Message of the Apologist By: John Frame
Philosophy
By “Christianity
as a philosophy,” I mean that Christianity provides a comprehensive view of the
world (a 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 discusses metaphysics (the theory of
the fundamental nature of reality), epistemology (the theory of knowledge), and
values (ethics, aesthetics, economics, etc.). (66)
Christianity
therefore competes with Platonism, Aristotelianism, empiricism, rationalism, skepticism,
materialism, monism, pluralism, Process thought, secular humanism, New Age thought,
Marxism, and whatever other philosophies there maybe—as well as other religions,
such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (67)
Under these circumstances, shouldn’t we consider some alternatives that are opposed to the conventional wisdom? Or is there indeed perhaps, only one such alternative? If so, and I will argue that there is, surely we ought to take that alternative very seriously. (69)
Metaphysics
The four
most important things to remember about the Christian worldview are: first, the
absolute personality of God; second, the distinction between Creator and
creature; third, the sovereignty of God; and fourth, the Trinity.
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 (“a se”).
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 timeless, for he is the Lord
of time itself (Ps. 90, esp. v. 4; Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:11; 2 Peter 3:8).70 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.”
This definition emphasizes not only God’s absoluteness but also his personality. “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), and searches (same verse). (p.34)
The Creator-Creature Relationship
According to Scripture, God is both transcendent and immanent. His transcendence is simply the fact that he is radically different from us. He is the Creator and we are his creatures. He is absolute, as we saw in the previous section. We are not. Even his personality is different from ours, for his is original and ours 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. (82)
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).
Liberal
theologians, (87) who refuse to be subject to the Bible and who freely
incorporate non-Christian ideas into their theologies, also regularly deny the
biblical Creator-creature distinction. They insist on thinking autonomously
(i.e., recognizing no absolute standard outside themselves), denying the
Creator’s authority over them. They regularly picture God’s transcendence not
as his absoluteness (as defined above), but as his remoteness, his “beyondness.”
In liberalism (and in so-called neoorthodoxy), God is “wholly other”—so far beyond
us that we cannot (even with the help of revelation) speak or think correctly
about him. Thus, the liberal theologian not only evades the authority of
Scripture, but also gives to that evasion a theological rationale.
As Van Til put it, the Christian worldview involves a “two-level” concept of reality. Van Til used to walk into class and draw two circles on the board, one under the other, connected by vertical lines of “communication.” The larger, upper circle represented God; the smaller, lower circle represented the creation. All non-Christian thought, he argued, is “one-circle” thought. It either raises man to God’s level or lowers God to man’s. In any case, it regards God, if it acknowledges him at all, as man’s equal, as another part of the “stuff” of the universe. Christian apologetics must make no compromise with such notions.
The Sovereignty of God
It is
important to the Christian worldview that 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).
The doctrine that God foreordains and directs all events is generally regarded as Calvinistic, and I am not embarrassed to be called a Calvinist. But other Christian traditions also accept this doctrine, sometimes in spite of themselves. Take Arminianism, for example. The Arminian makes much of human “free will,” insisting that our free decisions, especially those of religious significance, are not foreordained or otherwise determined by God. He seeks thereby to reinforce the doctrine of human responsibility (a doctrine with which, in itself, the Calvinist has no quarrel). But the Arminian also recognizes
· That God foreknows the future exhaustively, and that he has created the world knowing what the future will bring. Thus, even Arminianism implicitly concedes the Calvinist point without admitting it. Therefore, some Arminians today have abandoned the premise that God foreknows everything and have moved to a view more akin to that of process theology. (90) But this move is exceedingly dubious scripturally. Thus, even Arminianism implicitly concedes the Calvinist point without admitting it. Therefore, some Arminians today have abandoned the premise that God foreknows everything and have moved to a view more akin to that of process theology.
The main point is that Christians who honor Scripture as God’s Word regularly recognize—theological formulations to the contrary notwithstanding—that God rules over all of nature and history. The doctrine of divine sovereignty is the possession of the whole church.
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; Isa. 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).91 Somehow they are three, and somehow
they are one. The Nicene Creed says that they are one “being” but three “substances,”
or, differently translated, one “substance” and three “persons.” I prefer
simply to say “one God, three persons.” The technical terms should not be
understood in any precise, descriptive sense. The fact is that we do not know
precisely how the three are one and the one is three. We do know that since the
three are God, they are equal, for there is no superiority or inferiority
within God. To be God is to be superior to everything. All three have all the
divine attributes. All three are “Lord.” All three have the relations to creation
that we have earlier ascribed to God. All three are members of the upper circle
in Van Til’s drawing.
Why is
the Trinity important to apologetics? Well, what happens when unitarianism (the view that God is
merely one) is substituted for Trinitarianism?
One result is that the God so defined tends to lose definition and the marks of
personality. In the early centuries of the Christian era, the Gnostics, the
Arians, and the Neoplatonists
worshiped a non-Trinitarian God. That God was a pure oneness, with no plurality
of any kind. But one what? A unity of what? In answer to those questions,
nothing could be said. Anything we say about God would suggest a division, a plurality,
at least between subject and predicate. “God is X” creates, they said, a
plurality between God and X. So we cannot speak of God at all.
To such thinkers, God’s nature was, in modern terms, “wholly other.” It could not be described in human language, for (among other reasons) the human mind cannot conceive of a blank oneness. The logical conclusion, then, would seem to be not to speak of God at all. But the ancient unitarians would not accept that conclusion. Therefore, in answer to the question “One what?” they pointed to the creation: God is a perfect unity of those things that are separated in the creation. But if God is defined merely in terms of creation, then he is relative to creation. And indeed, these early unitarians saw reality as a “chain of being” between the unknowable God and the knowable world (a world that was actually a divine emanation: God in his plurality). God was relative to the world, and the world was relative to God.
Epistemology
God is
not only the origin of truth, but also the supreme authority for knowledge.
Authority is part of his lordship. God has the right to command and be obeyed.
He has, therefore, the right to tell us what we must believe. (99)
Fallen
man wants to think autonomously, subject only to his own criteria of truth,
free to ignore those of God. But God’s grace take away our bondage to
autonomous ways of thinking and enables us instead to think according to God’s
Word (Jer. 31:31ff; 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). (100)
The Holy
Spirit illumines our minds to know the truth (1 Cor. 2:12ff; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph.
1:17ff; 1 Thess. 1:5; Heb. 6:4; 10:32). The fear of the Lord leads to knowledge
and wisdom (Prov. 1:7; parallels). But 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).
So
rationalistic philosophy declares human reason to be the final standard.
Empiricism, recognizing the flights of speculation to which unbridled “reason”
is prone, demands that all ideas be ultimately accountable to human
sense-experience. And skepticism, recognizing that both human reason and
sense-experience are prone to error, declares (on its own authority!) that
truth is unattainable. (101) Kantian and existentialist thought in effect make
man the very source of significance in his experience.
The apologist must not only refuse to compromise with these distorted epistemologies, but also summon unbelievers to abandon them. For such epistemologies are part of the unbeliever’s sinful suppression of the truth. Like the distortions in metaphysics, they represent his desire to escape from responsibility, to avoid hearing the voice of God telling him what to do.
Ethics
Ethics
investigates such matters as good and evil, right and wrong. Like Christian
metaphysics and epistemology, Christian ethics is distinctive. As Lord, he is, as we have seen, the
supreme authority over his creatures. Under “Epistemology” we saw that God is
the supreme criterion of truth and falsehood. Under “Ethics” we must observe
that God is also the supreme standard of what is good and evil, right and
wrong. And he has expressed his standards in his words to us (Deut. 4:1ff;
6:4ff.).
Again,
the history of philosophy illustrates how human thinkers seek to avoid
responsibility to God by claiming autonomy. They don’t want to obey God’s laws,
and so they set themselves up as the ultimate judges of what is right.
Teleological ethics seeks to base values on sense-experience, but it cannot
bridge the gap between the is of experience and the ought of value.
Christianity is the alternative. Only Christianity flies right in the face of human claims to autonomy. Only Christianity, therefore, has the answer to lawlessness.
Good News
But
Christianity is not just an alternative to the secular philosophies or a set of
moral standards better than those of current society. It is gospel, good news.
In this respect, too, it is unique—a genuine alternative to the conventional
ways of thinking. Scripture teaches that human beings, made in God’s image,
sinned against him (Gen. 3:1ff.). We today bear the guilt of Adam’s first sin
(Rom. 5:12–19) and the weight of our own sins against God (Rom. 3:10ff.).
Our
problem, therefore, is not finitude (as we are told by some pantheists, New Age
thinkers, and the like), and the solution to the problem is not for us to
become God. Nor is our chief problem to be found in our heredity, environment,
emotional makeup, poverty, or sicknesses. (104)Rather, 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).
And what
is the solution? “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (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).
We see
that Christianity, both as philosophy and as good news, is the alternative to
the conventional wisdom. This uniqueness of Christianity is itself of
apologetic significance. Uniqueness does not itself entail truth, but when all
the other alternatives march along like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, all claiming
implausibly to be able to explain the personal by means of the impersonal, all
claiming autonomy (and thus denying God’s sovereignty), all claiming to find
ultimate not in God but in creation, all offering as a solution to our predicament
nothing more profound than works-righteousness—indeed, without a dime’s worth
of difference among these conventional ideologies—it certainly makes sense to
give a high priority to investigating Christianity and its claims. (p.39)
MY PERSONAL RESPONSE
In this
chapter it shown how Christianity is all about for me. And as John Frame, Christianity
as Philosophy is a way of seeing and being in the world, a way of believing and
living in the world, belief and practice. As a Christian we should not separate
our everyday life. It should connect to the Christian perspective and we are
doers of the word. On the page 33 says that Christianity is not just knowing
the God it’s include 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. And the most important things
to remember about the Christian worldview are first, the absolute personality
of God is compassionate and kind. He desperately loves all of mankind, and is
quick to forgive, embrace and restore our relationship with him when we have
done something damage our fellowship such as willful sin. Although He holy and
hates sin he will do or allow whatever it takes to get the attention of those
who have no desire to even know him. He does not delight in the death of the
wicked even, and wants those who reject and mock him to save. Although he is
the judge, it is not his desire to judge and condemn us for our sins that is
why he came in the flesh as a perfect sinless sacrifice for the imperfect
sinner and took on himself the penalty for our sins. He is a just God though so he has to judger
and punish sin. I would just also like to add that although God is long
suffering and again, quick to forgive and restore. He has no patience for those
who lead others, especially children astray. It would do us well to be quiet
and not speak at all if the things we have to say about God are opinions and
lies. Not that he can’t take people lying about him, but that he hates those
false teachings and false doctrine. Secondly the distinction between creator
and creature is important to know because it condenses the teaching and bring
the cross the very plain message that God is God and we are not we are his
creatures God exist in Himself his independent was makes his sure catechism
question answer for says that God is spirit. He is infinite internal and
unchangeable and He is being wisdom, power, justice, holiness, goodness and
truth creatures are the other hand are not like that we are dependent we cannot
exist in our self, we cannot have life existence being by virtue our own power
rather we are created us image of God we are independent upon him. We cannot
share same being yet we are analogies meaning we relay to God as his image not
his original. The first big point we need to understand the distinction between
creator and creature we should not blurred that as we approach the subject of
defending of faith. God exist in himself, he is independent, He is simple, he
is sovereign, He is the Lord overall. Because he is created those he reflect
his image those who are not god. Therefore we cannot serve as a mine who can
stand both God and decide what is wrong and right and what comes here and what
doesn’t. Thirdly the Sovereignty of God we means powerful and authoritative to
the extent of being able to override all other over power and authoritative.
Nothing can successfully stop any act or any design our purpose which God
intense to certainly bring about. Nothing can force stop his the bible says in
Job 42:2 I know that you can do all things and no purposes of yours can be
thwarted. Nothing can stop him he works
all things according to the counsel of his will whatever happens. God is
sovereign God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his
own will freely and immutability as possibility of changing. God did immutable
ordain whatsoever comes to the past. God has all power as well as wisdom and
understanding. God is God he has super power and authority over everything and
well see how he shown His sovereignty He’s sovereignty is magnifying truth.
Comments
Post a Comment