In the second episode of this two-part series, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss the practical implications of viewing apologetics and evangelism as inextricably related disciplines.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here again today with Cliff McManis. We both have the privilege of serving as pastors at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and we also get the privilege of training pastors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we are here with part two of our series on apologetics and evangelism. Asking specifically the question, is there a difference between these two disciplines? And if you haven’t been able to listen to the previous episode, we’d encourage you to do that. Go back and listen to that because this is going to follow up and talk about some practical issues that are implications of what we’ve already discussed. And again, would just remind you to check out withallwisdom.org, where you’ll find a large and growing collection of resources all designed to help you grow in the faith.
They’re all rooted in God’s word. And again, we have a lot of resources on apologetics and evangelism at that website withallwisdom.org. Alright, Cliff, let’s get back to what we are talking about. We left off by talking about the difference between how classical apologists and presuppositional AP apologists would define both evangelism and apologetics. And you spoke for a while about a definition of apologetics, and you walked us through, I believe, seven or eight definitions, getting more and more comprehensive or precise, or however you’d want to say it, as you went down the definitions. And more and more you start to see the divide forming between these two ways of approaching apologetics—classical apologists and presuppositional apologists. And what we’re trying to argue for is a view of evangelism and apologetics that we believe is biblical, where evangelism involves apologetics. And apologetics always involves evangelism.
It always involves the gospel because what are we defending? We’re defending the Bible or defending the gospel, and how are we defending it? With scripture. And one of the practical takeaways that I immediately saw when you and I first started discussing these things years ago, for those of you listening, Cliff wrote a book now titled Apologetics by the Book, previously called Biblical Apologetics. Right now it’s called Apologetics by the Book. And Cliff had been working on that for years, and he’s been continuing to update his material and now it’s in its latest version. It’s a great resource, but I remember distinctly, and this was just reaffirmed to me, the more that I would go back and read what you had written, that what this does, by bringing these two disciplines back together like they’re supposed to be, we’re not saying they’re not distinct in terms of their definition—they are distinct. One is proclamation, one is defense.
But by bringing them together this way, you’re actually relieving a great burden that Christians might feel about their ability to master philosophy or master certain arguments, thinking that they have to master certain things before they can even share the gospel. And what we’re saying is no, you need to know the gospel, know the word of God, and guess what? You’re an equipped evangelist. You can give an apologetic for the Christian faith. You are an apologist because, like you said, there’s no formal office in the New Testament of apologists, because all Christians in that sense are apologists. All Christians are called to defend the gospel. So I think the first big practical takeaway is that this actually emboldens, empowers and encourages Christians to take up the task of apologetics.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s huge. And the application, I think, as pastors, is that we need to bring that up more and talk to our saints about that because I think if you ask the average Christian in our churches, it’s somewhat biblically informed. So are you an apologist or do you do know apologetics? I think a lot of them would say no because they think that’s reserved for the elite professional. Oh no, that’s what William Lane Craig does. That’s what Geisler does. I’m not an apologist. I leave that to them. Then you’re skirting a basic responsibility of the Christian life, or as you just said, every Christian is called to actually do the work of apologetics. It’s like, do you ever evangelize? No, I leave that to the evangelists. No, every Christian needs to be evangelizing.
Derek: Yeah. Can we go back to a point that you made earlier about classical apologists defending something that the Bible never told us to defend. I thought that was profound. And I think what you were saying is it’s their attempt to defend the existence of God. Why would you say that the Bible never would have us attempt to defend the existence of God? Maybe some people would hear that and be like, wait a second. We should be defending the existence of God. We need to do that all the time.
Cliff: Go on Amazon. Well, don’t do this, but you could go to Amazon and order any book, because mine usually doesn’t pop up for whatever reason. But all those other ones do. Craig, Geisler, Sproul… And if you order those books, Introduction to Christian Apologetics [or whatever it might be], in the first chapter, the very beginning, they’re all going to tell you step number one of apologetics is defending the existence of God. And then you’re immediately introduced to natural theology and the theistic arguments. And then you have to sit there and memorize and learn these highly theoretical, philosophical arguments for the so-called existence of God. Derek, you have got to learn the teleological argument. You have to learn the cosmological argument, both of which are rooted actually in the ancient Greeks. Not that they’re bad, but that’s where they come from—Plato and Aristotle. And then in Anselm’s ontological argument—that came from the 11th century. It’s very esoteric and difficult and hard to understand.
Derek: Oh, you think it’s hard to understand? That makes me feel better.
Cliff: Yeah, I think it’s hard to understand. It can be simply stated in one sentence or half a sentence, but his delineation of it is pages and pages and pages and is very complicated and hard to follow. Everybody agrees. The ontological argument is one of the most difficult to understand. And then there’s the moral argument. So those are the four main theistic arguments. And you don’t use the Bible in any of them. Supposedly you use just logic and human reason apart from scripture. It’s synonymous with what is called natural theology, which is doing theology without the Bible. And that’s step number one. Apologetics is using these theistic arguments, these four, with the atheist. It’s assuming you’re talking to an atheist where you’re trying to prove the existence of God, not with certainty, but with what they say. Probability, not certainty, but probability. And going back to your original question, I don’t see anywhere in scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, where any believer is called ever to or commanded by God to prove that God exists.
The Bible just assumes God’s existence from the very beginning. Genesis 1:1: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It just assumes it is true. And that’s true all throughout the Bible. The Bible attests to that. The Old Testament says a couple of times that he who says there is no God is a fool because everybody knows there is. And then Romans 1 is the most explicit place where the Apostle Paul, through the Spirit of God, shows us why that is true—that there are really no born atheists because every human being is made in God’s image, whether you’re a believer or not. And even though you’ve inherited sin at birth, you’re still made in God’s image. And as a result, every human being has a conscience and a moral barometer within their soul, the law of God. It says in Romans chapter two, complementing what Paul said in Romans one, so that in Romans one, Paul says, everybody knows God or everybody knows that God the Creator exists, but because of sin, they resist that truth.
They know that to be true. So anybody that you meet that’s an atheist, like Richard Dawkins would be the most famous today. It used to be Christopher Hitchens. But Richard Dawkins, he’s not an atheist and he knows it deep in his heart. He knows God exists. Not only is he not an atheist, he hates God, and that’s why he’s doing what he’s doing. So the Bible—Romans one clearly says that every human being born into this world knows that God exists, knows that he’s the Creator, knows that he’s to be feared. Now, how do we know that? Because God made every human being in his image and gave them an internal spiritual barometer called the conscience and the law on their heart that convicts them continually and forevermore that God exists and they’re accountable to him, and you cannot escape it. And that’s why you have guilt. As the unbeliever tries to escape this reality of God, the Creator, and God, the Judge, is hunting them down and as rebels, they refuse to bow the knee. So it’s interesting. JP Morland wrote a book called Scaling of the Walls of the Secular City, way back yonder. It’s a book on apologetics. He’s a classical apologist. And in his introduction, he admits the Bible never tells us to prove the existence of God. It just assumes it to be so. Thank you, JP. I agree with that. And then, ironically, he goes on to try to defend the existence of God using the theistic arguments.
So that relieves a burden. You’re talking about relieving a burden in sharing the faith in evangelism, as every Christian should be encouraged knowing that when you go out to share the gospel, you’re not going to run into any hardcore atheist that you have to prove God exists. They already know He exists. You have that in your favor, and what you’re doing is you’re speaking to their conscience. Don’t listen to what they’re saying. That’s a distraction. They’re trying to fool you saying, oh, I don’t believe in God. Just bypass that and speak directly to their conscience, where their inner conscience is telling them, yeah, there’s a God. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, I know what this Christian is saying. It’s true, and I hate it. So you speak to their conscience, not to what you hear on the outside, and that just helps evangelism.
Then you can just get right to the gospel. They already believe in God. They’re already a theist. Then, you just give them what you already believe. Act 17. As the Greeks, they were worshiping false gods. Well, you already believe God exists. Which is kind of interesting that William Lane Craig and those guys, they point to Acts 17 to validate or say that you can use natural theology and the cosmological arguments in your apologetics. Well, you only use the cosmological argument with atheists, and they say, well, that’s what Paul did in Acts 17. When Paul starts out in Acts, they’re all theists. They believe in gods. There are idols all over the place. And he says, you believe in God. You believe in creators. You believe in gods. That’s a good thing. There is a deity, and let me tell you his name. So he’s speaking to their conscience, he’s speaking to their false religion, but they already know there’s a God. So it really helps in evangelism. That’s why it doesn’t matter who you’re talking to, you don’t need a warmup for the gospel. You can always go straight into the gospel. You don’t need to grease the slides with the theistic arguments.
Derek: And I think that’s such a relief because Christians, because they’re born again, they’re going to want to know scripture, and that’s just going to be a natural thing. And they’re going to be learning scripture in church from the pulpit, in their Bible studies, and in their personal reading. And basically what you’re saying is, in order to evangelize and in order to conduct apologetics, you need to know scripture. And that’s what people ask me. They’ll say, what’s your apologetic approach? Or when you’re evangelizing, what’s your apologetic approach? I say, my goal is, as quickly as I can, to get them into the Bible, to see what’s going on in there for themselves. They can hear the truth, they can see it because, first of all, it’s the word of God that’s going to create faith. But second of all, if you think about what you’re trying to defend, it’s the truth of scripture. If I’m going to defend anything, it would be the truth of scripture. Well, there’s nothing to defend if they don’t foresee it and know it. And so that’s my goal. So when we had a college ministry up at Stanford, we had some guys who would conduct evangelistic Bible studies and they just would study through the gospel of John with unbelievers so they could see the scripture for themselves. They could hear the truth for themselves. And I think that’s a huge relief, because when it comes to sharing the faith and defending the faith, Christians need to primarily know scripture. And it’s a huge relief.
Cliff: And the gospel of John—we use that a lot as the evangelistic gospel. It does have a purpose statement at the end there. I’ve written these—I’ve included these seven miracles—so that you might come to understand that Jesus is the son of God and believe in him and then have eternal life. So it’s written to evangelize, but as you read it, in just about every chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus is defending the faith, meaning in virtually every chapter, Jesus is doing apologetics. But it’s the gospel of evangelism, which is just an obvious illustration that evangelism and apologetics go together. The evangelistic gospel of John.
Derek: Another thing I want to point out—and I point this out a lot when in the seminary classroom or among our young adults—sometimes you’ll think of apologetics as smashing bad atheistic arguments, and you’ll use various tools to do that. And you might be debating with an unbeliever, and you’re smashing their belief in evolution, and you’re using some logic or whatever and trying to show that Neo-Darwinian evolution in and of itself is just a poor argument. It’s philosophy; it’s not empirical science. It actually turns on itself and is self-refuting. And so you’re using this logic and you’re pointing things out. Maybe you’re bringing things in from other scientists who have pointed out the flaws in Neo Darwinian evolution and so on, and you think you’re doing a good job there. Well, what’s going to happen to that unbeliever? Let’s say you do convince them. What I did think about Neo-Darwinian evolution, that’s wrong. And they’re not going to immediately become a Christian. They’re going to just find another way of defending their unbelief. That’s all they’ll do. And we know that because that’s man’s nature. And I always take them back to Adam and Eve in the garden. What was the first thing that Adam did after he sinned? He went and hid from God. And that’s what the unbeliever is doing now. Instead of using a tree or fig leaves or whatever, he’s now just using sophisticated philosophical or scientific or historical arguments to hide from God. Why is he doing that? Well, why did Adam do it? Because he knew that judgment was impending, right? And so sensing the defiled conscience, sensing the judgment of God on him, he hid. And I think that was a rational thing for him to do, right?
Knowing that judgment was coming. And so people, as you’ve already mentioned, they know judgment is coming. Their conscience bears witness that they have broken God’s law. They know God is a righteous judge. And so in order to hide from that, they build up sophisticated shelters, you might say, a philosophical argument. But if you smash one shelter, it’s not like they’re going to repent and believe. They’re going to just run to another shelter. If you are not, at all times, wrapping your apologetics with the gospel because you don’t want them to run to another shelter, you want them to run to Christ. They’re still looking for shelter from judgment. And you’re saying, I don’t want you to run for shelter in a philosophical argument. I want you to run for shelter to Christ. And that can only happen if in the process of smashing arguments and so on, you are at the same time bringing the gospel so that it’s the defense of the faith and the evangelism all happening at once. Otherwise, you’ll just push an unbeliever from one fallacious philosophical argument to another, and he’ll probably strengthen it. It’ll probably make it better than the last one. So I try to give people that imagery rooted in creation and Genesis three and then the Fall and what Adam did and what all men and women are doing now, and to remind people it’s not just about smashing arguments. You want people to be saved. And the only way that that happens is if you’re bringing the gospel along with every apologetic encounter.
Cliff: Yeah, I totally agree with what you just said. If you’re just debating with an unbeliever—say he’s an atheist—and you spend all your time trying to prove to him that evolution is false and that’s it, you’re wasting your time, number one. Then, you’re not being a good steward of the opportunity you have, because you’re not bringing the gospel. And say, eventually, you do convince this guy. He’s an atheist, and then he becomes an intelligent design guy. Now, are there any unsaved intelligent design guys out there? Yes, there’s a lot of them. Or theists. That didn’t do any good. His soul is still damned. Or Bill Craig—his specialty is the cosmological argument. It’s about 40 minutes long. It doesn’t incorporate the Bible, scripture, the gospel or Jesus. It’s just strictly a philosophical argument. And he is proud of the fact, and he even says it in this book Five Views on Apologetics, that he has convinced many atheists to become theists through the cosmological argument, and he celebrates that.
I’ve seen many atheists become theists from the cosmological argument. Not Christians—but theists. Now, there are plenty of theists who are still going to go to hell, and the first theist going to hell is Satan himself. He believes in God. So that doesn’t do any good when you’re trying to prove the existence of God by not making the gospel the priority. Mormons are theists, but they believe in a false gospel. They’re damned and doomed unless they repent and believe in the true gospel. You’re right, Derek, we’re going to have the right priority. He always comes back to Romans 1:16, what Paul said— I’m not ashamed of the gospel for it alone is the power of God. It’s the only thing that has supernatural power for salvation, for everybody—for the Jew, and also for the Greek. So the cosmological argument and unaided human reason—none of that has any power whatsoever to change a soul.
We’ve talked about the power of the word of God and the truth of the message itself of the gospel, which has supernatural power just in the message. You’ve got the advocate of the conscience of the unbeliever on your side and the law of God written on his heart that he can’t escape. And we haven’t even mentioned the work of the Holy Spirit, who takes the word of God and he’s the one that penetrates the conscience and the law of the sinner continually and forevermore. That’s John 16:8. The Spirit of God convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment. And he continues to do it long after you’ve shared the gospel and you leave. And two months later, the Spirit of God is still making them feel guilt and still convicting and still reminding them deep within their soul, and they can’t escape it. Give me another beer so I can drown out the truth of the gospel that’s violating my conscience and giving me guilt.
Derek: Yeah, I think you go back to the William Lane Craig as an example of creating theists, but not Christians. And you do have to ask the question, what should be the aim of conducting a 40 minute apologetic presentation? The aim should not be to create theists. The aim should be to create Christians and to create born again believers. And I don’t want to throw stones at William Lane Craig in terms of what he desires, but in terms of what we’re rejoicing over and what we desire, I think it will shape how we steward our time and our resources in these kinds of things.
Cliff: What should be the aim? It reminds me of something I say to my apologetics classes all the time. The students will ask, Pastor Cliff or Professor McManis, sometimes I don’t feel successful in my evangelism or apologetics. Can you give us any tips? Can you be successful? I believe that a Christian can be successful a hundred percent of the time in every encounter they have with an unbeliever—a hundred percent success. And that is if you focus on, did I deliver the gospel thoroughly and accurately? So I think delivering the gospel—it’s not contingent upon their response. They may resist and say, no. That doesn’t mean you failed. But did you get the seed out there, the message out there clearly, because now the Spirit of God can use that the rest of their life. And maybe 17 years later they get saved because they heard the gospel clearly from you 17 years before. That’s success.
Derek: Amen. And again, another relief, I think, to believers, most of whom are not going to be able to master these sophisticated, philosophical and logical arguments and who are not going to be able to engage people with these kinds of sophisticated arguments. But they can share the gospel. And if they can do that, knowing that that’s what’s required of them, boy, it just takes a lot of burden. It’s almost as though you are framing apologetics in kind of the classical way. You are almost adding a kind of, I don’t want to say legalism, but a kind of burden upon the believer as though they need to be doing something or performing something that scripture itself has never required them to do or be.
Cliff: Talk about relieving a burden. Derek, you’re the elder over evangelism at our church. We’ve been doing door-to-door evangelism on Saturdays once a month for two years. Have we been successful? Do you think our people think it’s been successful?
Derek: That’s a good point. I wonder what they think. It probably needs to be reaffirmed. Do you think it’s been successful?
Cliff: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There’s been a lot of gospel. [I think] the door-to-door evangelism at our church for two years has been successful. But at the same time, of the hundreds of people we’ve talked to, what’s the percentage of those who have responded positively on the Saturday mornings saying, yeah, I want to believe.
Derek: Well, I don’t think we’ve ever had [the phrase] “I want to believe” on a Saturday morning.
Cliff: In two years, we have had no positive responses, and we’re talking hundreds if not thousands of people we’ve talked to.
Derek: We’ve had a couple of people—one recently—just respond later in faith, it seems.
Cliff: And some people would say, this is failure. And I agree with you. No, we’ve had nothing but success because it’s based on successfully delivering the message with people who heard.
Derek: And we’ve done that a lot. And it’s been neat to see folks who have very little knowledge of any kind of sophisticated, apologetic arguments who just have a knowledge of the scripture and a very clear knowledge of the gospel, going to the door, sharing the gospel, and asking questions to get people to think about the important things of life, and then presenting the gospel of Christ. You just walk away going, man, it’s a beautiful thing to see.
Cliff: I don’t say to my 16-year-old son, here, son, take this package of radish seeds and go plant a row of radishes for me and come back in 30 minutes. And he goes and plants the radish seeds, comes back, and I don’t ask him, where are the radishes? How come you didn’t harvest them? Well, dad, you just told me to plant the seeds. Well, then, you did your job.
Derek: Exactly.
Cliff: You’ve got to let it grow. Give it time. Let the Spirit of God do his work.
Derek: So what I love about this is, you’ve done a lot of hard work in this area, Cliff. A lot of research, a lot of writing, speaking, teaching—years and years of teaching this at a seminary level. And all that rigor has been done in order to provide the church, I think, with a burden-relieving vision of what evangelism and apologetics really is supposed to be about. And so thank you for doing all that hard work because I think it has a real practical implication for our people.
Cliff: Amen. Well, that’s why I do it. I do all this from a shepherd’s heart. Let’s help our people be equipped and do it with confidence, and they can.
Derek: Amen. So we do hope this has been helpful for you listeners. We thank you for listening in. We hope that this has excited you about evangelism. It relieves some burdens, thoughts that you’ve had, perhaps about some confusion even about what it means to be a faithful evangelist or a faithful apologist. So we hope this has been helpful. Again, we encourage you to go back to listen to the previous episode on evangelism.
