Not Nearly Classical Enough

The "Classical" Apologetic Method?

Dear Friends,

Step into my study! Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

As I am sure you have noticed, much of my time has been taken up recently considering again issues concerning epistemology (human knowledge, faith and reason), and how it relates to the task of apologetics, or defending the faith against detractors. I count myself part of a “minority report” when it comes to this subject. It wasn’t always a minority report, as we shall see further confirmed today.

Consider this a bit of a follow-up to “Of Rocks and Trees,” wherein I argued at some length that a “presuppositional” approach—or at least commitment to its foundational principles—was at one time a majority report in Reformed theology. The Reformed resisted (initially) the temptation to divide faith and reason and set them side by side as independent activities and/or disciplines. They more or less sought to retain continuity with the Augustinian tradition of “faith seeking understanding.” That is, when it comes to first principles we do not first seek to know, and then believe; rather, by first believing we then understand and know (that’s the nature of “first” principles; if you “arrive” at them, they are no longer first principles). We ought to reason within the bounds of the Christian faith and profession, not unto Christian faith and profession. We reason inside-out, not outside-in. One reason for this is that there is no neutral ground from which to argue. One must stand somewhere. Stepping outside Christian commitments or setting them aside to argue one’s way back into Christian commitments is to imply that the “outside” is more reasonable, more true, more trustworthy than the inside, which is obviously (incandescently) the exact opposite of what the apologist is wanting and trying to do. Quite counterproductive.

To put it mildly, making this observation irritates a great many people. It just seems like “circular reasoning.” We believe Christianity because we believe Christianity. We believe the Bible because we believe the Bible. How is that a legitimate argument? Well, there is a lot more to it than that, but even setting aside the “more to it,” the truth is that nobody can avoid this sort of circular reasoning (i.e., “transcendental” reasoning). When dealing with absolute, foundational beliefs, things that must be true “of necessity” (e.g., in mathematics they call them “axioms”), things that are sina qua non (without which, not), there is no alternative but to proceed by faith. You begin by faith and reason outward from that faith. Everyone does this and it cannot be otherwise. Materialists believe by faith that matter is all there ever was and ever will be, and they reason accordingly, rejecting all counter-evidence because it doesn’t fit with their underlying faith commitment. Immanuel Kant wrote a famous book entitled Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason, signaling quite clearly what his bedrock presupposition is and how religion must acquiesce and bend to its demands. Christians have a bedrock presupposition, too, whether they openly acknowledge it or not. The presuppositional school of thought to which I belong thinks Christians should openly acknowledge it and proceed from there.

The question is what one’s foundation is going to be. And the Christian answer has always been (to greater and lesser degrees of consistency) the Word of God. “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is Truth,” Jesus says in John 17. Christians are sanctified, “set apart,” by their unshakeable commitment to God’s Word. The Bible, Holy Scripture, bears its own divine authority. It is “autopistos,” self-attesting. It is the judge, not something to be judged by the mind of man. This was Calvin’s view, and certainly Cornelius Van Til’s view; for the latter, the foundational “presupposition” or commitment was to “the self-attesting Christ of Scripture,” without whom nothing at all could be truly “attested.” The “self-attesting” part, the autopistos part, is what annoys devotees of an “evidentialist” or (allegedly) more “classical” approach to apologetics. No, no, no. We must first establish the truth of the Scriptures on other grounds—that is, by way of reason and evidence; only then can we accept it and use it as an epistemic foundation.

But just how “classical” is that approach?

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Passed down to us from antiquity comes a document that has become known as Fragments From the Lost Work of Justin on the Resurrection. As the title suggests, it is a fragment, not a complete work. But, for all that, it is still fairly complete. It is an outstanding work defending the resurrection of the body. Some scholars doubt the authorship of Justin Martyr (c. AD 100-165), but regardless of whether it was Justin or Athenagoras (often suggested) or someone else, it represents a very early specimen of Christian apologetics—as in, a generation following the death of the apostles. My view, having read Athenagoras’s separate and completed work on the resurrection, is that he is not the author of the Fragment. His attested work on the topic is argumentatively inferior to the Fragment. That is, it doesn’t seem to me that these two works come from the same hand, and Athenagoras’s known work seems dependent in some ways on the unknown fragment. So, even though it doesn’t matter, Justin Martyr it is for sake of discussion.

This is the opening of Chapter 1:

The word of truth is free, and carries its own authority, disdaining to fall under any skilful argument, or to endure the logical scrutiny of its hearers. But it would be believed for its own nobility, and for the confidence due to Him who sends it. Now the word of truth is sent from God; wherefore the freedom claimed by the truth is not arrogant. For being sent with authority, it were not fit that it should be required to produce proof of what is said; since neither is there any proof beyond itself, which is God.

That is so clear one hardly knows how to summarize it without just cutting and pasting it again. The word “carries its own authority.” It is not subject to “skillful argument” or “logical scrutiny.” It must be believed for “its own nobility” and because of who sent it. God sent it, and because He sent it, it is “not fit”—not appropriate—that it should require proof. There is no proof beyond itself. This is as bold a declaration of the “self-attestation” of God’s Word as you are likely to find. And Justin knows this is circular. Note that initially strange expression that truth is “free” and “wherefore the freedom claimed by the truth is not arrogant.” What does he mean by that?

My educated hunch is that freedom means something like “not impinged or hampered or subject to or accountable to anything outside itself.” This means that if the source were anything other than God, it would be arrogant—haughty, presumptuous. Usually, when someone makes a dogmatic claim, it can be countered with a “Says who?” If the answer is, “Says me,” that would be presumptuous in the extreme. Unless the speaker is God. It is a claim to absolute authority, and only God himself can claim such authority. And that, maintains Justin, is what the Scriptures are. The “freedom” claimed by God’s truth “is not arrogant.” Because it cannot possibly be otherwise! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?”

On the other hand, perhaps this opening by Justin is just an outburst of piety—just lofty words from someone who hasn’t really thought through or wrestled with its epistemological implications. But Justin goes on:

For every proof is more powerful and trustworthy than that which it proves; since what is disbelieved, until proof is produced, gets credit when such proof is produced, and is recognised as being what it was stated to be.

It appears he has, in fact, given this some thought. The proof is more powerful than that which it proves. As I stated above, stepping outside Christian commitments to “prove” one’s way back in implies that “outside” is more reasonable, more true, more trustworthy than “inside.” If you disbelieve something that is then “proven” so that you now believe it, then your more basic trust and belief is in the proof, not what is proven.

Justin now goes on to explain the transcendental character of the truth:

But nothing is either more powerful or more trustworthy than the truth; so that he who requires proof of this, is like one who wishes it demonstrated why the things that appear to the senses do appear. For the test of those things which are received through the reason, is sense; but of sense itself there is no test beyond itself.

This is a little opaque, but it seems a primitive observation about empiricism; one must take the reliability of sense perception for granted. You cannot “prove” sense perception without using sense perception, and thus the demand to have it “proven” is, well, senseless. It is a “transcendental necessity.”

As then we bring those things which reason hunts after, to sense, and by it judge what kind of things they are, whether the things spoken be true or false, and then sit in judgment no longer, giving full credit to its decision; so also we refer all that is said regarding men and the world to the truth, and by it judge whether it be worthless or no.

This is an analogy: “as then … so also.” Just as the objects of sense perception are brought the judgment seat of reason, to be determined what sort of things they are (ontology), whether things are “true or false” (epistemology), and then, once settled, we cease judgment and “rest” or “give full credit” to the decision, so also we bring “all that is said regarding men and the world” (i.e., everything, including, one presumes, reason and sense perception itself) to the judgment seat of the truth, and “judge by it.” The truth is the standard by which one measures, not the object or thing being measured. Now comes the key insight:

But the utterances of truth we judge by no separate test, giving full credit to itself. And God, the Father of the universe, who is the perfect intelligence, is the truth. And the Word, being His Son, came to us, having put on flesh, revealing both Himself and the Father, giving to us in Himself resurrection from the dead, and eternal life afterwards. And this is Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. He, therefore, is Himself both the faith and the proof of Himself and of all things.

This is Presuppositionalism 101. God is not, as C.S. Lewis put it, “in the dock” to be judged. He is the judge, and we are the ones under scrutiny. Jesus Christ is self-attesting—the “proof of Himself and of all things.” And this has decided implications for believers:

Wherefore those who follow Him, and know Him, having faith in Him as their proof, shall rest in Him.

We have faith in him “as our proof.” We rest in Him. I love the term John Frame coined about the believer’s basic intellectual posture: “cognitive rest.” That is the place from which the believer must undertake the task of apologetics—“in your hearts set apart (sanctify) Christ as Lord” (1 Peter 3:16). We do not start from a faux “uncertainty” to move to a place of certainty. We start from the “Certainty of Faith” (pre-orders for a new published edition here!), as Bavinck called it, and argue from the inside-out (the “binnensperspectief,” the “inside perspective,” as one scholar described Bavinck’s view). So also says Justin:

But since the adversary does not cease to resist many, and uses many and divers arts to ensnare them, that he may seduce the faithful from their faith, and that he may prevent the faithless from believing, it seems to me necessary that we also, being armed with the invulnerable doctrines of the faith, do battle against him in behalf of the weak.

Note carefully: the need for apologetics arises from the Deceiver attempting to seduce “the faithful from their faith”—that is, apologetics are intended to bolster and support the believer to stand firm in their faith, which is their prior, basic standpoint. Arguments and evidences are precious and necessary—he himself will go on to produce many of them. But they are supports or buttresses of faith, not the grounds of it. And when we “do battle” against the Deceiver, we do so “being armed with the invulnerable doctrines of the faith.” We are not battling our way to the doctrines of the faith, but battle the adversary with them. They aren’t the prizes to be won; they are the weapons. And they are “invulnerable” because they come from God himself in his self-attesting Word.

And so Justin goes on to argue at length for the resurrection based on what we know about God and his power and what he has done in Christ Jesus as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Now, I have left nothing out. I have just provided a commentary on the entirety of Justin’s first chapter—if you’ve read this far, you’ve read the whole chapter. The rest of the book jumps straight into arguing for the resurrection, and this introductory chapter represents the whole of his theoretical framework for apologetics.

It would be interesting to do a deeper dive and compare this framework with his other major apologetic works, like the Apology. I haven’t done that in any concerted detail, but I can tell you that in the Apology he spends a great deal of time showing the pagans that their mythologies and philosophies are contradictory, unstable, often irreconcilable, and provide no firm conclusions. They never result in Truth—invulnerable, unassailable Truth, with a capital “T.” He then simply declares to them, over and over again, “Here is what the Scriptures say.” He makes little to no attempt to “prove” the Scriptures, to my recollection, other than to give arguments for their antiquity (it’s important for him to show that they are more ancient than Homer and that whatever truth Plato managed to say was borrowed—without attribution—from the writings of Moses). The Scriptures are his weapons, and he wields them as the foil against the irrationality of pagan systems.

It seems to me the so-called “classical” method, building confidence in the Word of God with training wheels, bit by bit, evidence by evidence, so that we may at some future point then approximate something like “certainty,” isn’t remotely classical enough.

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Thanks for joining me for a Pipe & Dram! Let’s have another visit soon.