So how does this impact the “probability” of Christianity? When we look at the sheer “evidence” for Christianity and compare it to other means and methods of evidence, the probability debates rage. But what if we had additional information? What if God spoke to us through Scripture and what if God’s character is such that whatever God spoke is true? Would this information be relevant to the evidence and its probability and, if so, wouldn’t it raise the “probability” of Christianity to 100% certainty?

It seems there is a method in the background of classical and evidential apologetics when discussing probability that allows for some information at the outset such as “expert” opinion, extra-biblical corroboration, etc. but not other information such as God’s character, the character of God’s Word in Scripture, etc. For the evidentialist, those latter pieces of information are question marks that lie on a continuum of probability, but for the Christian faith they are certitudes that affect not only the certainty of the Christian faith but the very notion of probability itself.

I don’t endeavor toward a project of guilt by association, but what does it say for our apologetic when we appeal to a thinker who rejects God’s immutability—arguing that the Trinity evolves and unfolds in an historical process? It’s quite the opposite of Van Til’s approach, in which he bases his entire apologetic on the eternal Triune God who condescends to create and continues as the foundation for all creation. His is truly a Reformed apologetic in great debt to the distinctively Reformed thinkers that preceded it.

The “revolution in philosophy” which we have traced so far is a revolution within the Kantian revolution, within the Renaissance revolution, within the Greek revolution, within the revolution of Adam. [In Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings & Analysis (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed), 372.]

But we need to know more than the bare contents of Bible. We have to understand that system of doctrine contained in the Bible (yes, I still believe that the Bible contains a system of doctrine!). And even before that we need to know how the Bible “works.” That is, how it is structured redemptive-historically. So many have made shipwreck their faith because they read the Bible in a flat way, not caring for the redemptive-historical intricacies of the text. And here Kline is so very helpful. It might even be rightly said that Kingdom Prologue is fundamentally an apologetic work. Though it is more than that. We might say it is Biblical Theology in service of apologetics. That is because Kline comes from the Old School approach to Biblical Studies when men actually thought that the Bible ought to be defended against skeptical attacks. It seems today modern Bible believers have shied from that. They have caved to the pressure of the academy which eschews apologetics in biblical scholarship. That’s a shame. Since when did the liberals and secular scholars get to set the standard for biblical scholarship? That Biblical scholars have caved to this for the sake of advancing their own names and careers is a shame. By God’s grace, Kline did not cave.

Anyway, below is a dialogue I’ve had with an atheist. I share it here because in it I try to apply Van Til and Kline to the task, and I am asking for feedback. Take a read. Lets have iron sharpen iron. How can we better defend the faith? How would you tackle the issue differently, in a better or clearer fashion? Remember, this is real soul (a guy who actually apostacized from the Reformed Faith to atheism). I’d like to better defend the faith, so let’s hear your ideas.

Just by way of preface, this has been cut and pasted from an e-mail exchange which has a long back history. If you read this, you are jumping-in in the middle of a discussion.

> Jim:
>
> I didn’t ask you “by what standard.” I asked whether you believe that the
> slaughter of whole populations is always and everywhere immoral?
>
[Atheist] Yes, I know that, but you will eventually go there, so I’m
eliminating “the middle man”, as it were. You always end up asking by what
standard I judge god or some such, so why not just ask that in the first
place?

Yes, I think genocide is always and everywhere immoral. By what standard? By
reason. Reason tell me that genocide is not a good thing. Reason tells me
that collaboration works a whole lot better than killing off those who
aren’t on my side, or don’t believe the same thing I do? Now, when we talk
about genocide, we’re not talking about self-defense, at least not in the
OT; we’re talking about eliminating nations that didn’t believe in your god.
God couldn’t deal with them on judgment day, he had to have them slaughtered
like so much cattle. Quite the loving deity you’ve got there; defenseless
little children put to the sword, the ax, the lance and hey, why not the
hammer while we’re at it? I hope you’re paying attention to this, Jim, and
that you won’t ignore these points.

Jim:

First, I am curious how it is that “reason” told you those things. Whose reason? Yours? How do you know your reason is correct, especially because not every one’s reasons agrees with yours. It seems as if you have completely fallen into a subjectivistic approach to these things. Either that, or there is a universal standard of what defines reason – or rationality – and that which defines irrationality. Is there, in fact, a universal standard of reason? If so, how do you know it?

Second, God could have – and will – deal with them on judgment day. But as a precursor to that day, he enacted a temporal act of judgment. Your concern here is a right one, if – in fact – the people he judged were innocent. They were not. That’s right, not even the women and the babies. All are shut up under sin because of the sin of the first Adam. You know the rest. So it seems to me your real problem is not so much with the command of God to judge whole people groups, but with the doctrine of original sin. You don’t like that doctrine, you think its unfair and unjust. But, again, I wonder what standard you would use to determine just and unjust. The logical conclusion to your worldview is that you have no standard upon which you may stand to judge God without God. You just cannot do it. Your position, ironically enough, is that as you pursue an exclusively rationalistic approach to anything, you end up in the irrational camp because you cannot base your judgements upon anything outside of yourself. Therefore, your view of morality is simply a projection of yourself and your own subjective opinions about morals.

JIM:
> In terms of situational ethics, I can say unequivocally that I do not hold
> to that position. And you don’t as well. Situational ethics is not moral
> relativism. What I hold to is the fact that God’s law is universally
> binding on all men everywhere. However, where and how that law applies
> takes wisdom to determine. The law of God is never to be applied in a
> naive, unguarded way across the board in every and all situations (this is
> not situation ethics. SE rejects all laws other than the law to love.
> Therefore, all moral codes can be cast aside as long as the goal of love is
> the end).
>
> [Atheist] Not so. All moral codes are not cast aside in the name of love.
Situation ethics says that “other moral principles [not codes] can be cast
aside in certain situation if love is best served; as Paul Tillich once put
it: ‘love is the ultimate law.’” If you love your neighbour, do you not
fulfill the whole law? Jesus said that, didn’t he? So how would slaughtering
a whole nation be loving your neighbour, or your enemy? Will you tippy-toe
past these questions, Jim, or answer them?

Okay, so you don’t have a situation ethic, you have a subjective ethic.
Sorry, my bad.

Jim:

Actually, no, I don’t. My ethic is grounded upon a standard of morality which exists outside of me (the law of God). Now, that law has to be applied appropriately. And where and how depends much on context – that is the “situation.” And that situation is also outside of me, wholly objective. Yes, I need wisdom to determine which situation is before me and which law applies appropriately. And since the fall, that will always be imperfect, thus I will screw up a lot and sin. But that does not change or alter or determine what is right and what is wrong. That fact always remains outside of me. In other words, I do not determine morality. God does.

JIM:
> So, the 10 commandments say do not kill. This is true. We are are not to
> kill. But the question is, when is an act murder and when is it something
> else – such as self-defense. Even the law itself makes such distinctions.
> That is not to relativize morals. It is only to say that universal moral
> laws have to be rightly, and thoughtfully applied according to godly
> wisdom.
>
[Atheist] Right, godly wisdom to slaughter “seven nations greater than thee.”
Yep, and that’s just the kind of godly wisdom I happen to think should be
avoided, because it isn’t loving one’s neighbor. Jesus said love your
enemies and pray for them that persecute you, he didn’t say “slaughter the
lot of them”. He made more sense than that genocidal maniac in the OT.
Please explain to me how it is loving one’s neighbour and fulfilling the law
of love when one slaughters men, defenseless women, children and babies? My,
what a loving god you’ve got.

Jim:

God is love. He is also just. You cannot truncate the one for the other. And what you are up against is your limitations of understanding the flow of redemptive history. Throughout redemptive history God acts. Now, when he acts he is not necessarily giving a command of what we should always and everywhere do. God commands Israel to slaughter the Amalekites back in – lets say – 1500 BC. That does not mean that Israel should always and everywhere slaughter Amalekites. Its a woodenly literal and mechanical approach to the Bible that thinks it does. The command to kill the inhabitants of the land, as I said above, was a precursor of the final judgment to come. But what is even more important is the land which God commanded to be cleansed. The land of Canaan was also a precursor. It was a temporary and earthly picture of a an eternal and heavenly Kingdom. It was never an end in itself. That Kingdom has been ushered in through Jesus Christ, the King of Kings. Given that fact, the wall of hostility has been torn down between Jew and Gentile (Eph 2). The way of bringing about the Kingdom will no longer be by swords and carnal weapons, but through the spiritual weapons of preaching the Gospel, and acts of love toward neighbor. Of course, it was always that way, even under the Old Testament. The “spiritual realm” was there operative along side the carnal realm or physical and earthly pictures and foreshadows. But come the New Covenant, the earthly gives way to the heavenly and becomes obsolete. So, God’s command to slaughter the inhabitants of the land is what we might call an intrusion ethic. It is God’s end-time judgment intruding into the present (from their perspective), whereby God foreshadows the coming of the Kingdom in Christ. But it is never intended to be an abiding ethical code for the people of God, that is only found in the moral law as contained in places like the 10 commandments.

The first contribution, written by George Harinck, attempts to understand why Van Til came out so strongly against Barth. Van Til’s early criticisms have apparently become notorious among Barthian scholars (I’m just surprised non-conservatives know who Van Til is!).  To read the criticisms for yourself, see his The New Modernism and Christianity and Barthianism. For the Van Tilian, Harinck’s paper is well worth the read. I found Harinck’s comments about Van Til’s method to be the most interesting part of his entire paper.

There seemed to be a Van Tilian universe, and you were either in or out. Unlike neo-Calvinists such as Bavinck or G. C. Berkouwer (1903-96), you would never learn from Van Til’s publications how his opponents reason, or what they are aiming at.

Another trait, which is not per se typical of neo-Calvinism, is that Van Til is not all that interested in the intellectual problem that Barth poses, or in a discussion about such a problem. He is not interested in Barth’s motives or preoccupations. Rather, Van Til is interested in the battle itself, in overwhelming opponents with his arguments, and in showing them how the consequences of their ideas will undermine their own position.

Harinck has certainly picked up on salient features of Van Til’s modus operandi. Being either “in” or “out” is simply Van Til putting the antithesis to work. Bill Dennison, a Van Tilian teaching at Covenant College, once said to me, “We need to out-Van Til Van Til on Van Til.” What initially sounded like a manifestation of Dennison’s brain needle skipping the thought groove captured the idea that we need to always look for the inconsistencies and elements of unbelieving and unbiblical thought in Van Til as well as our own doctrine. No theologian knows perfectly, and therefore, there will be elements that need to be reformed or removed in all our theological systems.

In his criticisms, Van Til attempted to weed out those inconsistencies and to demonstrate the end of the road to which they lead. As such, Van Til wasn’t preoccupied with a theologian’s motivations or the milieu of his intellectual context. He simply wanted to demonstrate a system’s faithfulness to Scripture or lack thereof. I can’t help but think Van Til would take Harinck’s comments as a complement. Harinck continues:

Contrary to Schilder, Van Til did not develop a neo-Calvinist theology in reaction to Barth. In general, Van Til displayed an attitude more common among conservative theologians on the defense, in which one takes refuge in the illusion that the choice is either saving all or losing all. For Van Til, Barth simply had to be rejected.

Certainly, theologians can fall into an “illusion” of insisting competing views are always completely right or completely wrong. But, as Dennison insisted to me through his comment above, that was not an error Van Til committed. Indeed, Harinck may very well be guilty of taking refuge in the illusion that there must always be a via media. At the end of the day, Barth cannot be mixed with the theology of the Westminster Standards. And if Van Til remained committed to those standards—convinced they were faithful representations of the system of doctrine revealed in Scripture, Barthianism could have no place in this, his “universe.”

I am interested in defending the metaphysics that comes from Scripture. This involves: (a) the doctrine of the self-contained God or ontological Trinity, (b) the plan or counsel of this God pertaining to created reality, (c) the fact of temporal creation as the origin of all the facts of the universe, (d) the fact of God’s providential control over all created reality including the supernatural, and (e) the miraculous work of the redemption of the world through Christ. —Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed. (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed), 236.

Doesn’t sound too much like philosophy, right? That’s because Van Til has developed his metaphysics directly upon Scripture and the Westminster Standards, which he confesses as containing and embodying the system of doctrine taught in Scripture. Van Til continues:

This metaphysic is so simple and so simply biblical that non-Christian philosophers would say that it is nothing but theology. I rejoice in the work of Christian philosophers like Vollenhoven, Dooyeweerd, and Stoker. I have tried to understand and profit from their writings since 1926, but to my beginning students, coming from all sorts of backgrounds, I must stress the basic points and make them plain. —Ibid., 236-37.

Even many “Christian” philosophers would do well to read the Westminster Standards. Though it is “so simply biblical” and perhaps “nothing but theology,” many metaphysicians check their Christian doctrine at the door in favor of following wherever the philosophical speculation may lead.

Granted, some define metaphysics as “the study of created being,” but that definition is far from unanimous. Moreover, it certainly isn’t going to fly in the academy. Rather, metaphysics more often is understood succinctly as the “study of being” or perhaps “the study of reality.” With the latter in mind, let us not erect an unnecessary and unfortunate wall between theology and philosophy, but let us come to a better understanding of how God’s revelation speaks into all of life—especially to the world of metaphysics.

My primary interest is now, as it always has been, to teach what the Bible contains as the infallible rule of faith and practice in the way of truths about God and his relation to man and the world. —Ibid, 241.

The sum of the matter is that according to idealism, as according to any non-Christian view, “God and man must be thought of as correlative to one another.” (p. 231)

There are two great features of the recent 4th edition of Van Til’s key work is the contribution. First, the entire 1st edition text is included. For various reasons, the publishers cut out large (and important!) sections in the 2nd and 3rd editions. But second, the 4th edition contains helpful annotations by Dr. K. Scott Oliphint, Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. In his explanatory notes on Van Til’s quotation above, Oliphint expounds Van Til’s point.

This is the primary point Van Til is making with respect to idealism. In any idealistic philosophy of God, God as absolute is such only in the context of the universe as relative. So, the one pole always requires the other in order for each to be what it is. Van Til works this out more thoroughly in God and the Absolute, and in Christianity and Idealism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1955).

I trust our readers will understand the problem with attempting to develop Christian philosophy along idealistic lines of reasoning. The apologist cannot grant to man metaphysical or epistemological equality with God—in theory or in method. Doing so is a failure from the outset.

Modern theology is, to be sure, ready to defend the need and place of authority. But it will defend no authority that is not acceptable to modern philosophy and science. It too advocates the authority of the expert only. —Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 149.

In modern theology, as in what he would call other “autonomous” modes of thought, Van Til concluded that the only acceptable authoritative “expert” is the thinking individual him- or herself. And when everyone reasons on his/her own apart from the authoritative revelation of the Triune God of the Bible, we’re all left among a cacophony of individual and self-contained epistemic systems with no foundation to support and no anchor to connect them.

Well, maybe not. Though I wonder if the debate was as silly and as useless as some make it. Medieval Scholastics were pretty bright guys. It may be that the thought experiment about angels and pins was intended to unravel some important questions in theology.

Which, I suppose, brings me to Rob Bell. Everyone is talking about him and his recent denial of an orthodox doctrine of hell, heaven, God, Christ . . . where do we stop? For full disclosure I haven’t read the book. I have read reviews from men I trust, and have seen his interview with Bashir. Nevertheless, being that I have not read the book, this is not a review of it. Nor do I intend to comment on its contents, given that I haven’t read it, and commenting on a work one has not read is generally a really, really bad idea. Even if one has read reviews of a book by men one trusts.

I guess I am more concerned to comment on Scholasticism. Its amazing how reading Scholastic theologians has become for me, in more recent days, a breath of fresh air. Part of that has to do with the current reveling in ambiguity we find among post conservative evangelicals, and their counterparts, the so-called post-liberals. All of whom are simply the children and grandchildren of modern theology with it eschewing of propositional doctrine, metaphysics, and certain universal truths. These things are not new or unique to 20th century theology as you find in Barth, Rahner, von Balthasar, or Bultmann. In fact, these things – while certainly advanced by 20th century neo-Orthodox (not my favorite term for Barth, by the way. Here I stand with Bruce McCormack’s contention) theologians – were very much present going back to the days of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Harnack.

Anyway, since at least Schleiermacher, theologians in the modern period (are we really in a postmodern era?) have take to themselves ambiguity in theology as a badge of honor. The less precise a theologian is, the greater the honor lavished upon him. We can see this, at least in part, through “Bell’s Hop” on Bashir where he avoided with all his might actually say something. It was a truly Clintonian moment. Bill is to Monica what Bell is to Dogma.

At least with the Scholastics there was no doubt about where they stood on particular issues. Where there was mystery and no revealed word on a matter, they confessed mystery and moved on. But where the Bible was clear, they said so. And here’s the kicker, they actually strove for precision and clarity. How dare they!

Yes, there is a place for purposeful ambiguity. I love it in a movie or a novel. I love to be made to go “Hmmmm.” In my entertainment, I delight to be provoked. I suppose that is because its entertainment and not much is riding on it other than my own personal enjoyment. Enjoyment over such things is important, but not of ultimate significance. Theology, however, is different.

When I read a commentary on the book of John, I want precision. I really need to know whether the logos referred to in chapter 1, the same logos who became flesh in verse 14 of that chapter, really is God or simply a higher created being. That’s crucial. If I don’t nail that one down, then all sorts of things are thrown into confusion. Let’s take a practical matter. Worship. If in my commentary on John, and in my Systematic Theology book, I cannot be shown and made to understand that Jesus is fully divine, then what do I do in church on Sunday? I mean, if he’s not God I shouldn’t sing hymns to him. If he is God, I had better sing hymns to him.

I know that the divinity of Christ is not the issue over which there is so much hoopla in Bell’s teaching (not yet, anyway). But I use that to illustrate the point about the seriousness of theology. Its just not the kind of thing one wants to play loose and fancy-free over. Its not the kind of thing around which we dance, hop, move, and groove. We can’t afford to be unclear where God has made himself plain. That doesn’t make us rationalists (though rationalism is as much a problem as is irrationalism). But it does make us concerned to know those things which are revealed. For the things which are revealed ARE for us for our children.

Suppose there is a hotel and the hotel contains an infinite number of rooms, but all the infinite rooms are full with a guest. Someone approaches the hotel and wants a room. This should not be a problem for the manager who has an infinite amount of rooms, so he simply shifts every occupant up a room so that the guest in Room #1 goes to Room #2, the guest in Room #2 moves into Room #3, and so on through infinity. So Room #1 is now empty, but before the additional guest showed up the hotel was full. How can this be?

Apparently the situation can be complicated further. Suppose an infinite amount of guests show up and want to check in to this infinite hotel. The manager simply tells each guest to double his room number, and that new number will be the guest’s new room, so that the guest in Room #2 will move to Room #4, the guest in Room #3 will move to Room #6, and so on. Since any number multiplied by two is an even number, the original guests are all in even-numbered rooms, leaving the odd-numbered rooms to the infinite amount of new guests. The manager could even do this an infinite number of times if he or she wanted, but the rooms, we said, were already full before the guests arrived and now they’re full…again. But even if some guests or an infinite amount of guests left, the hotel would still be full. How can this be?

There are a couple problems with this illustration. First, we start off by stating that there is an infinite amount of rooms. Do we really mean that, or do we wink when we propose that, believing that that is impossible? If we do not really mean what we state, do we start out with a meaningless or weakened version of “infinite” from the start? Let us try another method and start out by sticking to our guns when we claim something is infinite. There is a hotel with an infinite amount of rooms – really. Although we cannot picture this, and although it would be impossible to measure and count, this hotel does have an infinite number of rooms for the sake of argument. But in this reality we have to say that if all the hotel rooms are occupied; then if there is a hotel room there necessarily is a guest that occupies that space. So based on our beginning criterion of every room within this series being occupied, there would be no empty rooms for any member of the infinite amount of guests to move into. In other words, having every guest “shift over into the next room is the part that is absurd and impossible, not the actual infinite that we assume from the beginning. This also eliminates the problem of anyone else showing up and looking for rooms, whether it be just one guest or an infinite amount of guests. There are no vacant hotel rooms in this infinite set, regardless of who shows up.

But this example doesn’t at all prove that an actual infinite is possible, it only demonstrates that if you do not assume its impossibility from the outset then you can find where the absurdity lies within the illustration. What about removing a member of an actual infinite set? If one guest among an infinite amount checks out from one of the infinite amount of hotel rooms, we still have an infinite amount of hotel rooms but not an infinite amount of guests. So the question is, can we meaningfully even talk about “infinity minus one”? It does not appear so, because we know that after subtracting one guest from the infinite set, we can’t just add that guest back to the set to make it infinite. So either there really can be an actual infinite that can sustain its infinite amount even when it is subtracted from (although talk of these implications sounds absurd), or the difficulties in talking about an actual infinite being subtracted from make its existence absurd. Craig lightly addresses these concerns and objections, recognizing that if these conditions existed then these absurdities would also occur, but assumes that the illustration demonstrates the need to deny the reality of an actual infinite from the get-go. More work needs to be done on this, or more reading on this needs to be done by me.

My concern lies more with how this illustration has been used to argue for the cosmological argument. Let us take this hotel illustration and look at it as an analogy. What is argued is that the universe must have had a beginning because an actual infinite series of events is absurd, as demonstrated by illustrations like Hilbert’s hotel. If we take the hotel example and understand the universe to be the hotel rooms and the series of events within the universe to be the guests, a significant problem arises. What would it look like to “remove” an event in the universe from its infinite series of events? To put it another way, we can picture and speak of removing hotel guests within an infinite series of guests from an infinite series of hotel rooms, but can we meaningfully speak of removing an event in the universe from an infinite series within the universe? How would an event be removed? There seems to be a category mistake or a quality that differentiates the two scenarios, disconnecting the supposed analogy. At any rate, it would need to be demonstrated how the two scenarios are analogous or related.

The purpose here is not to dismiss or completely discount the cosmological argument, but merely to anticipate objections an unbeliever might propose given the cosmological argument’s own set of rules, conditions, and logical parameters.

photo courtesy of Brent