The Message of the Apologist*

     The Message of the Apologist*

• The Perspective of Christianity as a Philosophy
  • Christianity provides a comprehensive worldview.
    • It gives us an account not only of God, but also of the world that God made, the relation of the world to God, and the place of human beings in the world in relation to nature and God. It is a viewpoint on everything.
    • It competes with other worldviews in the marketplace of ideas, often at a disadvantage (e.g., the expulsion of biblically-consistent concepts from secular education.)
    • It holds a unique position, however: Only Christianity flies right in the face of human claims to autonomy. Only Christianity, therefore, has the answer to lawlessness.
  • Christian Metaphysics (i.e., the theory of the fundamental nature of reality).
    • God, the Absolute Personality
      • God is “absolute” in the sense that he is the Creator of all things and thus the ground of all other reality. As such, he has no need of any other being (Acts 17:25) for his own existence. He is self-existent and self-sufficient. Nothing brought him into being; he always was (Pss. 90:2; 93:2; John 1:1). Nor can anything destroy him; he will always be (Deut. 32:40; Ps. 102:26-27; 1 Tim. 6:16; Heb. 1:10-12; Rev. 10:6). His existence is time-less, for he is the Lord of time itself (Ps. 90, esp. v. 4; Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:11; 2 Peter 3:8). He knows all times and spaces with equal perfection (Isa. 41:4; 44:7-8).
        • In the words of answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”
      • “Spirit” in Scripture is personal, and God is Spirit (John 4:24). As Spirit, God speaks (Acts 10:19), leads (Rom. 8:14), bears witness (vv. 16-17), helps (v. 26), prays (same verse), loves (15:30), reveals (1 Cor. 2:10).
      • The great question confronting modern humanity is this: Is the impersonal aspect of the universe grounded in the personal, or is it the other way around?
    • The Creator-Creature Relationship (Transcendence and Immanence)
      • God transcends all of creation (i.e., is radically different than all of creation) because He is original and it is derivative.
        • God is wholly personal and in no way depends on the impersonal, while we are dependent on impersonal matter (the “dust,” Gen. 2:7) and forces to keep us alive.
      • God’s immanence is his involvement in all areas of creation. Because he is absolute, he controls all things, interprets all things, and evaluates all things. Because of his omnipotence, his power is exerted everywhere. It is indeed inescapable, and therefore omnipresent. His personality also motivates his immanence. It motivates him to be involved with creation in still other ways. For we are, despite the great differences between ourselves and God, akin to him. We are his “image” (Gen. 1:26-27).
      • Non-Christians of all persuasions radically deny the biblical Creator-creature distinction. Atheists deny it, of course, but so do pantheists, who hold that the world itself is divine in character. It is denied in secular humanism, in which the human mind is adored as the ultimate standard for truth and rightness. It is denied in Kantian philosophy, in which the human mind is the author of the forms of its experience. It is denied in existentialism, in which man creates his own meaning. It is denied in those forms of naturalistic science that claim in effect that the universe is its own creator. It is denied in Eastern religions and Western New Age thought, which urge people to look to “the God within” and to “create their own reality” by visualization.
    • The Sovereignty of God
      • God directs all things, or, as Ephesians 1:11 has it, that “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” The relationship between Jacob and Esau was foreordained before they were born (Rom. 9:10-26). Paul uses this relationship as a figure for the broader relation of Jews to Christians. God works all things together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28).
      • This divine rulership is important to apologetics because it destroys the unbeliever’s pretense of autonomy.
    • The Trinity
      • Finally, the Christian God is three in one. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is only one God (Deut. 6:4ff.; I sa. 44:6). But the Father is God (John 20:17), the Son is God (John 1:1; Rom. 9:5; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:10ff.), and the Spirit is God (Gen. 1:2; Acts 2; Rom. 8; 1 Thess. 1:5).
      • God is more than “wholly other” (a blank oneness) and does not depend on the world for His identity or His love (“wholly revealed”).
      • The Trinity is the answer to the philosophical dilemma of monism versus pluralism.
  • Christian Epistemology: God is the supreme criterion of truth and falsehood.
    • God is omniscient, and controls all things by his wise plan. Hence, he knows all things (Heb. 4:12-13.; 1 John 3:20). All our knowledge, therefore, originates in him. Thus, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1 :7).
    • God’s grace takes away our bondage to autonomous ways of thinking and enables us instead to think according to God’s Word (Jer. 31:3lff.; Matt. 11:25-28; John 17:3; 1 Cor. 2:6-16; Eph. 4:13; Phil. 1:9; Col. 1:9ff.; 3:10; 2 Tim. 2:25; 2 Peter 1:2ff.; 3:18; 1 John 4:7).
    • When sinners try to gain knowledge without the fear of the Lord, that knowledge is suppressed, distorted (Rom. 1:21-25; 1 Cor. 1:18-2:5).
  • Christian Ethics: God is also the supreme standard of what is good and evil, right and wrong.
    • He has expressed his standards in his words to us (Deut. 4:lff.; 6:4ff.).
• The Perspective of Christianity as Good News
  • Christianity accurately identifies the problem of human existence, and the source of all problems of human existence: the problem is sin: willful transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4). According to Scripture, existing evils of heredity, environment, sickness, and so on are due to the fall (Gen. 3:17-19; Rom. 8:18-22).
  • The solution is found in John 3:16. Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification (Rom. 3:20-8:11; 1 Cor. 15:1-11). The scriptural directive is not for us to work harder to achieve God’s favor (Rom. 3:20), but to accept God’s mercy through Christ as a free gift (Eph. 2:8-10).
• Conclusion: Christianity, both as philosophy and as good news, is the alternative to conventional wisdom. 

*Drawn from John M. Frame & Joseph E. Torres, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief (P&R Publishing, 2015), ISBN: 978-1596389380: Chapter 2, “The Message of the Apologist”