Outline Of Apologetics

By

Hal Harless

Biblical Apologetics

 

How we got our Bible


Science vs. Bible: Creation


Science vs. Bible: Evolution

You may not know who Ernst Haeckel was, but if you ever took a biology class in high school or college, you probably studied his work. Haeckel was a 19th-century German biologist whose side-by-side drawings of salamander, human, rabbit, chicken, and fish embryos have for more than a century appeared in standard biology texts. His renderings did much to convince the world that human beings are not really very different from other creatures. After all, they all look alike as embryos.

Turns out humans are distinctly different in the particular embryonic stage portrayed by Mr. Haeckel. Michael Richardson, an embryologist at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London, performed a comparative photographic study of the embryotypes Mr. Haeckel was thought to have drawn, and found that Mr. Haeckel not only added or omitted features of the samples -- endowing the chick embryo with human-like pigmented eyes and deleting the unique limb buds in the human embryo -- he also fudged the scale accompanying the drawings, and so exaggerated the similarities among species. Says Mr. Richardson, "It looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology." (Steven J. Cole, World (November 22, 1997), vol. 12, no. 27, p. 14.)

Science vs. Bible: Flood


Who Moved the Stone?

The Evidence for the Resurrection

Introduction: CRI uses the acronym FEAT to help remember the evidence for the Resurrection, the greatest FEAT in history.

Fulfilled Prophecy

Messianic Prophecy

The Search for the Historical Jesus / Trilema


Christus si non Deus, non bonus.

If He is not God, He is not good.

-- Thiessen

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God."  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.

-- C. S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain


Miracles



We begin with a preliminary definition. A miracle is: a striking and religiously significant intervention of God in the system of natural causes.

Note two things here: (1) the concept of miracles presupposes, rather than sets aside, the idea that nature is a self-contained system of natural causes. Unless there are regularities, there can be no exceptions to them. (2) A miracle is not a contradiction. A man walking through a wall is a miracle. A man both walking and not walking through a wall at the same time and in the same respect is a contradiction. God can perform miracles but not contradictions--not because his power is limited, but because contradictions are meaningless. (Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 1994 by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli)

The main task of the apologist, with regard to miracles, is to answer all the objections that seek to prove that miracles are impossible. Remember, the objector here is not a historian who has investigated every event in all of human history and concluded that not one of them is miraculous. We do not have to meet the objection on the historical level by showing that some particular events have been miraculous. Rather, the objections operate on the philosophical level, the level of possibility. Each objection tries to prove that miracles are impossible (or overwhelmingly improbable). If miracles are impossible, then they are not actual, and if no miracles ever actually happened, then Christianity is false. For the fundamental claims and doctrines of Christianity are all miracles: Incarnation, resurrection, salvation, inspiration. If any one of these objections is valid, the whole of Christianity is refuted. (Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli)

Reply: What is meant by the "uniformity of nature"? If it means that we can explain whatever happens wholly in terms of the system of natural causes, then the objection begs the question. It amounts to saying "miracles violate the principle that miracles never happen." (Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli)

Now the Creator of the universe has authority over all creation. It is truly odd to call his suspending this or that regularly observed sequence a "violation," as if it were something he should feel guilty or embarrassed about. A miracle violates nothing. When one happens, God has (mercifully) modified the schedule of the day. (Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli)
2D. Miracles are unusual, but how does the skeptic know their probability?

1. A miracle is an event whose only adequate explanation is the extraordinary and direct intervention of God.

2. There are numerous well-attested miracles.

3. Therefore, there are numerous events whose only adequate explanation is the extraordinary and direct intervention of God.

4. Therefore God exists.

Obviously if you believe that some extraordinary event is a miracle, then you believe in divine agency, and you believe that such agency was at work in this event. But the question is: Was this event a miracle? If miracles exist, then God must exist. But do miracles exist?

Which events do we choose? In the first place, the event must be extraordinary. But there are many extraordinary happenings (e.g., numerous stones dropping from the sky in Texas) that do not qualify as miracles. Why not? First, because they could be caused by something in nature, and second, because the context in which they occur is not religious. They qualify as mere oddities, as "strange happenings"; the sort of thing you might expect to read in Believe It or Not, but never hear about from the pulpit. Therefore the meaning of the event must also be religious to qualify as a miracle.

Suppose that a holy man had stood in the center of Houston and said: "My dear brothers and sisters! You are leading sinful lives! Look at yourselves--drunken! dissolute! God wants you to repent! And as a sign of his displeasure he's going to shower stones upon you!" Then, moments later--thunk! thunk! thunk!--the stones began to fall. The word "miracle" might very well spring to mind.

Not that we would have to believe in God after witnessing this event. But still, if that man in Texas seemed utterly genuine, and if his accusations hit home, made us think "He's right," then it would be very hard to consider what happened a deception or even an extraordinary coincidence.

This means that the setting of a supposed miracle is crucially important. Not just the physical setting, and not just the timing, but the personal setting is vital as well--the character and the message of the person to whom this event is specially tied. Take, for example, four or five miracles from the New Testament.

Remove them completely from their context, from the teaching and character of Christ. Would it be wrong to see their religious significance as thereby greatly diminished? After all, to call some happening a miracle is to interpret it religiously. But to interpret it that way demands a context or setting which invites

such interpretation. And part of this setting usually, though not always, involves a person whose moral authority is first recognized, and whose religious authority, which the miracle seems to confirm, is then acknowledged.

Abstract discussions of probability usually miss this factor. But setting does play a decisive role. Many years ago, at an otherwise dull convention, a distinguished philosopher explained why he had become a Christian. He said: "I picked up the New Testament with a view to judging it, to weighing its pros and

cons. But as I began to read, I realized that I was the one being judged." Certainly he came to believe in the miracle-stories. But it was the character and teaching of Christ that led him to accept the things recounted there as genuine acts of God.

So there is not really a proof from miracles. If you see some event as a miracle, then the activity of God is seen in this event. There is a movement of the mind from this event to its proper interpretation as miraculous. And what gives impetus to that movement is not just the event by itself, but the many factors surrounding it which invite--or seem to demand--such interpretation.

But miraculous events exist. Indeed, there is massive, reliable testimony to them across many times, places and cultures.

Therefore their cause exists.

And their only adequate cause is God.

Therefore God exists.

The argument is not a proof, but a very powerful clue or sign. (Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli)

Annotated Bibliography



Answers: An on-line search for the truth about God, Jesus and the Bible. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996 [CD-ROM].

Answers In Action. [WWW] http://answers.org .

Brown, Michael H. The Search For Eve. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Non-Christian book. Does DNA prove Eve????

Chitick, Donald E. The Controversy: Roots of the Creation-Evolution Conflict. Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1984.

Christian Research Institute. [WWW] http://www.equip.org/ .

Coppedge, James F. Evolution: Possible or Impossible? Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975. Examines the mathematical odds against evolution.

Harless, Hal. Hal's Corner of the Universe. [WWW] http://web2.airmail.net/halh1/corner/hal.htm . What can I say?

Hillcrest Church. [WWW] http://www.hillcrestchurch.org/ .

Johnson, Philip E. Darwin On Trail. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993. Darwin critiqued by a Harvard Law Professor. Very good!

________. Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997. Dr. Johnson shows up the habits of sloppy thinking that Darwinists exploit. Very good!

________. Reason in the Balance. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995. Dr. Johnson argues for intelligent design and against evolutionary intolerance.

Lewis, Clive Staples. A Grief Observed. London: Faber and Faber, 1961. Lewis' experience of grief after his wife's death.

________. Mere Christianity. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1960. Lewis' argument for the Christian faith. A classic, must read.

________. Miracles. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1960. Lewis' defense of the rationality of belief in miracles.

________. The Abolition of Man. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1960.

________. The Problem of Pain. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1960. Lewis' response to the problem of evil and suffering.

McDowell, Josh. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Arrowhead Springs: Campus Crusade For Christ, 1972. You need this book in your library, a must have!

________. More Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Arrowhead Springs: Campus Crusade For Christ, 1975. This book deals exclusively with attacks on the Scriptures. It is more technical in format.

________. More Than A Carpenter. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1975. Sort of a condensed version of Evidence. Great to give away.

________. The Resurrection Factor. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1981. Josh's well written and reasoned defense of the Resurrection.

Morison, Frank. Who Moved The Stone? Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, n.d. A classic defense of the Resurrection by an English Journalist who set out to disprove it. The first chapter: "The Book That Refused to Be Written!"

Origins. [WWW] http://www.origins.org/ . Philip Johnson is on this site.

Ross, Hugh. Beyond The Cosmos. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1996. The existence of multiple dimensions and God's transcendence.

________. Creation And Time. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1994. "Old-Earth" Creationism explained.

________. Reasons To Believe. [WWW] http://www.reasons.org/ .

________. The Creator And The Cosmos. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1993. Scientific evidence for Creationism.

________. The Fingerprint Of God. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1995. The evidence for design in creation. This is partly an answer to Hawking's Brief History Of Time.

Sailhamer, John. Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look At The Creation Account. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Books, 1996.

Schaeffer, Francis A. Escape From Reason. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968. This book and the next two are classic Christian responses to contemporary culture and philosophy.

________. He Is There And He Is Not Silent. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968.

________. The God Who Is There. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968.

Wilson, Clifford. The Passover Plot Exposed. San Diego: Master Books, 1977. A refutation and response to Schonfield's book attacking the Resurrection.

Whitcomb, John C. and Morris, Henry M. The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications. Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961. A classic "Young-Earth" defense of a global flood.