Pastoral Apologetics - another ministers' fraternal paper

In the ‘Banner of Truth’ magazine for May of this year there is an article by Theodore Cuyler, who lived from 1822 to 1909, entitled ‘Advice for Young Preachers’. In the course of a generally very helpful article he says this: ‘In one respect I have not followed the practice of many of my brethren, for I have never wasted a single moment in defending God’s Word in my pulpit. I have always held that the Bible is a self-evidencing book; God will take care of his Word if we ministers only take care to preach it. We are no more called upon to defend the Bible than we are to defend the law of gravitation. My beloved friend, Dr Maclaren, of Manchester, has well said that if ministers, “instead of trying to prop up the Cross of Christ, would simply point men to that Cross, more souls would be saved”. The vast proportion of volumes of ‘Apologetics’ are a waste of ink and paper. If they could all be kindled into a huge bonfire, they would shed more light than they ever did before. It is not our business to answer every sceptic who shies a stone at the solid fortress of truth in which God places his ambassadors.’

This quotation well illustrates the way some Christians think about apologetics. To be truthful, I think that most of us at times have at least been ambivalent about apologetics. We feel the force of sentiments like this, and yet at the same time we may be unsure about their validity. After all, most of us have probably had periods of doubt or uncertainty. Perhaps at school we had teachers who maintained that there were three ‘Isaiahs’. Or we may have been worried about how exactly Judas died or whether the last supper was the Passover meal or not, and we were grateful to those who tried to set our minds at rest. Some of us in our ministries may have come across real Christians who nevertheless have been greatly troubled about some matter of truth and we have felt it right to do our utmost to help them over the difficulty. It is not only sceptics, is it, who need an answer?

Paul in Pisidian Antioch and Athens

In Acts 13 we find a sermon, I think we can call it that, preached by Paul in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia. Here were people, Jews and proselytes, who had met to worship God and who knew the Old Testament. Paul’s sermon, therefore, began with the early history of Israel and soon led up to the coming of Jesus as the Saviour, his life, death and resurrection. The truth of the resurrection was backed up by three Old Testament prophecies, and the sermon ended with a warning from Habakkuk. Four chapters later Paul is in Athens and he is called to explain his teaching before the council of the Areopagus. It is likely that the reason for this was not merely interest, nor just that they wanted to hear what he taught because it sounded new, but rather to see whether it was acceptable to them or not. This was a critical congregation in the most highly educated city in the ancient world.

Before we go any further, I would like to turn aside from the main theme just for a moment. Because of the background of Christianity and church-going in our country we still tend to think in terms of preaching the gospel in the Pisidian Antioch setting. I am becoming more and more convinced that this is a mistake. I know that some unbelievers do come to church services, some regularly, and for that reason there is a place for evangelistic sermons and evangelistic application. The modern pagan, however, has no idea of Christian worship and I doubt that we should be attempting, in the first place, to bring him or her into worship services in order to hear the gospel. Worship is predominantly directed to God. The gospel, however, is directed to sinners as sinners and I believe we should be looking for other settings in which to make it known. I wonder whether both worship and evangelism are harmed by the way we sometimes try to do both at the same time.

To return to Acts 17 and Paul in Athens: here Paul was not in a synagogue and he was not preaching a sermon as such. There are four aspects of Paul’s address that I wish to comment on. Firstly, he established a point of contact, and this came about by observing what was important to the Athenians. Secondly, he used logic. Thirdly, he quoted from two Greek poets, Epimenides and Aratus. Finally, he came to judgment and the resurrection. Let me comment on his use of logic. In v.24,25 he says: The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. Paul’s conclusion is inescapable; but he is not quoting Scripture, he is using logical reasoning. Or again, v.29: Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. Again, the reasoning is unanswerable. If God made us human beings, and is greater than we are, as he must be, then he cannot possibly be like anything that we can make with our hands or even construct in our imagination.

It is tempting to try and give an extended exposition of this passage, but that is not my concern. However, I will make one or two more comments. In evangelism we often, I think, tend to start with what is important to us, or with what we think ought to be important to people, rather than what is important to them. The wrong starting point can easily be a turn off or lead to an expression of derision. Notice, too, that Paul did not directly contradict the beliefs of the Athenians, he simply undermined their use of temples, altars and images by his logic. That seems to me to be remarkably clever. The fact that he could quote from two Greek poets is interesting. He didn’t know that he was going to have the opportunity to address the council and I’m sure he didn’t carry copies of these poets around with him. He knew them well enough, however, to be able to use appropriate quotations. I doubt whether most of us could come up with suitable quotations from, say, Shakespeare or Milton, if we were put on the spot. I also doubt, however, whether Paul could have quoted the songs that were sung in the taverns of Athens.

Why we need Apologetics today

To get back to the theme of apologetics let me repeat the last sentence from the Banner of Truth article with which I began: ‘It is not our business to answer every sceptic who shies a stone at the solid fortress of truth in which God places his ambassadors’. The fact is, though, that nowadays very many people indeed are sceptical. They believe that the Christian faith is outdated, irrelevant and untrue, and probably in that order. This belief is constantly fed and encouraged by most of the media. In these circumstances I believe it is right for us to give considerable attention to apologetics; giving a reason for the hope that is in us, seeking by the help of the Holy Spirit to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to obey Christ. In this connection I was interested in John Wesley’s address to the reader at the beginning of the 1771 edition of his works: ‘In this edition I present to serious and candid men my last and maturest thoughts, agreeable, I hope, to Scripture, reason, and Christian antiquity.’ It was the little word ‘reason’ in this sentence which struck me, especially bearing in mind the revival atmosphere in which Wesley carried out most of his ministry.

A number of translations use the word ‘reasoned’ of Paul’s ministry. For example the ESV uses the word in Acts 17:2. In the synagogue in Thessalonica Paul reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead. In v.17, while in Athens he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. His speech in Athens is clearly an example of reasoning. In Acts 18 vv.4,5 in Corinth he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Gentiles. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Mesopotamia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. In chapter 19 when he was in Ephesus he entered into the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks (verses 8-10). With Jews his reasoning was based on the Old Testament, but not with Gentiles.

What happened at Berea is often, in my opinion, misunderstood by some people, (17:11): Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. The emphasis that is often put on this is that the Bereans were checking up on Paul because they were suspicious of him – the application then seems to be that we should check up on preachers. But that is a negative way of understanding what happened. Surely the point is that Paul was telling them things from the Old Testament that they had never realised before and they were thrilled to see for themselves the meaning and fulfilment of passages that they had never previously been able to understand.

This sense of the joy of discovery reminded of a book that I will refer to again later. The Book that Made Your World is written by an Indian Christian. It was written largely in response to a book by a noted Hindu intellectual, Dr Arun Shourie, who condemned missions as a conspiracy of British imperialism. Vishal Mangalwadi as a student had had his own battle over this and had decided to check out the facts for himself. The result proved to be astonishing: ‘My investigation of whether God had truly blessed India through the Bible yielded incredible discoveries: the university where I was studying, the municipality and democracy I lived in, the High Court behind my house and the legal system it represented, the modern Hindi that I spoke as my mother tongue, the secular newspaper for which I had begun to write, the army cantonment west of the road I lived on, the botanical gardens to the east, the public library near our garden, the railway lines that intersected in my city, the medical system I depended on, the Agricultural Institute across town – all these came to my city because some people took the Bible seriously.’ The truth can always stand scrutiny and we should not be afraid of helping people to overcome their prejudices and misunderstandings.

So I have three modest suggestions to make. Firstly, I think it is good for pastors to have as good an understanding of apologetics as is possible, bearing in mind our limitations of time and dependent, to some extent, on the nature of our ministry. Secondly, I think those who have evangelistic gifts, or who find themselves often involved in outreach should try to make themselves as aware as possible of the objections and difficulties which people raise in these days and be able to answer them. Thirdly, I think there can often be a more apologetic edge to our preaching than may frequently the case. It is this that I want to particularly dwell on.

Very often, I think, we associate apologetics simply with arguments for the existence of God. Perhaps this is not surprising, but I believe that the subject is much wider than that. I am not against considering or using such arguments and I do remember Dr Lloyd-Jones preaching some of those arguments evangelistically. This is not very easy to do, especially if you are going to speak in a way that does not leave ordinary people wondering just what on earth you are talking about! Also many of the current arguments used by atheists are based on scientific considerations and most of us are not competent to understand or convincingly rebut detailed questions about radiometric dating or DNA or mutations or string theory or the Higgs boson. So what I am going to do is to mention briefly several apologetic books, and then try to give examples of some apologetic strategies that can be used in preaching.

Apologetics books

I take it for granted that you are aware of the booklets of John Blanchard and especially of his large volume Does God believe in Atheists? One of the most recent of big books is by Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics, A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Apollos). This is certainly comprehensive and takes a while to get through. His approach is to present the Christian worldview, thus giving a holistic apologetic that takes in every area of life. This is important for it is easy for those with a scientific bent to present their scientific arguments for evolution, but much more difficult for them to account for the worldwide existence of religion, for morality and the whole area of human culture. An early chapter is entitled Distortions of the Christian Worldview – Or the God I Don’t Believe In. This was a wise chapter to write, but it is too brief and I did not feel he always adequately answered some of the questions he raised. It is disappointing to find this early on in the book.

A second very recent book is Confident Christianity by Chris Sinkinson (IVP). This has an excellent sub-title, Conversations that lead to the cross. I have met Chris several times and enjoyed the book, perhaps especially the earlier chapters. Just occasionally I think he could have been a little more definite in his conclusions. Turning to an older book, but still available – and you can get it on Kindle – there is Scaling the Secular City, by J. P. Moreland (Baker). This is a very thorough and cogent defence of the Christian faith. I think it is probably still one of the best books on the subject, though not an easy read.

These are primarily books for Christians. What about suitable books for unbelievers? This is much more problematic, because unbelievers can come in many different shapes and sizes – if you see what I mean. As far as booklets go, I am impressed by Evidence for God by Andy Christofides, Seven reasons to believe in the existence of God (Day One). However, I come back to the point that, as far as possible, you need to know the person you are trying to help, have some idea of what are real problems – as opposed to mere debating points – and what level of book is required. I suspect that many books ask too much of the ordinary man or woman. The best apologists are those who can answer questions which people are actually asking, and so conversation with unbelievers is the best way to find out where the main difficulties lie. At this point I want to turn to some examples of apologetic approaches that can be incorporated into sermons. The purpose of this, of course, is not just for unbelievers, but also to reassure and establish believers and give them ammunition to use in discussion and witness.

The moral argument for the existence of God

To start with there is one argument or reason for belief in God that I do want to mention because of its importance for the present day. In this case I am going to quote from an article entitled Aggressive Atheism by Kieran Beville in the current issue of Foundations, the Affinity theological journal:

‘In Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov there is the famous argument that if there is no God all things are permitted: ‘But what will become of men then?’ I asked him, ‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?’

‘In his Templeton Prize address Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: ‘Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened”.’

‘Well-functioning human beings are typically aware of actions as being right and wrong. Furthermore, this awareness binds them to certain obligations. A proposition such as, ‘torturing babies for fun is wrong’ is generally regarded as a statement of fact, a position known as moral realism. The existence of God provides a better explanation for this than various alternatives. Social organisation strategies in the West (such as systems of jurisprudence) have evolved over time and are based on the transcendent ethical code of the Commandments. If morality is transcendental in nature then theism provides the best explanation for this.

‘Thus, the existence of morality provides good grounds for belief in God. He made people in his image and morality reflects something of his nature. Thus morality is best explained within a theistic hypothesis; if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. But objective values do exist and thus we must conclude that God exists.’

The logic of this argument is very difficult to deny. Many young people are idealists; they want to save the planet, they want to stop wars, they want love and peace and fairness, they’d like to change the world. But why? If we are just animals who have gradually evolved what is the reason for such desires? Why do we think there are such things as universal human rights, why do we believe in right and wrong at all? If right is just what most people think is best at any given time and in any given circumstance, then it is either just a matter of personal preference or of following the crowd. There is no such real distinction as right and wrong, good or evil. On the other hand if we are made in the image of God and all have his law written on our hearts and have been given a conscience, that not only chimes in with our experience, it means that right and wrong have universal significance. Some things are always right, others are always wrong, just as most people think and most people have always thought.

The importance of the resurrection

I remember a few years ago Brian saying that he thought that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the best argument to use to demonstrate the truth of the Christian faith. Quite clearly if Jesus did actually rise from the dead then that means his words and claims are true. It means he is the Son of God and his death has saving significance and he is the Lord before whom every knee should bow and every tongue confess. How do we know for sure that he was raised from the dead?

What is the earliest reference that we have in the New Testament to his resurrection? Almost certainly the first mention in point of time comes in the first verse of Galatians: Paul, an apostle – not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. We will return a little later to the date of this letter. For the moment we note that Paul is explaining how he became an apostle, and therefore where his apostolic authority came from. His apostleship came through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.

When we look further on into this chapter we can see that Paul is referring to his experience on the road to Damascus: God was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach among the Gentiles. He had known that the apostles had filled Jerusalem with the teaching that Jesus had risen from the dead, and he was present when Stephen called out, Lord Jesus receive my spirit, and almost certainly in the council earlier than that. But it was not until the risen Jesus met with him on the road that he was forced to acknowledge the truth and bow in subjection to the Lordship of Jesus.

Who was this man, Paul? Was he someone gullible, someone who might be taken in, in some way? Was he likely to hear voices or have strange experiences? Everything we know about him suggests the opposite. He came from a respected and probably quite well off family. He was born a Roman citizen, so his father was already a citizen of Rome himself, and that was an unusual status for most people in those days, perhaps particularly for Jews and those who lived in the provinces.

Though Paul was a Jew his home was Tarsus, in what is now Turkey. This means that he was brought up in two cultures, Greek and Jewish, though neither of these was native to Tarsus. So we can add to these the basic, pagan culture of that area as well as the overlay of Rome. He was probably educated in a synagogue school in Tarsus until his Bar Mitzvah, and it is very likely that it was then that he went to Jerusalem and learnt from the most respected and influential Jewish rabbi of the day, Gamaliel. We have also noted from his address to the Areopagus that he was familiar with some Greek literature at least.

To this picture of Paul we can add the fact that prior to his Damascus road experience he was thoroughly convinced of Pharisaism and an outspoken and even fanatical opponent of the Christian church. It may be, however, that he had never actually heard or seen Jesus himself as he tells us that what he did was done ignorantly in unbelief. We also add in that his letters demonstrate him to be someone of considerable intellectual ability, someone, too, who had very high moral standards.

The point of all this is to establish what sort of person it is who tells us that he met with the risen Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. It is not credible to say that he was taken in about this experience, nor that he was lying about it. There is no doubt that an extraordinary turnaround took place in his life. How else can it be explained? On what grounds is it possible to deny that he is speaking the truth – apart from prejudice and unbelief?

Earlier I said that this was most likely the first explicit mention of the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament. Most scholars believe that this was the first letter that Paul wrote and that it was written around AD 50, give or take a year or two. Probably the letter of James is the only earlier document in the New Testament, and though the resurrection of Jesus is implied in that letter it is not explicitly mentioned. Now AD 50 is only about twenty years after the resurrection itself took place. So this written evidence for the resurrection is extremely close to the actual event. The only way to deny the force of this argument is to say that this letter – and by implication, the whole New Testament – is a deliberate fabrication. No alternative explanation is even possible.

Manuscript evidence

Nevertheless, some would say that even if Galatians was written so early what about the fact that we don’t have the original manuscript. This leads us on to some discussion about manuscript evidence. One of the earliest, if not the earliest, manuscript of Galatians is the Chester Beatty papyrus p.46, which is dated around 200 AD. However, it is important to keep the question of manuscripts in proportion and in this connection it is interesting to make comparisons with other ancient writings.

Take, first, a book written by the Roman historian Tacitus. He has a short book on Agricola, who became the Roman governor of Britain in AD 77. He was noted for his building of forts in order to establish Roman authority and it is likely that it was he who was responsible for the first one to be built on the banks of the river Lon – hence, Lancaster. Tacitus wrote about 100 AD. There is only one manuscript copy of his minor works in existence and that is dated to round about the year 1000, 900 years later.

Or take Suetonius, another Roman historian, who wrote his book about the Twelve Caesars some time between AD 75 and160. There are 8 manuscript copies of this in existence, the earliest being dated around 950, some 800 years later. Then there is Plato. He wrote somewhere between BC 427 and 347. There are 7 manuscript copies of his work in existence and the earliest copy is around 900AD, some 1,200 years later.

I have taken these figures from Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City, and there are other ancient books that he cites. When you consider that the earliest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament go back to the third century AD, with some fragments even earlier, and that there are 5,000 of them, as well as 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate and several hundred in other languages you can see that the evidence for the New Testament is of a completely different order from that of other ancient books whose authenticity is taken for granted.

The fact is that we have huge numbers of manuscripts and the differences between them are not very great, so that we can be certain of most of the text as it stands. Where there are some textual uncertainties these do not affect any major doctrine and do not make any significant difference to Christian faith and practice at all.

Thus the idea that the deity of Christ was something that developed in the church after a period of time during which he was glorified more and more is impossible in the light of the evidence. So also is the idea that his resurrection was influenced by pagan ideas of the death and resurrection of gods. Let me quote from another book, God is Great, God is Good.* ‘The fashionable charge that stories of crucified and risen saviours were rampant in the ancient world prior to Christianity has been dismissed by critical scholars, especially during the last few decades… it cannot be demonstrated that there is even a single pagan resurrection account prior to Jesus, whether mythological or historical.’

Clearly, we cannot preach about manuscripts or become too technical, but I think it is possible to insert facts like some of the ones I have mentioned into our sermons from time to time. After all, we want to answer genuine questions that some may have or have heard. We want to remove obstacles which might keep some from taking the Gospel record seriously, and we want to take away from unbelievers the spurious reasons that they give for their unbelief.

The influence of the Bible

The final apologetic strand that I want to explore briefly is the influence of the Bible. It is easy, of course, to say that the Bible has had a great influence on our own history in Britain, but that is general and vague. The 400^th anniversary of the King James, or Authorised, Version of the Bible produce a rash of books on its influence, both by believers and unbelievers. It is very interesting to see how much, for example, Lord Bragg, well-known on radio and TV and in literary circles, attributes to the influence of that book. He even has a chapter entitled The Royal Society (1660): Early Modern Science and the Bible. He concludes it like this: ‘Christianity assumed that the world was intelligible. So, and perhaps, therefore, did modern science. There had to be a first cause because Newton knew it was there: It was God. In the formative years of the seventeenth century it could be said that the King James Bible joined religion and science together in a marriage which has just about held despite massive bombardment.’

However, I want to go back to the book I mentioned at the beginning of this address, The Book that Made Your World. Its author has an incredible knowledge of history on a worldwide scale and also of the present intellectual culture in the Western world. The fact that he is an Indian allows him to say things that most of us would never dare to. For example, my breath was taken away when I read these words: ‘This chapter will examine how the Bible changed the European idea of a hero during the last millennium. A thousand years ago, “Christian” Europe’s idea of heroism was expressed in the first international conflict of the second millennium. It was a crusade in which Christian soldiers tried to purge the Muslims from the holy City of Jerusalem. The last major conflict of the second millennium was Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait, in which Western soldiers risked their lives to liberate Kuwaiti Muslims from Iraqi Muslims.’

He gives a short answer in a paragraph, and then he works it out in much more detail: ‘The answer is that the Bible replaced the classical idea of the hero as a world conqueror and the medieval idea of the hero as a courageous knight with the idea of a hero as someone who sacrifices himself for the good of others.’

Again, because the author is an Indian he sees things that we are not so likely to understand or take notice of. He has a chapter on ‘True Wealth’ which he illustrates by the invention of the reaper – for grain – by the American Cyrus McCormick. He points out that McCormick came of Puritan stock and was himself a dedicated evangelical Christian. He says: ‘McCormick’s reaper reinforces the point made in an earlier chapter – that necessity is not the mother of invention. All agricultural societies have needed to harvest grain. But no other culture invented a reaper. Most cultures met this need by forcing into backbreaking labour those who were too weak to say no – landless labourers, servants, slaves, women, and children. McCormick struggled to find a better way. The driving force of his life becomes apparent when you notice that he gave substantial portions of his income to promote the Bible through several projects including newspapers and the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Chicago, which was renamed the McCormick seminary.’

Later on he writes: ‘McCormick was nurtured on the biblical idea that through godly and creative work human beings can roll back the curse of sweat and toil and re-establish their dominion over nature. To repeat, my ancestors did not lack intelligence, but our genius was expressed in a philosophy that taught us to worship nature instead of establishing dominion over it. Economic development involves not worshipping but harnessing natural resources and energy for human consumption, albeit with foresight and a sense of stewardship.’ This is not a book that you could preach, of course, but it contains many illustrations of the way the Bible has changed the world that can be incorporated into sermons.

The quotation I began this address with contained this sentence: ‘We are no more called upon to defend the Bible than we are to defend the law of gravitation’. There is, however, a difference between simply defending the Bible and demonstrating its relevance to life and showing the beneficial effects it has had over the centuries. Even when we are not using illustrations from the sort of book I have been quoting from, I believe we ought in our preaching to show the match that exists between what the Bible says and our human experience. Isn’t the Bible accurate when it speaks about people being slaves to sin? Don’t we have many incidents recorded which show us typical human behaviour – Eve looking at the fruit of the tree, Lot’s wife looking back, King Jehoiakim cutting up Jeremiah’s book and throwing the pages into the fire, Peter denying the Lord. All human life is in the Bible and yet sometimes we seem to make it irrelevant to people, rather than bringing out its truthfulness and application to our hearers.

Finally, I believe we ought not to make too much of a contrast between apologetics and trusting in and looking for the power of the Holy Spirit. Why cannot the two go hand in hand? It is of course true that we can over-rely on reason and argument, but that is an example of relying upon ourselves. If both preparation and preaching ought to take place in reliance on the Spirit then we can fail in that while preaching solely on the Bible, just as we can if we try and add an apologetic element.

Personally, I would like churches to try and make more use of apologetics in preaching and also in non-worship situations. Paul at Athens didn’t quote the Bible at all, but he did quote two pagan writers. Not surprisingly, given his mention of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ That, surely, is at least a good start.

* IVP; 2009