True and Reasonable Faith

Theistic Proofs

Dr. Richard Spencer

June, 2015

• “Theistic proofs” and other evidence help to solidify our

faith by confirming that Christianity is both true and

reasonable. They are NOT the basis for our faith, but

show that it is completely consistent with human reason,

including science and history

"I am not insane, most excellent Festus," Paul replied. "What I am

saying is true and reasonable.

Acts 26:25

• In addition to strengthening our faith, proofs are of use in

pre-evangelism; listen to Machen …

Our Purpose

J. Gresham Machen wrote in 1913,

it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well

prepared to receive the gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is

the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of

preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best

preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that

power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind,

and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of

God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel.

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the

gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet

succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the

whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled

by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity

from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.

Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy

the obstacle at its root. … as Christians we should try to mold the

thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of

Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Culture,

The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 11, 1913

J. Gresham Machen wrote in 1913,

it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well

prepared to receive the gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is

the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of

preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best

preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that

power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind,

and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of

God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel.

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the

gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet

succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the

whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled

by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity

from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.

Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy

the obstacle at its root. … as Christians we should try to mold the

thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of

Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Culture,

The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 11, 1913

Common beliefs in our culture:

• “Spiritual” matters are strictly personal and whatever works for

you is fine, but don’t bring it into the public marketplace of ideas

• All religions are equally valid (or invalid), we just need to avoid

the “radicals” in any religion (i.e., those who truly believe it!)

• Modern science is the only reliable methodology for finding truth

about our physical world

• All of life can be explained by some set of natural processes

Outline

• Epistemology

– How do we decide what is true?

– Faith and reason

• Rationality; belief, knowledge and warrant

– When does belief become knowledge?

– Is belief in Christianity reasonable?

• What is the foundation of proper Christian faith?

• What good are theistic “proofs”?

• Classic Theistic Proofs

• Other Theistic Proofs

• Modern evidence for the Christian worldview

• Apologetics

How Do We Decide What is True?

• Everyone has an ultimate standard for deciding what is

true

• There are only two possible standards:

– Human reason (individual or collective)

– Divine revelation

• You can only defend your choice of ultimate standard by

reference to that standard (although you obviously use

human reason to do so in both cases – more on that in a

moment)

Human Reason or Divine Revelation?

• Human reason is, by all accounts, fallible and based on

limited knowledge and understanding

• Divine revelation is based on the perfect and exhaustive

knowledge of God

• Divine revelation is obviously the most rational standard,

but that assumes that we are convinced that we have

such revelation and can tell which one of the different

proposed sources to believe, which necessarily uses

human reason

• Therefore, it is impossible to escape using our reason, it

just shouldn’t be the ultimate standard

Thomas Aquinas and Reason

• Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was the greatest of the

Scholastics (sometimes called the Schoolmen)

• The Schoolmen were frequent targets of Calvin’s attacks

in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, but Aquinas

also wrote much that is good

• He distinguished between things that man can determine

from nature by the use of reason and those things that

must be accepted by faith in divine revelation …

Thomas Aquinas and Reason

• Aquinas wrote

It was necessary for man’s salvation that there should be a

knowledge revealed by God, besides the philosophical sciences

built up by human reason. … Even as regards those truths about

God which human reason can discover, it was necessary that man

should be taught by a divine revelation, because the truth about

God such as reason could discover would only be known by a few,

and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. …

Although those things which are higher than man’s knowledge may

not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once

they are revealed by God they must be accepted by faith.

Sum. Th., First Part, I, Q1

Thomas Aquinas and Reason

• Aquinas properly recognized that:

1. There is ample evidence (e.g., miracles, fulfilled prophecy,

internal consistency) that the Scriptures are God’s revelation to

man

2. God’s revelation is authoritative

3. Therefore, we must accept on faith the doctrines presented in

the Bible

• So we use our reason in order to confirm that the Bible is

God’s revelation, but then we submit to the Bible and

obey it; our reason is then used only to understand and

apply what it teaches

Faith and Reason

• All worldviews are based on a combination of faith and

reason

– In this case I am using the word “faith” to mean to believe

something without proof, but it implicitly includes trust since all

decisions depend on our worldview

– Reason simply means to draw conclusions based on the proper

use of logic and evidence, all of which is subject to our

presuppositions

• “Gödel showed that provability is a weaker notion than

truth” Douglass Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, pg. 19

An Example Worldview

• Rudolf Bultmann’s said “it is impossible to use electrical light and the

wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical

discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament

world of spirits and miracles.”

Kerygma and Myth, Harper and Row, 1961, pg. 5

• What can we conclude?

– Bultmann assumed, by faith, that modern science is, or would soon be,

able to explain all of existence without reference to God and, therefore,

the physical world is all that really exists

• He still spoke of salvation, but it is hard to know how he held such a

view given his materialistic assumptions. He needed to hear Paul,

“Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the

dead?” (Acts 26:8)

Belief and Knowledge

• We can believe things to be true, and we can have what

we call knowledge; what is the difference?

• A belief may be true or false, but even if it is true it does

not necessarily constitute knowledge (e.g., I may believe

that a particular stock is going to go up, but that is not

knowledge even if it turns out to be true)

• For a belief to reasonably be called knowledge, it must

have warrant, i.e., there must be good reason to think it is

true, not just probable

Is Belief in Christianity Reasonable?

• Philosophers speak of “properly basic” beliefs

• A properly basic belief is “a belief which is not derived

inferentially from any more foundational belief but which

is rationally justified by being formed in appropriate

circumstances.” W.L. Craig

• In general, properly basic beliefs are still subject to

“defeaters”; that is, opposing arguments so strong that it

would be irrational to ignore them

• But, Craig, Plantinga and others argue that Christian

belief “grounded in the witness of the Holy Spirit” has

such strong warrant that it simply overwhelms any

proposed defeater (it is a defeater for all defeaters)

Examples of Properly Basic Beliefs

• Examples of properly basic beliefs:

– Solipsism is false

– The world is more than five minutes old

• But not everyone will agree about which beliefs are

“properly basic”

• The issue is one of rationality; are you irrational to hold a

particular belief?

• The answer is not based on whether or not you can

“prove” the belief, either to yourself or to someone else

• William Lane Craig wrote about a “Christian” college

professor at Wheaton who told the class that if he were

persuaded that Christianity were unreasonable, he would

abandon it.

• Craig responded:

Now that frightened and troubled me. For me, Christ was so real

and had invested my life with such significance that I could not

make the confession of my professor – if somehow through my

studies my reason were to turn against my faith, then so much the

worse for my reason! Thus, I confided to one of my philosophy

teachers, “I guess I’m not a true intellectual. If my reason turned

against Christ, I’d still believe. My faith is too real.”

Five Views on Apologetics, pg 27

Example of a Properly Basic Belief

Don’t be Bullied or Intimidated!

• You need to know the true Triune God of the Bible

personally, and then be firm in your understanding that

such a belief is entirely rational; in fact, all other

worldviews are irrational!

• Let’s consider a simple example of how you shouldn’t let

supposed proofs sway you from what you know to be true

…

Consider the Following “Proof”

−20 = −20

16 − 36 = 25 − 45

42 − 4 × 9 = 52 − 5 × 9

42 − 4 × 9 +81

4= 52 − 5 × 9 +

81

4

42 − 2 × 4 ×9

2+

9

2

2

= 52 − 2 × 5 ×9

2+

9

2

2

4 −9

2

2

= 5 −9

2

2

4 −9

2= 5 −

9

2

4 = 5

0 = 1

Is anyone

convinced?

Unshakable Faith

• We should have the same unshakable faith in God and

his Word; if evidence or argument is presented that

contradicts it, we should simply be able to say that we

know it is wrong even if we can’t see how or why

• But, we should also strive to learn as much as we can

and think as carefully as we can so that we are “prepared

to give an answer to everyone who asks [us] to give the

reason for the hope that [we] have.” (1 Peter 3:15)

A Fully Warranted Belief

• To see another example of a fully warranted belief (one

that you can believe with absolute intellectual integrity

independent of any opposing evidence), consider being

accused of a crime you didn’t commit, like Richard

Kimble

• No amount of evidence would shake your belief in your

innocence, and your belief is fully warranted and, in fact,

constitutes true knowledge

Proper Use of Reason

• We are made in God’s image

• His Word implicitly and explicitly assumes and demands

that we use the reason he gave us, but we are to use it in

the service of truth – to understand God’s Word

(ministerial), not to stand over God’s Word and judge

whether or not it is true (magisterial)

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your

sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are

red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

Proper Use of Reason

• We are made in God’s image

• His Word implicitly and explicitly assumes and demands

that we use the reason he gave us, but we are to use it in

the service of truth – to understand God’s Word

(ministerial), not to stand over God’s Word and judge

whether or not it is true (magisterial)

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be

transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to

test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect

will. Rom 12:2

Proper Use of Reason

• R. C. Sproul lists four “essential principles of knowledge”

R.C. Sproul, Defending your Faith, Crossway, 2003

• These are NOT part of some standard of truth to which

God’s revelation is submitted, but they are God-given

tools to understand his revelation

• The Bible itself (and therefore God) presupposes these

four principles in communicating truth to us

• Sproul argues that virtually all atheists at some point

attack one or more of these principles

The Four Principles of Knowledge

• The law of noncontradiction

– A cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same

sense or relationship

• The law of causality

– Every event has a cause (every effect must have a cause is a

tautology)

– It is NOT that everything must have a cause! In fact, something,

or someone, must be eternal and uncaused (self existent)

• The basic (not infallible) reliability of sense perception

• The analogical use of language

– We are made in God’s image and can understand some things

about God, albeit imperfectly, by analogy

• It is NOT pious to say that “God transcends logic” and

then embrace contradictions; God defines logic

The Law of Noncontradiction

• While not truly “post-modern” in the fullest sense, much

of our modern culture, especially in academia, accepts

some degree of relativism

– Something can be “true” for me, but not for you

• The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner went so far as to say

that contradiction is the hallmark of truth

• Sproul responds:

If contradiction is a hallmark of truth, then there is no way we can

differentiate between right and wrong, good and evil, obedience and

disobedience.

The Law of Noncontradiction

• The Bible clearly assumes this law of logic to be true

– If “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, then

certain truths necessarily follow: e.g., the universe is not eternal,

but contingent

– In arguing for the importance of the historical resurrection of

Christ in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul assumes this law: “If there is no

resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.”

(v 13)

Paul argues that to believe that which is contradictory to fact is to

believe in vain

– We could give innumerable other examples

• In fact, any real communication assumes this law

The Law of Causality

• Everything (or everyone) that is not eternal and self

existent (i.e., not eternally dependent on someone or

something else), must have a cause

• David Hume attacked our ability to discern the real

causes behind particular effects – he was certainly right

that it can be difficult, but the “law” still stands whether we

find the right cause or not

• The Bible again assumes this law universally

– God tells us many times that HE created the universe

– Miracles are used as signs precisely because we know

everything must have a sufficient cause, and some events cannot

be naturally caused

The Basic Reliability of Sense Perception

• We are all aware that our senses can deceive us – any

good illusionist can confirm that

• But the idea that our senses provide basically reliable

information if we are careful is an essential belief to

function in life and is as much a tenet of modern science

as it is of the Bible

• The Bible assumes it universally:

– The use of miracles as signs assumes that we aren’t just

deceived

– The evidence given of Christ’s resurrection assumes the

reliability of our sense perception

The Analogical Use of Language

• We are concerned with knowledge of God – is he

somehow beyond human language? Can we make

intelligible, true, statements about him?

• Logical positivism is dead:

– If “only those statements that can be empirically verified have

meaning”, then this statement itself is meaningless

• We are made in God’s image and can understand much

by way of analogy, for example:

– We understand power, even though we are not omnipotent

– We understand being, even though we are not eternal and self

existent

– We understand love, truth, and other attributes of God even

though we do not possess any of them to the ultimate degree

What is the Proper Foundation of Christian Faith?

• The proper foundation of our faith is not evidence and

arguments, it is the transforming work and inner witness

of the Holy Spirit confirming in our hearts that God’s

Word is true

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

Romans 8:16

• If rational argument and evidence are the foundation of

your faith, it will be shaken every time someone more

clever or knowledgeable than you questions your faith!

Set Your Feet on Solid Ground

• Jesus said

everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them

into practice is like a wise man who built his house on

the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the

winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not

fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.

Matt 7:24-25

• So put God’s words into practice – sin is the cause of

much doubt! Assurance depends on obedience

• Increase your love for God, his Word and his church,

participate in the life of the body and walk in holiness

So What Good are Theistic Proofs?

• To summarize things we have said:

– Theistic proofs strengthen our faith and witness by giving us

confidence that the Christian faith is both true and reasonable

– Theistic proofs help us to think carefully and logically, which

pleases God

– By thinking clearly and then speaking and writing in the public

domain Christians can influence the world and, in particular,

create an environment in which people are more receptive to the

gospel

– These proofs can be used themselves in pre-evangelism

Classic Theistic Proofs

• We will begin with Anselm and Aquinas, but will also give

more modern versions of their proofs

• We will then move on to discuss many other types of

evidence for the truth of the Bible and the Christian

worldview

• Not all of these arguments have equal weight for all of us!

But it is good to use our minds …

• One good summary of much of the information we will

cover is: Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig,

Crossway, Revised Ed., 1994