Of The Holy Scriptures and Apologetics 3

The YouTube video is available here.

Role of the Scriptures in Apologetics

It Serves as Our Ultimate Presupposition – It is the necessary precondition for making sense of everything. Genesis 8:22 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
 View of Metaphysics (Theory of reality)
 View of Ethics (Theory of morality)
 View of Truth (where do we get our knowledge of the truth)
 View of Science (Induction, Uniformity of Nature)
 View of Knowledge or Epistemology (How do we justify all the things we know)
 View of Logic and Reasoning (How we should reason)

It Serves as Our Commitment – 1 Peter 3:15 in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.
 Proximate Starting Point – Our reasoning faculties
 Ultimate Starting point – 2 Corinthians 10:5 take every thought captive to obey Christ.
 Faith is not something that stands over against reason. Rather a reason itself rests upon the presupposition of faith and collapses arbitrarily without it. – Greg Bahnsen
 [Sye Ten Bruggencate] “God is not a God that we can reason to; He is the God that we can’t reason without.”

Apologetics, How?

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26:4-5

FOOL – [John Frame: Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief] Non-Christian thinking is foolishness

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
 Do not place the unbeliever the judge over God.
 Answer them not according to their own standards or you’ll be like them.
 The gospel does not cater to rebellious man’s demand for factual signs and logical argumentation that will pass the test of autonomous scrutiny. (Greg Bahnsen on Foundations for Christian Scholarship, 209)

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
 For the sake of conversation, you may grant the truth of their presupposition and then show them that it cannot account for or justify their own knowledge claims using their own terms.
 Help them see that it is, in the final analysis, built on sinking sand and that only in Christ the Solid Rock can their worldview stand.

Example: “All truth is that which is observable and testable. Therefore, you must only present me observable facts.”
 Do Not Answer: “I do not believe that empiricism or sensory observation is the standard of truth…”
 Answer: “…but supposing that that is true, is that statement itself observable and testable?”

Practical Points:
 An apologist must be a Christian.
 Luke 21:10-15: 10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. 12 But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. 13 This will be your opportunity to bear witness. 14 Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, 15 for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.
 We do not start with our autonomous reason to get to God. Rather, we start from God and His word in order to establish truths.
 As Christians, we shouldn’t be neutral because unbelievers aren’t.

To God be the Glory!

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Prepared by Jordan Ravanes
References: Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief by John Frame; Christian Apologetics by Cornelius Van Til; https://defenseofaith.wordpress.com/2015/12/25/ultimate-presupposition/ Pat’s Article;