Classical Method: From Demonstrating God to Establishing God’s Word
Classical apologetics is distinguished from other schools of apologetic method in at least four ways: 1. It is the most historic approach to defending the faith, 2. It takes an unequivocally positive view of natural theology, 3. It comprehends the most amount of truth, and therefore 4. It comprehends the totality of modes of thought that discovers those truths. It is the third and fourth qualities that will especially concern us here. All of the other schools seek to restrict legitimate starting points on the ground that reason is undermining some necessary or central dimension of the Christian faith.
Presuppositionalism sets this limit against extra-biblical reasons for faith. Reformed Epistemology does the same against any justification of properly basic belief. Fideism rules out reasons for faith altogether. Evidentialism reasons about evidence in a way consistent with the classical view, but even it sets a kind of limit when it so prioritizes the contingent matters of either history or science, eschewing the questions of natural theology for at least some of the same reasons as the other schools do.
When a classicalist says that “All truth is God’s truth,” our method can actually take that seriously in that we are both willing and able to “go there,” wherever there may be.
More to the point of my opening summary, the restrictions that each of these schools set on starting points (or any points in the case of the fideist), in that very act of limitation, make null and void the truth of Christianity in those arenas so restricted. In effect, the would-be apologist has left the unbeliever no longer “without excuse” as Paul describes him in Romans 1:20. Of course as Christians we know that all unbelievers really are without excuse. But the other schools of apologetics have put themselves in the corner of not being allowed to tell the unbeliever why precisely this is the case in those delegitimized zones.
Proponents of competing approaches will naturally disagree with this summary. It can be more rigorously defended another time. In positive terms of procedure, the classical method operates from taking the unbeliever from the necessary truth of the most basic realities (God, truth, the universe and the soul), to realities which are more specific to the Christian claim yet contingent upon the former.
Once we grasp the basic rationale for the classical approach, we can see how the conclusions of natural theology force the skeptic into a narrow set of options when he comes to the evidential questions. A more narrow set of options than those to which he might otherwise attempt to retreat. How many times have we been in conversations with people who are all over the map, so to speak? We answer one objection over a matter of fact, and they fly back to a more general skepticism over a matter of principle. Like a pinball machine, they bounce the apologist back and forth until all that is left for the untrained onlooker is a chaos of unresolved difficulties.
From Natural Theology to the Divine Inspiration of Scripture
When the existence of God is demonstrated by a logical argument, one is dealing with a conclusion 1. about necessary truths 2. concerning the First Cause of all other things. Just ponder those two components for a moment. The implications of this for epistemological criteria in all other inquiries is seldom considered. It eliminates the logical possibility of the vast majority of the backdrop against which the skeptic brings up his many difficulties.
Someone may see all of this in general, and yet still wonder how it is of specific advantage when coming to questions about Scripture. The simple answer is that some of those places of retreat into antecedent questions have been cut off to attacks on Scripture as well. For example, how many times will a barrage upon particular Bible passages descend into, “The Bible was written by man!” or “You can make the Bible mean whatever you want!” Sound familiar? But what sort of questions are these? Are they really evidential? In other words, what arena of truth, or scope of reality, are these two objections operating within? The answer is that they are assaults upon the objectivity of truth. And if the rational viability of such a subjectivist stance has already been flushed out like a flamethrower into a rat’s tunnel, then there is no more room for these.
The divine inspiration of Scripture (thus implying its authority and inerrancy) is many things, but from an apologetics perspective, we need to see that this is neither a purely philosophical nor purely evidential question. It is a convergence of both.
For example, the premise “God cannot err” was a conclusion of natural theology. By contrast, the premise “The Bible is God’s word” is a conclusion of both deductive inferences and inductive matters that must first solidify our premises. In that latter category, one establishes important pieces such as 1. the basic reliability of Scripture’s testimony, 2. the claims of Christ about the Scripture, and 3. Jesus’ own infallible credibility given his works, not to mention 4. epistemological criteria such as Locke’s principle of the credit of the proposer.
Once that is done, we proceed to a more formal case for the divine inspiration of Scripture, such as that proposed by Gerstner and Sproul.
(1) The Bible is a basically reliable and trustworthy document.
(2) On the basis of this reliable document we have sufficient evidence that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
(3) Jesus Christ being the Son of God is an infallible authority.
(4) Jesus Christ teaches that the Bible is more than generally trustworthy: it is the very Word of God.
(5) That the Word, in that it comes from God, is utterly trustworthy because God is utterly trustworthy.
(Conclusion) On the basis of the infallible authority of Jesus Christ, the Church believes the Bible to be utterly trustworthy, i.e., infallible.1
As you can see, it is Premise 5 that was derived from a prior treatment of natural theology. However, since (especially in a “postmodern culture”) even the legitimacy of truth criteria as such is subject to doubt, and the basic ordering of rational demonstration is not something taught in Western schools anymore (even at the college level), it just so happens that our time spent in philosophical investigation, prior to the evidential questions, will go a long way toward rebuilding those tools of discovering truth. So things can be misleading on the surface of a formal argument. In the deeper reality, the classical order accomplishes more than simply plugging in our Premise 5 above. To put it in layman’s terms, it prepares our skeptical friend to learn to think straight.
Is There Not a More Popular, or Simpler, Approach? Yes and No.
If one wants to smooth off any of the rough edges that have to borrow from philosophical reasoning, they may do so. Apologists have done this in recent years. However, what I will argue is that the moment any one piece of such arguments is rejected, virtually any reply by the Christian is going to get deeper and deeper into what amounts to philosophical reasoning. For example, there is what Stephen Cowan calls “The Inherent Character Approach.” He uses the recent publication, Building Belief, by Chad Meister, as a case study.2 Cowan sees value here, but finds it to be incomplete in terms of its substance, though I want to point out something a bit more formal about it. Many versions of this approach abound in internet articles. I have answered in such ways myself for the purpose of being concise. For instance, if someone asks us point blank: “Why I should I believe the Bible over, say, the Qu’ran or the Book of Mormon?” we might reply something like,
We can know the Bible is the word of God by various objective qualities of divine authorship. For example, its (1) transformative power over people’s lives; (2) its internal consistency; (3) its fulfilled prophecies from Old to New Testaments; (4) its profound diagnosis of evil in the world; (5) external corroboration of its history and archeology; and (6) its answering the most fundamental problem that human beings have.
This is a very helpful way to introduce the subject. It may even satisfy some inquirers. However, in the real world of engaging the skeptic, it will not do—not because any of the six qualities of Scripture here are defective, but because the form of the reply is cursory in nature. Invariably someone will respond: “What do you mean by profound diagnosis of evil?” or “Internal consistency—ha! Big deal! An account can be logically consistent but still erroneous!” How do we reply? A good reply will be one which reasons. It will have to not only challenge assumptions (as the presuppositionalist would agree to do), but it must set down new tracks of thinking with the already provided materials of general revelation.
Cowan actually favors the the above method of Sproul-Gerstner, as well as Geisler, who made a similar argument. Cowan places this under a larger category called “The Christological Approach” because of how it hinges on the credibility of Christ, though the Sproul-Gerstner-Geisler varieties are more specifically “The Historical Reliability Version,” as the basic reliability of Scripture is a first hinge, opening up the honest inquirer to the subsequent steps regarding Christ. After all, where does one receive his picture of Jesus but by the very Gospel witnesses which might otherwise be called into question? The evidential work of the apologist at this point is an interesting subject, and I certainly commend Cowan’s little essay on that subject—part of which makes the point that such arguments make most sense within a classical apologetic understanding.3
For our purposes, I have only to say in closing that the more one gets into this, the more one is occupied in the business of epistemology and not merely evidence. Before one can agree on what the evidence says, one must agree on how evidence would say anything at all; and then once one fills in their premises with more evidence, there are more inferences to be drawn. It would seem, then, that evidentialism on its best day is flanked by the philosophers. Classical apologetics’ commitment to “obscure reasoning” turns out to be indispensable for virtually any part of the apologist’s task.
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1. A few places that Sproul and Gerstner set forth this line of reasoning are: 1. Sproul-Gerstner, “Is the Bible Inspired by God?” in Silencing the Devil (Video Mock Debate). 2. Gerstner, “Proving the Inspiration of the Bible” in Handout Theology.
2. Stephen B. Cowan, “How to Make a Case for the Inspiration of Scripture in the Current Milieu” in Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics, Vol. 2, No. I, 2009, 67.
3. Cowan, “How to Make a Case for the Inspiration of Scripture in the Current Milieu,” 78.
