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Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Hansel & Gretel apologetics


I recently commented on two statements by William Lane Craig concerning inerrancy and original sin respectively. These are not isolated statements. From what I can tell, they reflect his overall apologetic strategy, which is grounded in his idiosyncratic religious epistemology.

Craig presents his basic strategy in Five Views on Apologetics (S. Cowan, ed.; Zondervan 2000) as well as Reasonable Faith (Crossway, 3rd ed., 2008). This is how I’d summarize and evaluate his strategy:



A. Exposition

1. Knowing: The Role of the Spirit

i) Preconversion

“Therefore, we find that for believer and unbeliever alike it is the self-authenticating work of the Holy Spirit that supplies knowledge of Christianity’s truth” (RF: 47).
The Spirit’s “role is existential: he preveniently moves in the hearts of unbelievers to dissolve their sinful prejudices and open their minds to an honest consideration of the arguments and evidence” (FV: 53).

(Craig places this under “showing” rather than “knowing”.)

ii) Postconversion

“When a person becomes a Christian, he automatically becomes an adopted son of God and is indwelt with the Holy Spirit” (RF: 44).
“Such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God” (FV: 29).
“The testimony of the Spirit is even greater than the apostolic testimony” (FV: 32).
“When it comes to knowing one’s faith to be true, therefore, the Christian will not rely primarily on argument and evidence but on the gracious witness God himself give to all his children by the indwelling Holy Spirit” (FV: 36).
“What role, then, is left for rational argument and evidence to play in knowing the Christian faith to be true?…the only role left for these is a subsidiary role” (FV: 36).

2. Showing: The Role of Evidence

i) Argument from prophecy and miracles

“Jesus appealed not only to his miracles as evidence of his divine mission, but, as the Gospels portray him, also to fulfilled prophecy” (FV: 41).
“The witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus played a special role in the earliest Christian apologetic” (FV: 42).
“Thus, although arguments and evidence may be used to support the believer’s faith, they are never properly the basis of that faith” (RF: 46).

ii) Minimal Facts

“The Christian apologist seeking to establish, for example, the historicity of Jesus’ empty tomb need not and should not be saddled with the task of first showing that the Gospels are, in general, historically reliable documents” (RF: 11).
“Any historical argument for Jesus’ resurrection will have two steps: (a) to establish the facts which will serve as historical evidence and (b) to argue that the hypothesis of Jesus’ resurrection is the best or most probable explanation of those facts” (RF: 350).
“The case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus seems to me to rest upon the evidence for three great, independently established facts: the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. If these three facts can be established and no plausible natural explanation can account for them as well as the resurrection hypothesis, then one is justified in inferring Jesus’ resurrection as the most plausible explanation of the data” (RF: 360-61).

iii) Retroactive authorization

“The significance of this event [i.e. the Resurrection] is then to be found in the religio-historical context in which it occurred, namely, as the vindication of Jesus’ own unparalleled claim to divine authority” (FV: 53).

Craig doesn’t develop this point, but I wonder if he’s piggybacking on John Warwick Montgomery’s spiral argument for Biblical authority.

B. Hansel & Gretel Go to Church

Craig’s apologetic strategy is reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel. The Christian apologist is a good witch. The minimal facts are the gingerbread house that baits the unsuspecting unbeliever. Once the curious, unwary unbeliever goes inside, the door locks behind him, and the Holy Spirit zaps him, at which point he no longer needs the evidential candy and pastries, for he now has the self-authenticating witness of the Spirit. Conversion by entrapment.

On this view, it’s critical that the good witch do nothing alarming to scare away Hansel and Gretel. You mustn’t have Bible verses painted on the doors and windows, facing out.

Rather, you coax him inside–at which point it’s too late for him to back out. Like bagging a stray cat by using a saucer of milk.  

C. Evaluation

i) Craig’s theory concerning the witness of the Spirit resembles the Quaker doctrine of inner light. He seems to treat the witness of the Spirit as if it was an independent (indeed, superior) source of knowledge, apart from the word of God.

To what does the Spirit witness? Apparently, the Spirit doesn’t witness to the word of God.

Rather, the witness of the Spirit seems to bypass the word of God and directly inform the mind of the believer.

Maybe that’s not what Craig intends, but he leaves the relationship between Word and Spirit terribly unclear.

And this is quite artificial, for the Spirit bears witness to the word which the Spirit inspires. The Spirit bears witness to his own words­–the words he inspired. So there’s no reason to divorce the witness of the Spirit from the word of the Spirit.

ii) Biblical miracles prophecies are Biblical lines of evidence. In what sense can we rightly demote Biblical evidence to a secondary or subsidiary role?

iii) Likewise, the testimony of Scripture is properly the primary basis of Christian faith. The witness of the Spirit makes the witness of Scripture convincing.

iv) In fairness to Craig, he tries to justify his ranking system by appeal to 1 Jn 5:6-10. But his interpretation is quite dubious:

a) “Spirit/water” allude to the baptism of Christ (cf. Jn 1:29-34) while “blood/water” allude to the crucifixion of Christ (cf. Jn 19:34-36).

b) This doesn’t oppose divine testimony to apostolic testimony, for the knowledge of these historic events is contingent on apostolic testimony. The author of the Fourth Gospel appeals to his own, firsthand observation to vouch for the events. The Father and the Spirit bear witness to the Son, but that, in turn, involves the testimony of inspired eyewitnesses (Jn 14:26). And we have the same appeal in 1 Jn 1:1-3.

Divine testimony stands in contrast to uninspired human testimony, not inspired human testimony.

c) Indeed, it would be counterproductive for John to oppose divine testimony to apostolic testimony, for John’s opponents rebel against apostolic testimony–namely, John’s testimony. His opponents would like nothing better than pull rank on John by appealing to the (allegedly) superior testimony of the Spirit. Indeed, that’s what they tried to do (1 Jn 4:1). But the Spirit can’t outrank himself. The work of the Spirit in regeneration isn’t superior to the work of the Spirit in inspiration.

v) Instead of distinguishing between evidence and argument, I’d distinguish between prereflective (tacit, pretheoretical) knowledge and reflective knowledge. An inarticulate Christian may have good reason for what he believers, even if he lacks the skill to argue for his faith. But that is still based on evidence.

Put another way, the fact that showing falls short of knowing doesn’t mean that knowing falls short of showing. If, say, an OT prophecy truly shows Jesus to be what he claims to be, then isn’t that a way of knowing who Jesus is?

vi) Even at the argumentative level, if an argument is sound, then why can’t that figure in the basis of Christian faith? Put another way, as long as something is true, why can’t that truth be a part of what grounds our faith?

If, say, Jesus truly fulfilled OT types and oracles, then why is that truth unsuitable to form a cornerstone of our faith? Isn’t the Christian faith founded on revealed truths?

Put another way, if the evidence is truly evidentiary, if, say, an OT prophecy does, in fact, predict something about Jesus, then how can Craig treat that like a ladder which the climber can then kick aside once he reaches his destination? For it’s not just a means to an end. Rather, the fulfillment is internally related to the promise, and vice versa. You can’t dissolve the relation without losing the both ends of the relation. The truth of the fulfillment doesn’t obtain apart from the truth of the prophecy, and its true realization in the future event. Rather, the fulfillment is the upper story, resting on the lower story of the oracle (to change metaphors).

vii) Does the Spirit universally “dissolve the sinful prejudices” of unbelievers “to open their minds an honest consideration of the arguments and evidence”? If that were the case, then that ought to be manifest in their behavior. But most unbelievers don’t act that way. Just the opposite. Indeed, that’s why they’re unbelievers.

viii) Fact is, Scripture is meant to be divisive. Revealed truth has a polarizing effect–appealing to some, but repellant to others. It's that way be design. A Christian evangelist or apologist has no right to shortchange Scripture. 

ix) Many of Craig’s apologetic arguments have value in their own right, irrespective of his apologetic strategy. So I don’t say this to discount what’s worthwhile in his apologetic endeavors–which is considerable. Craig is a giant-killer. He has slain many enemies of the faith.

But the parts are greater than the whole. His apologetic method is predicated on a very distinctive–indeed, rather eccentric–religious epistemology. It’s best to treat his apologetic assemblage as a source of spare parts. 

11 comments:

  1. All these flaws ... and still the atheists see him as the most formidable living Christian apologist.

    He must be doing something right.

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  2. ἐκκλησία,

    As B.B. Warfield once said, God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick.

    Anyway, the debate over apologetic methodology is independent of practical apologetics. I'm pretty sure the atheists aren't commenting on Craig's meta-apologetics.

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  3. Interesting analogy. It sounds just like the method RC apologists use that John and I talked about over at BeggarsAll the other day; you don't usually hear RCs mention the extra baggage - like Marian dogmas - that comes with the assurance of an infallible church until it's too late to back out. Seems like that is what Craig is doing here.

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  4. "Craig is a giant-killer. He has slain many enemies of the faith."

    God bless Dr. William Lane Craig.

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  5. Having read the article presented, "Hansel & Gretel apologetics", I come back to the question posed, this one:

    In what sense can we rightly demote Biblical evidence to a secondary or subsidiary role?

    Quite obvious! The Holy Spirit, as recorded, through Christ, said this about that:

    Mat 12:25 Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.

    Mark's and Luke's Gospel basically address the same issue.

    Why would the Holy Spirit inspire men to write the Word that we have to hear to receive the Gift of Faith and then contradict Himself or make that very Word inspired secondary, or a subsidiary, of Himself?

    Especially when He gives this witness about Himself through the agency of Christ:

    Joh 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.


    They would not be of "one heart and one mind" nor would the Church be able to come into the same as we read the early Church came into, here, by the power of God:

    Act 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
    Act 4:32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.
    Act 4:33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.


    Nor would the Apostle Paul be able to teach this:

    Php 2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,
    Php 2:2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

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  6. Steve said...
    To what does the Spirit witness? Apparently, the Spirit doesn’t witness to the word of God.

    The Spirit witnesses to the Truth of God that's supremely and infallibly contained in Scripture. Ideally, someone is saved by the witness of the Spirit as he personally reads the Bible. However, not everyone in the history of the Church has had access to the Scriptures. For example, a Medieval Christian may have been illiterate and in an area of the world where even his local priest didn't have a copy of the Scriptures. Yet, to the degree that his priest faithfully preached the basics of the Trinity and story of Jesus as the Son of God who died to save sinful humanity (as it was orally conveyed to the priest as well), he might have been truly regenerated and exercised saving faith. Even today, a person can share his fallible understanding of the Gospel along with his fallible quotation of Scripture to lead someone to genuine saving faith even though that new convert didn't confirm from Scripture that the Evangelistic spiel given to him by this Free Will KJV Only Fundamentalist "Babdist" (i.e. Baptist) was 100% true. The Truth of God is not only to be found in Scripture, but also fallibly in the testimony of the Church, Church tradition and of individual Christians. The difference is that only in Scripture is the teaching infallible. And so, I think WLC is saying that the Spirit testifies to the truth of the Gospel regardless of whether the NT documents are considered inspired Scripture or not.

    Steve said...
    Rather, the witness of the Spirit seems to bypass the word of God and directly inform the mind of the believer.
    Maybe that’s not what Craig intends, but he leaves the relationship between Word and Spirit terribly unclear.


    Agreed.

    Steve quotes WLC: “Thus, although arguments and evidence may be used to support the believer’s faith, they are never properly the basis of that faith” (RF: 46).

    I can see why Steve said the following...
    i) Craig’s theory concerning the witness of the Spirit resembles the Quaker doctrine of inner light. He seems to treat the witness of the Spirit as if it was an independent (indeed, superior) source of knowledge, apart from the word of God [I would say, "the truth of God", with or without access to the Scriptures].


    As a Calvinist, I'd say that the truth of God is the basis for faith, even if regeneration may take place in the immediate *absence* of the truth of God (though, I'd assume it's usually *in* the presence of the truth of God). So, for example, God can regenerate someone while the person is watching a movie that awakens her conscience. Then, later that day, she encounters a Jesus Freak who shares a fallible presentation of the Gospel with her (notitia). Throughout the remainder of the week she muses on the Gospel and concludes that it's actually true (assensus). After which she receives Christ as her Savior and Lord and commits to follow Him by trusting Him, repenting of her sins, and committing to obey Him by getting a copy of the Bible and doing what it says (fiducia). This is all before she actually investigates the evidence for the historicity of Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus in particular (which she already believes because she already assented to the truth of the Gospel). However, her later investigation eventually leads to a confirmation of the historical truth of Christianity and so supports her previous conclusion that it is true. In another instance, someone else might investigate the historical claims of Christianity first, before exercising (fiducial) faith. The Spirit converts people in various ways (cf. John 3:8).

    Continued in next post:

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  7. Steve said...
    iii) Likewise, the testimony of Scripture is properly the primary basis of Christian faith.

    Ideally, yes.

    Stev said...
    The witness of the Spirit makes the witness of Scripture convincing.

    True, but again, sometimes people don't have access to Scripture but only the Truth of God that's supremely in infallible Scripture. A rabid skeptic and atheist who never read the Bible could get stranded on a desert Island and only have a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress to read. After reading it 10 times, he ends up concluding that Christianity is true and becomes a Christian because the Holy Spirit witnessed to his heart to the truth of Christianity. [Btw, allegedly Spurgeon read it 100 times!!!]

    Steve said...
    Divine testimony stands in contrast to uninspired human testimony, not inspired human testimony.

    But, sometimes people receive inspired Divine testimony second hand via uninspired human testimony. The woman at the well in John 4 fallibly testified to her fellow villagers of the infallible testimony of the Divine Son of God and some of them believed before hearing Him. While others believed in Him after hearing Him.

    John 4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers. (italics mine) - NIV

    Btw, I do believe that the Scriptures are self-attesting so that even in the absence of additional historical evidence to the truthfulness (or at the very least) reliability of Scripture, one is justified in knowing that the contents of Scripture is true. That is, it satisfies the usual requirements of knowledge, viz. justified, true, belief.

    Steve said...
    ... then how can Craig treat that like a ladder which the climber can then kick aside once he reaches his destination?

    I don't see where Craig does that. Maybe I need to re-read the portions of Craig that Steve quoted.

    Steve asks (alluding to Craig's statement)...
    vii) Does the Spirit universally “dissolve the sinful prejudices” of unbelievers “to open their minds an honest consideration of the arguments and evidence”?

    I think Steve and I would agree that this manifests Craig's non-Calvinist views on prevenient grace.

    Steve said...
    viii) Fact is, Scripture is meant to be divisive. Revealed truth has a polarizing effect–appealing to some, but repellant to others. It's that way be design. A Christian evangelist or apologist has no right to shortchange Scripture.

    Amen.
    2Cor. 2:15For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?- ESV

    Steve said...
    His apologetic method is predicated on a very distinctive–indeed, rather eccentric–religious epistemology. It’s best to treat his apologetic assemblage as a source of spare parts.

    Amen.

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  8. By the way, when I said, "the truth of God" I obviously meant it as a shortcut for the truth of God concerning the (factual contents of the) gospel.

    correction:
    "That is, it satisfies the usual requirements of knowledge, viz. justified, true, belief."

    Should be:

    "That is, it satisfies the usual requirements of knowledge, viz. it's justified true belief."

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  9. Paul said: "As B.B. Warfield once said, God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick."

    B.B. Warfield was right. You are right to point that out Paul - thanks.

    The point is, we are all crooked sticks (though not Christ). None of us are as straight as we should be.

    I thank Christ that he can use men like the apostle Paul, Steve Hays, and William Lane Craig to oppose the pharisees of this world.

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  10. Steve,

    I am reading Five Views at the moment and I think Craig points out that Frame acknowledges that the Spirit also witnesses to extra-canonical info.

    Also, it would be great if you could do a post sometime explaining why Frame thinks all the arguments are ultimately circular and that we should admit it. I don't think any of the contributors to the book see how that is true and neither do I. And then in closing remarks Frame seems to say his view may be construed as linear after all?!?

    It needs some more explaining, e.g. why is the teleological argument ultimately circular? How does it presuppose God's existence the way Craig sets it out in his 3 step deductive argument? And if so, what should Craig do differently?

    Or again, how come Frame is so happy with Habermas' resurrection evidence given that Habermas works on the presuppositions of secular scholars (only using the bits and pieces that critical scholars accept as legit)? Isn't that inconsistent?

    It is these practical questions that I think many people would like to see more clearly explained.

    I'd love to understand Frame a bit better, I read his Apologetics to the Glory of God but still it seems foggy, I think FV will be my last attempt to get Frame!

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  11. I think he means "circular" in something analogous to the coherence theory of truth, but with a triperspectival twist, viz.

    In this sense, the truth in one perspective includes the truth of all the others, including God’s. To maximize my own knowledge, I need the knowledge of everyone else, especially that of God. So to see everything perfectly from my own perspective involves seeing everything from everyone else’s perspective, and from God’s. In that sense, finite perspectives are dependent on God’s and interdependent on one anothers’. My perspective should ideally include yours, and vice versa. An exhaustive view of the universe from my perspective (if that were possible, which it is not) would have to be enriched by yours and everyone else’s, including that of God, and, indeed, that of the fly on my wall. So my perspective must include yours, and yours must include mine. In that sense, all finite perspectives are interdependent. God’s perspective is independent in a way that ours are not, for God governs all perspectives. But even his knowledge, as we have seen, includes a knowledge of all finite perspectives. And all finite perspectives must, to attain truth, “think God’s thoughts after him.”9 So in one sense, all perspectives coincide. Each, when fully informed, includes all the knowledge found in every other. There is one truth, and each perspective is merely an angle from which that truth can be viewed.

    A biblical epistemology will also acknowledge these three elements. Secular epistemologies have found it difficult to relate sense experience, reason, and feelings in their accounts of human knowledge. They have also been perplexed by the relation of the subject (the knower), the object (what the knower knows), and the norms or rules of knowledge (logic, reason, etc.)

    These three aspects of knowledge are perspectival. You can’t have one without the others, and with each, you will have the others. Every item of true human knowledge is the application of God’s authoritative norm to a fact of creation, by a person in God’s image. Take away one of those, and there is no knowledge at all.

    So I distinguish three perspectives of knowledge. In the “normative perspective,” we ask the question, “what do God’s norms direct us to believe?” In the “situational perspective,” we ask, “what are the facts?” In the “existential perspective,” we ask, “what belief is most satisfying to a believing heart?” Given the above view of knowledge, the answers to these three questions coincide. But it is sometimes useful to distinguish these questions so as to give us multiple angles of inquiry.

    http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/PrimerOnPerspectivalism.htm

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