The Task of Apologetics: Nature and Necessity (Van Til's Apologetic)

     In ancient Greece an apologia was the defense offered in a court of law in answer to an accusation. Socrates was accused of atheism and of corrupting the youth of Athens; eventually he was sentenced to die. Christians in the ancient world knew what it was to have accusations and ridicule directed at them for their religious convictions and practices.

Twentieth-century believers can sympathize with their brothers in the ancient world. Our Christian faith continues to see the same variety of attempts to oppose and undermine it. What kind of response should be made to such accusations and challenges? It is clear from the New Testament record that the believers in the early church were not content to be relativists, subjectivists, or eclectics. In the accounts of opposition that are mentioned above, Christians are not found replying that nobody can know anything for sure (especially about supernatural matters), in which case there is no absolute truth.

Religious disagreements are not seen as irresolvable differences of personal upbringing, culture, or perspective. We do not read anything like “The Bible is true for me, but may not be true for you.” Nor can we find any willingness to make common cause with false religiosity as long as Christianity is accepted as one among many legitimate points of view. First-century Christians were willing and able to defend that claim. After all, the truth is not clearly taught unless whatever contradicts it or whatever error stands over against it is refuted.

According to Cornelius Van Til’s apologetics aims to defend the Christian faith by answering the variety of challenges leveled against it by unbelievers, thereby vindicating the Christian philosophy of life (worldview) over against all non-Christian philosophies of life (worldviews). There are many ways in which Christian truth-claims come under attack. Their meaningfulness is challenged. The possibility of miracles, revelation, and incarnation is questioned. Doubt is cast upon the deity of Christ or the existence of God.

            The nature of God and the way of salvation are falsified by heretical schools of thought. Competing religious systems are set over against Christianity. The ethics of Scripture is criticized.The psychological or political adequacy of Christianity is looked down upon. These and many, many other lines of attack are directed against biblical Christianity.  It is the job of apologetics to refute them and demonstrate the truth of the Christian proclamation and worldview—to “cast down reasoning and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5).

 

APOLOGETICS DEFENDS CHRISTIANITY TAKEN AS A WHOLE

Apologetics is the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life. Now there is, to be sure, a certain amount of truth in this way of putting the matter. Apologetics does deal with theism more than it deals with Christianity, and evidences does deal with Christianity more than it deals with theism. Christianity can never be separated from some theory about the existence and the nature of God.

 The result is that Christian theism must be thought of as a unit. We may, therefore, perhaps conceive of the vindication of Christian theism as a whole [in comparison] to modern warfare. There is bayonet fighting, there is rifle shooting, there are machine guns, but there are also heavy cannon and atom bombs. It is impossible and useless to seek to vindicate Christianity as a historical religion by a discussion of facts only. Suppose we assert that Christ arose from the grave. We assert further that his resurrection proves his divinity. The philosophy of the pragmatist is to the effect that everything in this universe is unrelated and that such a fact as the resurrection of Jesus, granted it were a fact, would have no significance for us who live two thousand years after him.

Thus we are driven to philosophical discussion all the time and everywhere. Yet in defending the theistic foundation of Christianity we, in the nature of the case, deal almost exclusively with philosophical argument. If we are to defend Christian theism as a unit it must be shown that its parts are really related to one another. We have already indicated the relation between the doctrine of Christ's work, the doctrine of sin, and the doctrine of God.

BOTH APOLOGETICS AND EVIDENCES VINDICATE CHRISTIAN THEISM

If we take apologetics in its broad sense we mean by it the vindication of Christian theism against any form of non-theistic and non-Christian thought. Christian-theistic evidences is, then, the defense of Christian theism against any attack that may be made upon it by “science." Yet it is Christian theism as a unit that we seek to defend. We do not seek to defend theism in apologetics and Christianity in evidences, (9) but we seek to defend Christian theism in both courses.

Thus, we face the question of God's providence. And providence, in turn, presupposes creation. We may say, then, that we seek to defend the fact of miracle, the fact of providence, the fact of creation, and therefore, the fact of God, in relation to modern non-Christian science.

The real question about facts is, therefore, what kind of universal (10) can give the best account of the facts. Or rather, the real question is which universal can state or give meaning to any fact.

 

APOLOGETICS PROVIDES A BASIC METHOD FOR ANSWERING EVERY CHALLENGE

How will the young pastor guide his flock, his high school and college people, in the midst of this confusion? ... He needs a criterion by which he himself may be able to distinguish truth from error. He needs, in particular, to be able to discern whether the books he reads, and those his people read, hold to historic Christianity or not. He must understand the reasons why men reject historic Christianity. He must know how to evaluate these reasons.

The young pastor may well be baffled by all this. He cannot hope to know as much about the facts of science as the non-Christian experts in science do. He may get some help from fellow Christians whose life task it is to study science. He may get some help also from his former seminary professors. But while they are "experts" in their specialized fields of research, they may not be able to show him how he may settle each and every issue. (12)

 

APOLOGETICS SHOULD BE PURSUED IN A LEARNED 

The unity and organized character of our personality demand that we have unified knowledge as the basis of our action. If we do not pay attention to the whole of biblical truth as a system, we become doctrinally one-sided, and doctrinal one-sidedness is bound to issue in spiritual one-sidedness.

            We have already indicated that the best apologetic defense will invariably be made by him who knows the system of truth of Scripture best. The fight between Christianity and non-Christianity is, in modern times, no piece-meal affair. It is the life and death struggle between two mutually opposed life and world views. (14)

The non-Christian attack often comes to us on matters of historical, or other, detail. It comes to us in the form of objections to certain teachings of Scripture, say, with respect to creation, etc. It may seem to be simply a matter of asking what the facts have been.

In conclusion, we should observe that just as a thorough knowledge of the system of truth in Scripture is the best defense against heresy, so it is also the best help for the propagation of the truth. This is but the other side of the former point.

The church will have to return to its erstwhile emphasis upon its teaching function if it is to fulfill its God-given task of bringing the gospel to all men. Its present recourse to jerky evangelism as almost the only method of propaganda is itself an admission of paupery.

It goes without saying that if all these benefits are to come to us as ministers and as a church, we must undertake our work in a spirit of deep dependence upon God and in a spirit of prayer that he may use us as his instruments for his glory.

 

APOLOGETICAL REASONING WITH THE UNBELIEVER IS NOT USELESS

The Arminian holds that on the Reformed conception of man there is no sense to preaching. There would, the Arminian argues, be no approach to an identity of meanings between the preacher and the man "dead inters passes and sins" to whom he preaches

The dead man cannot even count and weigh and measure. (18) There is an absolute severance of all connection between him and the living. For this absolute deadness of the natural man, the Arminian substitutes the notion of degrees of deadness, in order thus to establish degrees of contact with the truth. There can be no absolutely evil deed because then the will itself would be destroyed.

It is ambiguous or meaningless, says the Arminian, to talk about the natural man as knowing God and yet not truly knowing God. Knowing is knowing. A man either knows or he does not know. He may know less or more, but if he does not "truly" know, he knows not at all.

The Calvinist, he argues, is an absolutist who destroys the light of day. In reply to this the Calvinist insists that there are no degrees of deadness. The natural man does not know God. But to be thus without knowledge, without living, loving, true knowledge of God, he must be one who knows God in the sense of having the sense of deity (Romans 1). (19)

                                                                        Personal Response

              In this chapter the nature and necessity of apologetics wrote this  to defend the Christian faith defend the Christian faith by answering the variety of challenges leveled against it by unbelievers, thereby vindicating the Christian philosophy of life worldview over against all non-Christian philosophies of life (worldviews). There are many ways in which Christian truth-claims come under attack. Their meaningfulness is challenged. The possibility of miracles, revelation, and incarnation is questioned. Doubt is cast. For me there is a strong current of antipathy to the function of the mind in the Christian life, if we are not rooted and firmatively in the God’s word. Depending our faith is depending the truth with our minds and growing in it. If Christians know why they believe what they believe, they will also feel more secure in their faith and have more assurance that what they believe is true. But how about the unbelievers that they are different from their believe and they are more relaying on the religions or what they grown up or maybe they believe to those people whom surrounded . But For what Kuyper said it is useless being a Christian if we are not helping the unbelieves to believe and Kuyper think that there is an a appropriateness and necessity of apologetically argument with unbelievers needs to be asserted, not only against anti-intellectualism and false piety, but equally against the sophisticated opinion of someone like Abraham Kuyper that apologetics is intellectually futile. Kuyper well understood that all men conduct their thinking and reasoning in terms of an ultimate, controlling principle a most basic presupposition, perspective, and mental attitude. For the unbeliever, this is a natural principle that takes man’s thinking to be intelligible without recourse to God, while for the believer it is a supernatural principle based on God’s involvement in human history and experience, notably in regeneration, providing the framework necessary for making sense of anything). These two ultimate commitments call them naturalism and Christian supernaturalism there is two different and a vary needed by the people. It is not easy to introduce to the unbelievers what we believe and what is the bible telling the truth it is a long process and a long journey that we need to accept that convincing them is not a short cut process and is not our own ability and wisdom it is a step by step and a toiling journey with them it is not a blink of an eye that we can change them to what we want to became them.  But from it he drew a fallacious conclusion, namely, that Christian apologetics is useless, that there is no pressing need to reason with the darkened understanding of the unbeliever: “It will be impossible to settle the difference of insight. But for Van Til’s says that Christianity must be presented to men as the objective truth, and provably so. It is not only a moral lapse, but also an unjustifiable intellectual error, to reject the message of God’s revealed word.  Like the defense of faith of Christian claims: Like Peter in Acts 2:36 as well as Paul in Acts 9:22, Act 17:17-18, Acts 26:2 and Philippians 1:7-16 this is the bible verse that they defend their faith. In those who were followers of Christ in the early church stood firm on His own categorical claim: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Accordingly, they proclaimed Christ in such way that the gospel about Him would be understood as objectively and exclusively true. Those who abided in His word would “know the truth” that sets men free (John 8:31-32). This is our task to introduce to the unbelievers what they need to know and telling the truth whatever happens if we encounter the rejection from the believers just focus on what God wants us to do to proclaiming his word, declaring his faithfulness, sharing his unconditional love at most important is telling the truth about the bible because the bible is our source to know the truth and to depend our faith in anyone else and be stand firm in depending our faith whoever we talk to., whatever they sect, religion they belief even the denomination I should stand what I believing in what is truth whatever the circumstances ,whatever I faces, whatever the suffering and struggle in my life I will remain to defend my faith in God.