Responses to Andy Stanley

Articles by Dr. Michael Kruger and Dr. Al Mohler and Dr. James White spent 7 Dividing Line programs on these issues that are connected to the methods of Andy Stanley's view of Scripture, evangelism, seeker-sensitive emphasis, easy -believe-ism, and his erroneous views of church and church discipline; and apologetic methodology.

https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/responses-to-andy-stanley-and-his-statement-that-the-bible-is-not-the-foundation-of-the-christian-faith-and-other-issues/

The problem with depending on the rationalism of Thomas Aquinas: Analysis of the book, "Evangelical Exodus" by Scott Oliphint

Video begins around 12:20.

This was a very good analysis of why so many students and and teachers at Southern Evangelical Seminary (founder Norman Geisler) have left Evangelicalism and converted to Roman Catholicism.

Analysis of the rationalism of Thomas Aquinas and the book "Evangelical Exodus" (Edited by Douglas M. Beaumont, Ignatius Press, 2016)

Addendum:  (June 11, 2016)
Dr. White's comments on the Dividing Line Program of June 10, 2016 (from around 18 minute mark to 43 minute mark) about the Evangelical Exodus book, Norman Geisler, Southern Evangelical Seminary, Thomas Aquinas, Oliphint's lecture, and Roman Catholicism are a good addition to Oliphint's lecture. 

Dr. White emphasized other issues such as the bondage of the will vs. freedom of the will (Monergism vs. Synergism) and the Sacramentalism of Thomas Aquinas.  (Aquinas was the one called upon by the Pope to defend the 1215 dogma of Transubstantiation.  Aquinas lived from 1225- 1274 AD, but he is the one who explained the earlier dogma of 1215. )  Also, the fact that the SES students are not exposed much at all to the best of the Reformation thinkers - Luther on the Bondage of the Will, Calvin, others - those Calvinists are avoided by Geisler and SES and so the emphasis on Aquinas and the autonomous freedom of the human will, seems to have filled that vacuum.

Dividing Line Program of June 10, 2016 :

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php/2016/06/10/arminian-loses-psalm-3310-11-ses-rome-comma-johanneum/

Three parts to that DL:
1. An Arminian writer skips Psalm 33:10-11 (beginning to 18:00) 
2. Evangelical Exodus, Geisler, Oliphint, Thomas Aquinas, Roman Catholicism ( around 18.00 to 43.00)
3. Issues about the Textus Receptus, Textual Criticism, 1 John 5:7-8, some Reformed Christians who believe the Textus Receptus Greek text is the best (TR Onlyism); and how that attitude will not equip people to deal with atheists, skeptics, Muslims, JWs, Mormons, etc. who will eat their lunch if they try and bring a TR Only ism attitude into the real world in evangelism and apologetics.  (43:00 to the end)

MP3 Debate: The Case For / Against God 1991

Here's an MP3 I found on a Catholic apologetics website (and moved over to another sever):

Greg Bahnsen vs. George H. Smith The Case For / Against God 1991

For those of you not familiar with presuppositional apologetics, this free-form discussion between the late Greg Bahnsen and atheist George Smith will give you a good taste of the method of argumentation. Try not to be doing anything distracting while listening to this show.

Presuppositional Apologetics

Many people make a broad distinction between presuppositional and evidential (or classical) apologetics. The classical method enjoys a rich history (for instance B.B. Warfield would be considered a classical apologist), while the Presuppositional approach really came to fruition with Van Til and Greg Bahnsen (though I've read various things from different theologians in church history that have sounded very presuppositional).

I recall hearing Michael Horton say he was presuppositional, but really, whatever "worked" for a particular person is what he would use. He may be on to something- if understood in this sense: I believe that one must be attentive to where a non-believer “is at”. Presuppositional arguments might be good for a hardcore atheist or pseudo-intellectual type. For instance, a guy I work with is a left-wing liberal, and well educated. Presuppositional arguments are very effective to get him to think. An evidential approach though may be perfect for someone who assumes much of the Christian worldview already. Sharing the classical argument that Christ was either “liar, lunatic or Lord” might be very helpful in getting to the gospel, quickly, for someone who's ready. From my viewpoint, both methods are possible.
That being said, my real love in apologetics is the presuppositional approach. Probably the best example of this approach is the debate between the late Greg Bahnsen and the atheist Gordon Stein. “Does God Exist?”. It’s best to track down an audio copy of this debate. This is not "easy listening". It requires one's complete attention, and multiple listenings. It's not something one can put on and then "multi-task". It will be of tremendous benefit to anyone interested in presuppositional apologetics.

If you’ve only listened to it once, my opinion is that it gets better the more one listens to it- it really takes time to chew and digest the arguments from both sides. Quite frankly, the first time I listened to the debate years ago, a lot of it went over my head. I subsequently burned off a copy to CD in which I divided each segment up to individual tracks, and took the time to focus on each section. Sometimes driving to work, I’d listen to only Bahnsen’s segments, other times just Stein’s. If wasn't until I took a seminary-level class in presuppositional apologetics that it all really made sense to me. Presuppositional arguments are like dynamite. They are extremely powerful.

Bahnsen doesn’t deny the use of reason, argument, and evidence. His point though is that these only make “sense” and find meaning in the context of a theistic worldview.

In response to the question “Is God good?” Bahnsen responds he knows God is good because:

“He saved me. He created me. He made the world and He made it good. He sent His son into the world to die for my sins. Many of these evidences are quite convincing to me, but I don’t use them outside of a word-view in which they make sense, in which they would be taken as true. If you mean is God good in such a way, or can I give you evidence that you would accept? That would depend on what your presuppositions are.”

In response to the question, “What solid evidence do you have to maintain that the Christian faith is the only true religion with a god? There are religions far older, and more or just as wide spread which millions of people consider valid,” Bahnsen answers,

“I have not found the non-Christian religions to be philosophically defensible, each of them being either internally incoherent or undermining human reason and experience… I will give just a couple of illustrations. Obviously I’m not going to cover all of them.

For instance, Hinduism assumes that God, or Raman is the impersonal and universal soul of the unchanging one of which all things are part (for instance). And because of that particular outlook, Hinduism says that everything in terms of my normal experience of the world and thinking is Maya, or illusion. Because everything in experience and thinking presupposes distinctions. But that is contrary to the most fundamental metaphysical fact, and that’s that there are no distinctions, all is one. So basically, Hinduism tells me that all my thinking, all of my reasoning is illusion. In so doing, it undermines reason.

You can take religions such as Shintoism, it’s view of Commi, the forces that permeate the universe, or Taoism, the ordering force of the universe. And they are impersonal forces, and as such are even less than human beings because they don’t have volition or intelligence.”

I point these things out to enforce the fact that presuppositional arguments are not an appeal to fideism. The employ reason, argument, and evidence. Bahnsen says elsewhere (not in the debate):

"God wishes for us to be rational: to exercise and improve our reasoning ability in understanding, propounding and defending the truths of Scripture. And as Locke observed, this reasoning ability does not begin or end with the teaching of Aristotle. To be rational is a trait much broader than the use of syllogisms (although they certainly have their place). The kind of rationality or reasoning that we will employ in defending the Christian faith involves not only study of formal logic (patterns or abstract forms of inference), but also attention to informal fallacies in ordinary language, the use of inductive reasoning, the handling of empirical evidence in history, science, linguistics, etc., and especially reflection upon the demands of an adequate worldview in terms of which all such thinking makes sense."

Bahnsen was keen on exposing the prejudice of non-Christians in regards to the "facts." In evaluating arguments against Scripture, Bahnsen uses arguments very similar to Josh McDowell:

"The third indication of prejudice in the criticism of the unbeliever is that he or she has not taken account of the actual evidence which is publicly available regarding the text of Scripture. If the critic had taken time to look into this subject, he or she would not have offered the outlandish evaluation that the Biblical text is unreliable. This came home to me with great force after taking an advanced course on Plato in graduate school, a course which took account of the textual criticism of the literary corpus of Plato's works. Our earliest extant manuscript of a work by Plato dates from right before 900 A.D. ("Oxford B," found in a Patmos monastery by E. B. Clarke), and we must remember that Plato is thought to have written roughly 350 years before Christ -- thus leaving us with a gap of over twelve centuries. By contrast, the earliest fragments of the New Testament date less than fifty years after the original writing; the bulk of our most important extant manuscripts dates from 200-300 years after original composition. The text of the New Testament is remarkably uniform and well established. The reliability of the Old Testament text has been demonstrated by the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls.

The overall authenticity and accuracy of the Biblical text is well known to scholars. Frederick Kenyon concluded: "The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation, throughout the centuries." Such assessments from competent scholars could be multiplied easily -- which only goes to show the prejudice that operates in the thinking of unbelievers who offhand criticize the Bible for "very likely" having a dubious text."

I point all these things out for any of you interested in learning about presuppositionalism. Sometimes those of us who spent years in evangelicalism will over-react to the multitudes of Arminian apologetics we've been exposed to, and wrongly embrace a form of presuppostionalism that is an over-reaction to folks like Strobel, Geisler, McDowell, Paul Little, etc. When I first gripped presuppositional apologetics, it was just one more weapon against Arminian theology. The more though I learned about it, the more I learned to employ some of the work from the Classical approach.

“I believe in Christianity because it’s absurd!” The Hidden God vs. The Revealed God

“I believe in Christianity because it’s absurd!” Would you ever say such a thing to a non-believer? I doubt it. Most of us would be asking God’s forgiveness for even thinking it. The early church father Tertullian is said to have expressed his belief in Christ’s crucifixion with these words: “...it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.” He also said, “And He [Christ] was buried, and rose again, the fact is certain, because it is impossible”.* These statements sound preposterous. But Tertullian had something deeper in mind than nonsense. These assertions are more profound than the first glance reveals.

Look out your window. It may be a bright sunny day, with birds chirping and flowers blossoming. If it’s nighttime, perhaps you can look up into the sky and see the stars shining like diamonds against black velvet in a jeweler’s case. As Christians, we see the divine artist and His brilliant handiwork: “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

But non-Christians also look out their windows. Scripture tells us they know God exists (Romans 1:18-23). They see the same profound beauty and wonder you do. But rather than praising the true God of the Bible, they create god as they imagine him to be. Seeing a sunny day, a man may realize he enjoys life. His god is probably the grandfatherly image of the ‘good guy’ with a long beard who sees that the good in his life outweighs the bad (or so he thinks). Through the window though he may see a torrential storm, thus his god may be powerful and angry. When things go wrong in his life, he wonders exactly what he did to deserve his fate from the hands of angered providence.

Because human creatures want to make it on our own, because we ultimately want to feel responsible for our ultimate well being, the gods we fashion demand performance and accomplishment. The fallen creature cannot even imagine what God is really like, so his god is largely a reflection of his feelings, failings, and fears. This is the god that makes ‘sense’ to fallen humanity. Martin Luther called this humanly fashioned deity the “hidden god.” This is the god that sinners can’t see; yet they know he’s there. It’s easy for them to believe in this god, in fact it’s ‘logical’.

Tertullian’s words should be coming a little more into focus. If one were to ask you what is the best description of God you could come up with, what would it be? How has God most clearly revealed Himself? The answer should be obvious: God has revealed Himself to us most clearly in Jesus Christ. But think about the “revealed God” for a moment. How was he first revealed? He came to us as a baby in a manger. God almighty, creator of the universe revealed Himself as a weak, fragile infant. Then the infant grew, and took on a vocation: carpentry. God almighty, creator of the universe revealed Himself as a hard working “blue collar” guy, a man without the financial strength and greatness of kingly riches. Where do we find God a few years later? We find him beaten and bruised, dying in weakness on a cross, abandoned by friends and followers: a succinct picture of helplessness.

Paul brings Tertullian’s words sharply into focus. In 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:9. Paul says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’” Indeed, the Gospel message must seem utter foolishness to non-believers. In Christ’s weakness on the cross, one actually finds the God of the universe. And how is it that mankind can know God almighty? “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” The “foolishness” of preaching becomes the highest wisdom!

Paul expresses these paradoxes succinctly: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” And whom does God choose to enjoy the riches of His wisdom and strength? Paul explains: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” God primarily chose fishermen and tentmakers to spread His Gospel. Likewise, you Christian, feeling insignificant and inconsequential by the world’s standards, bear the power of God contained in the Gospel. However weak you may feel, our Lord states in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that His “strength is made perfect in weakness.”

You will probably never explain to a non-Christian that you believe in Jesus because it’s absurd. But maybe you’ve been embarrassed or ashamed in front of the world because of your Christianity, and haven’t been able to understand why. The reason is quite simple. You have probably been evaluating the Gospel with the wrong worldview. Maybe, like all of us, remnants of the hidden god (the god that makes “sense”) clouds your understanding of the revealed God. Paul explains that in weakness, he was strong (2 Cor. 12:10). It is only by embracing God as he has most clearly revealed Himself: “in the crib” and “on the cross”, will you be strong, in actuality. Don’t be afraid of your weakness, boast in it, that the power of Christ may rest upon you (2 Cor.12:9).

*Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, 5 as cited in Geisler, N. L. (1999). Baker encyclopedia of Christian apologetics. Baker reference library (Page 721). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books. Geisler points out that Tertullian probably used the word "foolish" rather than "absurd."