Should we argue and debate our faith?

Here is another long citation from Bernard Ramm on the benefit and purpose of Christian evidences and apologetics.

“At this point the purposes of Christian evidences for the Christian should be made evident:

• The Christian is established in his faith not only experientially, but intellectually and factually. He sees the Christian religion not only as that which gives him a blessed experience of salvation and assurance within his heart, but also as s system universal and factual in its scope. He sees it in its cosmic, historic and factual breadth. His personal experience is thus related to a universal and valid system of religion. The snipings of psychologists at his religious conversion are emptied of much of their pertinence, for although his religious convictions commenced with his conversion, they now no longer rest solely on such a narrow base, but are part of a comprehensive world view.

• Further, the Christian well versed in Christian evidences understands the nature of many of the attacks on the Christian faith, and knows their invalidity. His knowledge of textual criticism enables him to silence the argument that the text of the Bible has been appreciably tampered with during the course of its transmission; his knowledge of literary criticism enables him to defend the trustworthiness of his documents; his knowledge of all the other items in the arsenal of Christian evidences is a powerful weapon for not only the silencing of attacks on the faith, but the positive evangelistic presentation of the Gospel of Christ.

• Apologetic and Christian evidences are not the gospel, but if a person has a prejudice against the gospel it is the function of apologetics and evidences to remove that prejudice. The value of apologetics and evidences for evangelistic purposes (public, personal conversation, literature) is too frequently underrated usually on the grounds that people are won by preaching of the Word alone.

Two observations are pertinent to this assertion:

1. First, no well-grounded apologist will state that the philosophic demonstration of Christianity saves a man, but it is, to the contrary, quite evident that no man will give the necessary credence to the Word if he has certain notions and biased opinions about the facts and nature of the Christian religion. Apologetics and Christian evidences cut down these objections to enable the gospel once again to directly confront the consciousness of a person. Spurgeon’s oft-quoted remark that the Bible is a lion that defends itself is very pious of sound, but very fallacious of fact. The huge slashes of radical criticism into the Christian church reveal the Bible is defenseless unless defended by its believers. Is every cavil, every slander, every false accusation, every gross misrepresentation to go unnoticed, unanswered, unchallenged? Can the stabs at the vitals of theology be answered by quoting a verse or two of Scripture? We think not. Christian evidences and Christian apologetics are indispensible to the health, welfare and progress of the gospel.

2. Second, the opponents of Christianity figure that it is worthwhile to argue their case. It is the basic theory of all propaganda that successful efforts are possible by argumentation, specious or genuine. Lunn correctly observes that ‘Nobody is ever converted by argument’ is a formula as popular with Christians as it is unknown among politicians and political canvassers…Human opinion is not always formed from argumentation, but a good measure of it is, and therefore Christian evidences is the Christian arsenal of data and facts for any Christian who wishes to defend and debate his faith.”

                                                                           Bernard Ramm, “Protestant Christian Evidences,” pp 14-16 

Science against Christianity? Let's look again...

Here is a long quote from Bernard Ramm that pinpoints a huge flaw in the naturalistic universe of natural science, at least that natural science that purposely cuts itself loose from theism.

“The scientist opposes the supernatural on two counts:

A. He opposes the supernatural on the basis that the supernatural is contradictory to natural law.

B.  On the grounds that miracles do not fit into the universe the scientist works in.

A.  However, the concept of natural law is not as simple as appears on the surface. Although the scientist may handle the law as a simple axiomatic notion, it does not admit of such simplicity upon analysis. The first premise of every natural law is the principle of the uniformity of nature. If the uniformity of nature is not predicated the law is meaningless, 1.e., it becomes provincially true of one experiment or a cluster of experiments at one point in time in one section of space. It is the principle of the uniformity of nature that universalizes laws so that what is discovered at one place and time may be predicated of many spaces and times.”

      “Not only is natural law dependent on the principles of uniformity, but all predication is dependent on it. There is no demonstrable method of proving that the future shall be like the past. I can only be assumed in terms of the principle of uniformity.”

      “It is recognized that the principle of the uniformity of nature is a dictum that comes from the medieval period. It was a theological tenet which stated that in that God was an orderly Person the universe must reflect His orderliness. The original source of the principle is to be found in the theistic undergirding of Nature. Now by the strange concourse of events the uniformity of nature is used to controvert theism! In the theistic system the principle of the uniformity of nature finds its rational justification and its metaphysical undergirding in the character of Almighty God.”

      “Further, although the Christian may locate the source of the principle in his theistic metaphysics, the scientist has no method of proving the principle. There is no single experiment that proves it, for it the first principle of all experimentation. To extend the principle from one experiment to all is to use the principle to prove itself. There are two ways out. The scientist may give the principle full metaphysical status as a pervasive feature of reality, but in so doing he as become a metaphysician. Or, he may with the positivists state that the principle is one of the assumed principles of scientific investigation which one takes as true but does not bother to prove. In this case, the question is begged or dodged. Another variety of the positivistic position is to assume the truthfulness of the principle on pragmatic grounds. But if grounded pragmatically, it cannot then be used viciously to exclude the miracle in Biblical history. Pragmatic verification leaves it possible that other situations may occur in which the principle does not hold.”

     " Finally, the Christian theist insists that the uniformity of nature is not the point of argument at all. For the daily routine of life, for he regular procedures of science, and for the practical needs of the commercial world, the principle of uniformity holds true. As will be noted in the discussion of miracles, the Christian insists on a regular order in nature for he very detection of the ‘irregular.’ That is to say, the Christian theist is not arguing for a chaotic or a spontaneous or a haphazard universe when he argues for the supernatural. At this point he only insists that science does not mercilessly and blindly extend the uniformity of all of human history without full appreciation of the nature of scientific knowledge itself, and the worthy contentions of Biblical theism.”

      "The Christian attitude toward the principle of the uniformity is this: For the general routine of life and existence the principle is granted its validity. Its ultimate grounding is in the consistency of God’s nature. But the principle is not to be used to mercilessly rule out all conceivable supernatural events if for other sound and rational arguments such events can be shown to fit into the entire system of the universe.”

      Amen, brother Ramm.

      “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Go, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”  2 Corinthians 10: 4-5

In his book “But I say unto you…,” John Reisinger frames the issues of the believer’s relationship to the law of Moses by a series of pointed questions which he poses in the first chapter. For the sake of our future discussion, I will list a summary – but only a summary – of those questions here.

“How are we to understand Christ’s teaching on the sermon on the mount? Is Christ contrasting His teachings with the law of Moses, or is He only contradicting the Pharisee’s interpretation of Mosaic law?”

“Is Christ really setting up a ‘new system’ of controlling personal behavior?”

“Is the entire thrust of the sermon on the mount merely Christ giving us the true and spiritual meaning of what Moses really meant, or is Christ also contrasting His teaching and authority with the laws and authority of Moses?”

Relentlessly drilling down to the crux of the matter, Reisinger asks:

“Is Christ [in the sermon on the mount: my note] establishing a totally new kingdom based on grace and giving a new and higher canon of moral conduct, or is both the foundation and canon of moral conduct of Christ’s kingdom the same as that of theocratic Israel?”

Drilling down even more tightly, Reisinger asks:

“Is Christ saying exactly the same thing that Paul said in Romans 6:14, “You are not under law but under grace?”

Leaving no stone unturned, Reisinger asks two more probing questions:

“Is there really no contrast at all in the sermon on the mount between law and grace?

“Are both Israel and the church under different administrations of the same covenant and therefore the same moral canon of conduct, or did Christ establish a new covenant that demands much higher and more spiritual conduct from His people?”

It is almost axiomatic that how one answers these questions will depend on the particular theological system and biblical hermeneutic the interpreter has adopted. Yet at this point in the discussion, we are not accusing anyone of anything, but rather trying to explain how new covenant theology has arrived at its understanding of the teaching of the sermon on the mount. For instance, traditional classical [Scofieldian] dispensationalism concludes that the sermon on the mount is not for the believer today at all, but is the rule of life for some future kingdom to be established at the appearing of Christ.

New covenant theology, to the contrary, believes that the sermon on the mount is a vital and integral part of the Christians rule of life NOW, TODAY.

Secondly, new covenant theology does NOT teach that Jesus in the sermon on the mount is contradicting Moses in any way that shows Moses to be wrong. NCT as much as any system of interpretation believes in the unity of Scripture and thus does not teach that one part of the Scriptures contradicts another. Often, covenant theology has been ruthless in their accusations against NCT along this very line, despite the denial and counter arguments made by proponents of NCT. I might properly call for a more civil discourse on this issue which refuses to demonize anyone that might differ with us.

Though Jesus does not contradict Moses as wrong in any way, Jesus DOES promulgate new and higher standards of moral conduct than Moses ever did, or for that matter, could ever give under a covenant of laws. But from this no one can charge or imply that NCT throws Moses under the bus, as the saying goes.

Yet it DOES mean that Christ is literally a new and superior lawgiver than Moses because He administers a “new and better covenant based on better promises,” (Hebrews 8:6). It surely DOES mean that a covenant of grace can – and does – make higher demands than any external law did or ever could!

Why can we claim this as true? Why can a covenant of grace appeal to higher motives and demands of believers today? We have arrived at the crux of the matter and an issue that I have come to believe that classical CT gets wrong, or at least minimizes: the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God under the new covenant of grace. Under the new covenant of grace the believer is enabled to do what the law could never do; by the Holy Spirit the new covenant believer is empowered to fulfill the new and higher demands.

A third distinction that NCT makes about the contrast between the sermon on the mount and the Mosaic code is that under a legal system, we cannot regulate and punish the thoughts and intents of the heart. A system based solely on external laws cannot, indeed, is unable to legislate, regulate and punish the thoughts and intents of the heart.

But God by the Holy Spirit under the new covenant can.

Under grace and the new covenant, the Holy Spirit is the personal guide [pedagogue] of every believer. The Holy Spirit can deal with the thoughts and intents of the heart in a way that the magistrates could not under the old covenant Mosaic law.

We can make some preliminary conclusions, then, as to what new covenant theology does in fact teach. We conclude that in the sermon on the mount Christ is saying much more than “This is what Moses actually meant.” He is saying that He is giving His disciples new laws that make moral and spiritual demands that are based on grace instead of old covenant external laws.

Thus we avoid either of the two extremes that lead to serious error. First, we protect the unity of the Scripture by showing that Christ is not blatantly contradicting Moses as if Moses had been wrong. Yet on the other hand, we will not limit the authority of Christ by making Him a “rubber stamp” of Moses. We will allow Christ to be the new lawgiver, “that prophet” prophesied to come, who can and does give new and higher truth than Moses did or even could give.

A bit later in his book, Reisinger uses the phrase that I chose as a title to my series of sermons and lesson on the sermon on the mount: “Moses is finished.”

We do not mean this in any derogatory sense, but only to say that Moses has been replaced by “that prophet” (Deut. 18:15; John 1:21; Acts 3:26) who would supersede Moses as the new and final lawgiver. This new lawgiver has established a new covenant, a new and better covenant with new and higher laws. He is NOT just a new administrator of the old covenant.

“And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”  (Matt. 7: 28,29)

The problem with logic: a critique of covenant theology

Over on FaceBook we were discussing a session which I recently taught which I entitled "The problem with logic: a critique of covenant theology." In that session, I challenged covenant theology in its use of theological constructs taken from logical inference and not explicitly from the Biblical text. My views have been largely influenced by the works of John Reisinger and Fred Zaspel. I consider Fred a friend, and John, too, but I have not had the same amount of personal contact with John that I have had with Fred. I consider both men as excellent examples of devoted Christian men and theologians. It was during a month or two of debating with John over on the Sound of Grace discussion forum that I first was persuaded to rethink my covenant theology, a system of Biblical interpretation that I had held for many years. Though I was not fully persuaded of new covenant theology at that point in time, after I left those discussions, I began to rethink the things I had come to believe.

Among the things that I had great difficulty in defending about covenant theology when debating with John was the issue of the covenant of works. In fact, John argued that the entire covenant theology framework was built upon the [sandy?] foundation of the covenant of works, despite the fact that such a covenant is not mentioned in the very text from which it is argued by covenant theology, namely the first three chapters of Genesis. Indeed, John argued that I was creating the existence of that covenant by what the covenant theologians call “good and necessary consequences,” that is, logical inferences from the Scriptures rather than the Biblical texts. Later, I would fully agree with him on that point.

Since that time, I have come to recognize that covenant theology in fact bases much more [infant baptism, their doctrine of “church,” Sabbath, eldership, etc] of their system of theology on just such inferences, which are often not at all evident from the Biblical text. It is that which stimulated the title I used, “The problem with logic.”

Mind you, as I said, I am not dissing logic; indeed, I insist on proper logic as a foundational concept of Christianity. But logic is NOT Scripture, nor should we elevate logical consequences and inferences to the same authority as the Biblical text. Human handling of logic even in the best minds is uneven, even seriously flawed due to the fallen nature of man. Even the regenerate person is not rendered infallible in terms of logic and reason; we still tend to “grope along the wall” at times, and as a result we ought to be modest in our claims of understanding even logic. We especially need to caution ourselves to not allow us to elevate logical inferences which appear to be “good and necessary” to the same authority as the Biblical text. Here is the very crux of the “problem” with the logic of which I speak. Often, logical inferences are neither good nor necessary, especially when there are explicit Biblical texts that differ with or outright refute such inferences.

It is this discussion that I want to take up here on the blog. It will afford me to write some of the things that I have been unable – or perhaps unwilling –

to write up to this point. I am not sure why, but I have been reluctant to set forth my thoughts under the notion that all that I could say had already been said by men much better than myself. That still remains true. But those other writers do not always have the attention of those folks in my own network of contacts, and it is often unlikely that everyone that I speak to are going to read the many books I have read on the issues. So, perhaps there is a reason why it might be useful to set forth some of the issues here. It will afford a healthy and vigorous debate and an opportunity for some of us to hone our understanding of the issues.

With that said, I will begin to set forth some of my thoughts in the near future. I pray that God will grant us the needed patience and ability to describe the issues fairly and as comprehensively as possible. I look forward to the opportunity to express some things I have been holding in for a long time now. I do not change easily. Indeed, my transport from classic covenant theology over to new covenant theology has taken almost 15 years. Even now I have some questions about NCT [new covenant theology]. But at this point I can say that I am about a 95 percenter, as I like to call it. I have pretty much made the transition from CT to NCT by now and as a result I have more confidence in what I preach and teach.

Just a few notes before I go. During our conversations, I will purposely NOT capitalize the words Covenant Theology and New Covenant Theology. I have chided my covenant theology friends about their propensity to capitalize words which they give particular meaning. For instance, the word “law” is almost invariably rendered “Law” by covenant theologians. Knowing that they think that the ten commandments [which they also always capitalize] is the ultimate and unchangeable moral law of God, that capitalization has a peculiar effect of making the term mean a priori what CT wants it to mean rather than what the meaning of the word might be in the context of the Biblical text.

You will notice a slight inconsistency because I capitalize CT and NCT, the shorthand way of referring to the two primary systems of biblical interpretation in which I am interested here. I hope you will indulge me with that small inconsistency, though in the end I think it is actually grammatically correct to capitalize an abbreviation such as CT and NCT.

With that settled for the most part, let us begin.

No comment needed

Here is one of those news items that make you cringe. It is a report of an instant poll taken after the president's State of the Union message last evening [1-27-10]

"According to an instant poll conducted by the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research Institute, 90 percent of Republicans who did not see the President's speech strongly disagreed with it."

"Additionally, 95 percent of Republicans polled agreed with the statement, "If I had seen the President's speech, I'll bet I would have hated it even more."

Davis Logsdon, who supervised the poll, said there were certain difficulties in polling Republican voters: "Many of them would not let us finish asking the question before answering 'No.'"

Truly, no comment is needed.

And now for somthing completely different...

I gave Facebook a try, but it was a disaster program that I could never master. I have a long web address, and I had to enter it like fifty or sixty times a day to access even my own site! It was also a quirky, buggy program that did strange things. So, I deactivated that mess, which leaves me only my blog as a site where I can perhaps contribute. It has been a long time since I got serious about my blog; indeed, I had forgotten my login information, but BlogSpot was quick to resolve that in a way totally different from Facebook.

Now that I have left FaceBook, maybe now I can spend a bit more time here to discuss things that I want to discuss - like things theological and Biblical. But I don't want to make my blog only a religious site, but I want to include materials and content on politics and social issues of our day.

So, I am glad to be back, and will begin in earnest soon to contribute content here.

Greetings to all my friends.