian rationalists for procrastinating and geometrizing reality. He noted, for example, that Ferdinand Christian Baur on the basis of his Hegelian philosophy with its thesis, antithesis, and synthesis expected to find a conflict in the Apostolic Age with a gradual compromise and settlement. He found that phenomenon surely enough in defiance of the facts, but in agreement with his philosophy.

Carnell also agreed with Machen that the great weapon with which the disciples of Jesus set out to conquer the world was not a mere comprehension of eternal principles, it was an historical message, an account of something that had recently happened. It was the message, “He is risen!” Carnell’s writings also reflect his study of philosopher and theologian, James Orr. Carnell quotes Orr that “Flowing from God who is Himself truth, the system of meaning in the Bible has a character coherence and unity of its own and stands in sharp contrast with counter theories and speculations. It has the stamp of reason and reality upon itself and can amply justify itself at the bar of both history and experience.” Quoting Orr again, Carnell notes that “A religion based on feeling is the vaguest, most unreliable, most unstable of all things. A strong, stable religious life can be built on no other ground than that of intelligent conviction.” Carnell likewise agrees with Orr that skepticism becomes irresistible when one leaves the doctrine that Christ is God for a mediating position. And with Orr he concurs that the issue of miracles is not of this or that particular miracle; far more crucial matters are at stake here—is there a supernatural being? If so, does that being govern the world and relate to humans? Who is Christ? How can we obtain redemption? Is there



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a hereafter? It is these larger questions that have to be settled first and then the question of particular miracles will fall into its proper place.

Humans, Carnell points out, will think on those deep problems which lie at the root of religious belief, on the nature of God, His character, His relations to the world, and man sin, the means of deliverance from it, the end to which all things are moving. And if Christianity does not give them answer suited to their deeper and more reflective moods, they will simply put it aside as inadequate for their needs.

While doing graduate work at Harvard University (1944-48), Carnell interacted at length with the existentialism of Reinhold Neibuhr. Having learned much from Neibuhr’s realistic view of sin’s pervasiveness, he later noted, for example, that fundamentalism exempts itself from the limits that original sin places on history. It wages holy wars without acknowledging the elements of pride and personal interest that prompt the call to battle. Carnell differed, however, with Neibuhr’s assumption of an infinite qualitative distinction between God and humans, maintaining that God created the human mind to think, at least in part, his thoughts after Him. So Carnell opposed Neibuhr’s contention that there is no univocal point between God and humanity, such as the law of noncontradiction. Carnell also opposed Neibuhr’s belief that an irresolvable dialectic between time and eternity renders all seemingly logical and literal biblical teaching symbolic. Having given the lion’s share in his epistemology to an inward Empiricism, Carnell wrote, “Neibuhr cannot avoid skepticism within the natural law. Everything is provisional and tentative.” In the end, Neibuhr is left with an Absolute Relativism. Carnell concluded, “The evangelical says that inward experience is to be explained in terms of the biblical revelation; whereas, Existentialism says that the biblical revelation is to be explained in terms of our inward experience.

It was from another influential professor at Harvard in 1944, D. Elton Trueblood, that Carnell adopted his verificational approach, integrating his varied, logical, empirical, existential emphases in hypothetical “if then” sequences. Although Trueblood noted what he interpreted as emotional difficulties and narrow dogmatism in this graduate of Westminster Seminary, Carnell was open enough to learn from him. Trueblood’s Logic of Belief is the source of Carnell’s observation that interpersonal experience of God sustains one not merely temporarily as do drugs, but through both



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bright and dark hours. Carnell also utilizes Trueblood’s statement that “If all evil, whether moral, natural, or intellectual is truly illusory, we are foolish indeed to fight it. It would be far preferable to forget it.” And citing Trueblood’s predicament of modern man, Carnell observes, “Man is an animal who is peculiarly in need of something to buttress and to guide his spiritual life. Without this, the very capacities that make him a little lower than the angels lead to his destruction. The beasts do not need a philosophy or a religion, but man does.”

Carnell also uses Trueblood’s argument in Philosophy of Religion, a later version of The Logic of Belief, that if God exists, then we can make sense of several lines of evidence stemming from our subjective human experience as well as from external observation. Carnell’s own hypothetical starting point is not mere theism if God exists, but the triune God disclosed in the Jesus of history and in the inspired teaching of Scripture and most frequently referred to as simply “the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture” or “the God of the Bible.”

Carnell learned much at Boston University (1945-49) from empirical philosopher, Edgar S. Brightman. For example, a theologian cannot ignore the hard data of sensory observation. Utilizing Brightman’s evaluation of various criteria of truth, Carnell argued that consistency tells us in general that all things must stand together. It does not tell us specifically how or where or why they are to stand. Like Brightman, Carnell insisted that religious emotion, if worthy, must conform to truth and not truth to religious emotion. In addition, philosophy is interested in everything in the universe that in any way enters into human experience. Carnell quoted Brightman, “In any event, one’s starting point is not decisive in philosophical investigation. The main thing is to conclude the whole range of relevant experience before we are through.” Parting ways with Brightman, however, Carnell vigorously opposed his case for a finite God and his denial of God’s absoluteness.

During his graduate studies, Carnell furthered his existentialist interests through the study of the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. In fact, Carnell’s dissertation at Boston University considered the problem of verification in Soren Kierkegaard. That dissertation was accepted in 1949. Carnell appreciated many of Kierkegaard’s emphases, especially the individual’s total dependence on God in humility, thankfulness, and love. Kierkegaard developed the meaning of Christian love with a profundity, thoroughness, and



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biblical accuracy which it is no exaggeration to say surpassed all previous efforts. Carnell adds, “He was convinced and rightly so that far too many ethicists were quagmire in legalism. That love is the fulfillment of the law and that the ethical self falls short of it duties until it performs works of love.” The term existential may strike some as nothing but a sign of academic pomposity, but it actually signifies that the spiritual being of a person has no reality apart from works of love.

In contrast to all the strengths Carnell found in Kierkegaard, he continued to find epistemological weakness. Kierkegaard offered a very inadequate relation between the Christian religion and public evidences. Although Kierkegaard said many fine things about faith, he was rather disappointing when he attempted to define the relation between faith and public evidences. Whereas Kierkegaard claimed “Certainty and passion do not go together,” Carnell maintained that “As far as the state of certainty is concerned, the one and only issue is the sufficiency of the evidences. All else is beside the point. Sufficiency is simply a characteristic of evidences on which we are willing to act.” This statement from Carnell’s last publication reflected his continuing concern that one’s opinions in philosophy and theology fit the facts; that is, they must be well-informed.

Did Carnell radically change his apologetic later in life? Although his later publications emphasize existential values more than his earlier books, they are consistent with his earlier studies. In his Introduction to Christian Apologetics (1948), the facts or givens include internal existential data as well as external empirical data, and his Christian Commitment (1957) emphasizes the law of noncontradiction and the sufficiency of the evidence. Interpreters of Carnell who claim that he radically changed his approach in later years do not do justice to either the variety of his graduate work on Neibuhr and Kierkegaard or his continued interest to the end of his life in verifying hypotheses.

In Christian Commitment, one of his later works he wrote, “Christianity is true because its major elements are consistent with one another and with the broad facts of history and nature.” You can see then how Carnell did his homework thoroughly. He learned much from those under whom he studied in Christian schools and secular universities, but he kept his critical mind about him. He saw not only their strengths, but also their weaknesses and sought to combine in his own approach their strengths. I think because he did his homework so thoroughly, he had unusual early



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success. During his graduate studies in theology and philosophy at Harvard and Boston Universities, Carnell taught philosophy and apologetics at Gordon College and philosophy of religion at Gordon Divinity School. As one of his students at Gordon College in those years, I took all the courses I could from the stimulating, young professor. The brilliant scholar punctuated his lectures of stories of his dialogues with empiricists and existentialists at the universities. He challenged students fresh from pietistic homes and churches to formulate a defense of their faith in the God of the Bible. Carnell’s account of a visit to the mother Church of Christian Science was unforgettable. He said the fervent testimonies of healings outdid many of the testimony meetings in evangelical churches, but the fervency of testimonies and the changed lives did not of themselves show that Christian Science is true. Experienced healings did not free the belief system from contradictions and discrepancies with fact.

While teaching and completing two doctorates in theology and philosophy, Carnell found time to write An Introduction to Christian Apologetics. It won a $5000 prize from the publisher. Not yet thirty years of age with one earned doctorate, neither another, and a prize winning book to his credit, Carnell was invited to teach at the new Fuller Theological Seminary. Carnell arrived in Pasadena in September 1948, excited about teaching both philosophical apologetics and systematic theology. Ahead of his times, he published Television: Servant or Master? in 1950, and in 1951, a revision of his Harvard dissertation, The Theology of Reinhold Neibuhr. This was followed in 1952 by A Philosophy of the Christian Religion, a substantial work on values. From 1954-59, Carnell gave up teaching theology and writing major books to serve as President of Fuller Seminary. Under his leadership, it achieved accreditation. Robert Rankin, a member of the accreditation team of the American Theological Schools said, “The accomplishments of the seminary are sound measurements, I believe, of the distinguished leadership which Dr. Carnell gave to it during those formative years of his presidency.”

Notice then the highlights of his verificational method. Carnell’s most significant scholarly contribution was his method of reasoning to determine the truth when one is faced with contradictory interpretations or claims. His method of justifying beliefs integrates the emphases of Clark on logic, Van Til on presuppositions, Machen on historical facts, Brightman on empirical givens, and existentialists like Neibuhr and Kierkegaard on internal data. Carnell’s if/then verificational approach



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acknowledges that there is subjectivity in every decision about the ultimately real and good. But it also finds that some convictions are better informed than others. The more coherent and viable proposals have greater probability than the others.

Carnell was acutely aware that minds torn asunder by contradictory claims regarding such ultimate concerns as God, Christ, and the Bible cannot commit themselves authentically to God’s kingdom, nor can these contradictory claims upon our loyalties be finally resolved by appeals to authority, for the authorities that roam Mecca, Salt Lake City, and Banaries contradict one another. Appeals to self-authenticating religious experience and intuition are not the answer either, for they also result in contradictions. One must choose between contradictory claims on other grounds.

By what method of reasoning then can contradictory claims be resolved? Carnell carefully considered and rejected deductive, inductive, and mystical approaches. Deductive reasoning from assumed premises, axioms, or presuppositions to conclusions that are logically true is useful only if the premises are in fact true. If the proponents of particular religious claims merely assume the truth of their basic premises, their reasoning is circular. A purely inductive method of reasoning is equally unfit for the task. It assumes that the mind is tabula rasa that observed empirical phenomena and then infers general conclusions with various degrees of probability. Total objectivity, however, seems impossible in religion as in other fields. Our controlled observations are extremely hampered by limitations of time, space, and energy.

Furthermore, a conductive method can neither confirm nor disconfirm the universal statements entailed in Christian faith; for example, all people ought to respect the rights of others. A purely empirical approach can never completely confirm God’s sovereignty overall. Hence, Carnell does not utilize the usual inductive arguments for God’s existence. The mystical method, furthermore, assumes that religious knowledge is a matter of immediate experiential acquaintance. Carnell acknowledges that mystical experiences and person encounters do provide important data. Unfortunately, however, the experiences do not interpret themselves. Naturalists explain them as the intellects being overwhelmed by emotions. Monists regard them as a realization of fusion with the cosmos, and theists may speak of a person-to-person encounter with the living God distinct from the world but active in it. Only critical discernment determines


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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whether an immediate experience is introverted narcissistic self-worship, a consciousness of fusion with mother nature, a personal awareness of the Creator, or a selling of one’s soul to the devil. Without discernment we cannot distinguish authentic from counterfeit religious experiences.

Having rejected the deductive, inductive, and mystical approaches to settling conflicting truth claims about the ultimate subject/object of worship, Carnell proposed a verificational method of reasoning. We will look at it fully next time.

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