Bill Roach on Defending Evangelicalism

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations of That Matter Podcast, my name is

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John Harris. We have a guest today, a frequent flyer I guess now, you've been on twice Bill. This is the book

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Defending Evangelicalism, The Apologetics of Norm Geisler and Bill Roach, you are the author of this book,

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I could probably call you Dr. William C. Roach, that's what it says on the author title here on Google Books, you are

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William C. Roach. But you've really done a service in writing this, I've been looking through it myself, finding out how some of the principles you talk about that Norm Geisler fought for apply to our current situation and so I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit.

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Welcome to the podcast and thank you for allowing me to interview you on this subject. John, thank you so much for bringing me on here and yes,

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I want to emphasize it's the William C., you've got to emphasize the middle initial there, there's $5 to anyone who can figure out what that C.

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actually stands for. But again, thank you so much for being able to come on here, it's really a service to be able to reach your audience with this and also the topics that we discuss in this book.

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There's nothing new under the sun, evangelicalism fights old battles in new eras, each generation, it seems like it moves faster now because the internet makes the message go a little faster but it's the same old arguments, the same old tried arguments and what we need is renewed men of conviction and that's what we're hoping to do through this book and other things that we do right now.

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Amen. Well, I wanted to just ask the basic question that every interviewer asks for someone who's authored a book, why did you write this book?

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The main reason I wrote this book is because Dr. Geisler was a prolific writer throughout the entirety of his career.

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He penned close to 130 volumes over the span of his academic career, hundreds of articles on top of that and when you look at a prolific author like that, you sometimes need to ask yourself, how do

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I boil down their entire argument or what's the gist of what they're doing? That's what

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I try to do is I try to take the vast amount of literature that he put out and boil it down into the central tenets, which for him was issues related to truth,

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God, the Bible and applying that to contemporary issues going forward. When I was looking at the book,

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I was looking for what have you said about critical theory and that kind of stuff and I did find there was a quote in standpoint epistemology,

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I was I lost it, but basically you said,

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I'm summarizing here that Geisler did not, his apologetic did not take into account standpoint epistemologies and these different perspectives that so many people today say you have to make your starting point and so actually,

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I think I might have found it here, let's see, you said, you're talking about I think the horizons approach to scripture and that Geisler had fought against that.

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So how does that battle that Geisler fought against this horizons approach parallel the battle we're fighting today against standpoint epistemology and critical race theory?

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OK, let's back up in order to understand this. One of the key areas where you start to see this whole issue come in is what both

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Francis Schaeffer and other evangelicals from that time period labeled as the existential method.

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And by that, they're trying to say these ideas that not only just influence you, but necessarily determine the influence upon you.

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And we find them engaging in this in the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy, specifically the

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Chicago Statement and in particular, the Chicago Statement on biblical hermeneutics.

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And they start talking about things like what's the nature of truth? And the truth is that which corresponds to reality.

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What's the proper hermeneutic? It's the historical grammatical. And immediately people go, oh, that archaic approach to hermeneutics, that that wicked historical grammatical interpretation.

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So what they did is they fleshed that out more in the second conference on biblical hermeneutics.

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And Geisler wrote the compendium volume to the statement on hermeneutics, which further explains what they mean by the historical grammatical.

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And the reason this was important is because you had an influx of liberal theologians and neo -Orthodox theologians coming from our classic liberal schools, but in particular schools like Fuller Theological Seminary and people like Dan Fuller, who were so worried about how do we understand these cultural influences upon our interpretation?

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And the Chicago Statement tried to push back against that, saying, no, if there's a God who speaks, that God doesn't stutter.

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And if there's a God who knows all things, he knows how to communicate to us. So it's not like God can't communicate to us and he can't give us an objective interpretation.

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We can flesh that out as we go further here. But that's how they started to deal with it then was this existential method.

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But then when you look at it today, we find that on steroids because now it's not just, oh, my historical vantage point conditions me or, oh, my

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Western standpoint conditions me. It's so much that it's down to your race, almost creed and color determine you.

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And it's not just an influence. It necessarily determines what you're going to do and say and operate and all of your hermeneutical endeavors.

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And on that one final point, if the existential method was incompatible with the

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ICBI back then. I make the case that if you have a more ramped up form of standpoint epistemology and existential hermeneutics today, your institution can sign the

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Chicago Statement all that it wants, but you're gutting it in the way that you're interpreting the

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Bible. And we have clear affirmations from the framers themselves who say that method's inconsistent with the doctrinal affirmation you claim to affirm and uphold.

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Well, I'm even thinking about like people who have signed the statement and they say that they're they believe in a grammatical historical hermeneutic.

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And then we'll say things like, I think we get the best interpretation of the Bible when we bring people from all different kinds of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds because they're going to have insights that I won't have in basically my box.

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My it's like a prison. It seems like you just can't see certain things because I guess you're in this social location.

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And but then at the same time, they they want to agree with Norm Geisler. They like Norm Geisler. So is that that's just hypocrisy then?

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Is that what you're saying? Well, I think what it is is this. Let's use a simple analogy to understand what's going on here.

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We all know stories of like this. Let's just say you're a father and you have a daughter.

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We'll say she's in her mid 20s of marriageable age. And you talk to her and we'll say, you know, her name is

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Susie. Susie, I see you hanging around with this guy quite a bit. Right. And is there something going on?

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She goes, oh, no, dad, we're just friends. Nothing's going on here. But then day after day, she keeps texting with him and she gets ice cream with them and she's on the phone with him.

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And what do we conclude from this? Your dating are way more important than what you're actually claiming.

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Somebody can claim that they're not actually, quote, dating the person. But when you're texting them and calling them and going out with them, you're dating the person.

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And how this applies to evangelicals is we can say that we affirm a high view of scripture and a historical grammatical approach to the

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Bible and our creeds and our confessions that our institutions put out and completely gut it by our actions.

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Look at what they do more than what they say when it comes to these affirmations and these statements that they're saying about faculty in schools.

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Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, the actions do speak louder than words. What do you think Norm Geisler would would say today if he saw the current battle over social justice and the introduction of this this standpoint epistemology and applying that to hermeneutics?

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I mean, I think I know the answer, but I want to hear you say it. I think what he would say is, is that it fundamentally undermines true truth because what it's fundamentally doing is that it's denying this idea that truth corresponds to reality and that God has actually spoken in the text of scripture.

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But that's what he might say from a philosophical standpoint. And I think we all know that everybody knows that this is very much an existential approach to interpretation and to how things are going.

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When CRT broke onto the scene a couple of years ago, I do think that there's some credibility to the fact that many evangelicals were not aware of it.

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And when they embraced it, sometimes they were embracing something they didn't necessarily know all the details about. Not everyone.

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Some people knew exactly what they were embracing. But now we are operating in a paradigm in which people know what the claims are and how they work and the consequences of it.

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The game is shifted a little bit now. So then why do people keep doing it if it denies truth and it undermines orthodoxy?

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I think what Norm Geisler would really say is this. People like to put academic respectability above orthodoxy.

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They like to put fraternity over orthodoxy. They like to put a place at the table over orthodoxy, which ends up becoming like a diabolical trinity that undermines orthodoxy.

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That's what I think Norm would be saying on this. Yeah. You know, Norm Geisler is a guy that for many people who are in the apologetics world, especially people who like James White's work, they recognize him as kind of like he's the

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Arminian guy. Like he is against the doctrines of grace. And I know you have expressed,

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I've heard you say that you kind of you're more on the reform side of things. And so someone who knows a lot about Norm Geisler has worked with Norm Geisler on that level.

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I mean, are you able to kind of separate those things? Or maybe better said, you don't see that, it sounds like, as the main focus of Norm Geisler, like Arminianism.

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Like what was his norm, his main focus? And what do you think of his views on that subject? Well, the main focus for Dr.

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Geisler was a defense of the Christian faith. And by that, it was a holistic evangelical idea of the

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Christian faith. It's not a truncated view. It's not a minimalistic view. It's not a neo -Orthodox view.

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It's classic evangelicalism, the inerrancy of the Bible, the Trinity, classical theism, justification by faith alone, and these key aspects that we have to affirm.

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So did Dr. Geisler affirm some of the more Arminian aspects of things? He did.

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But I don't think that takes away from the strong arguments that he put forward in these other areas.

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So I think the way that we need to use a guy like Norm Geisler, sometimes the way that a lot of reformed

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Baptists in particular try to use John Calvin, you find the best in him. You have the ability to discern the areas where you go, this guy is right in this area.

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And we may differ with them on, say, something like infant baptism, like with Calvin in that regard.

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So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah, good word. Be consistent. Many evangelicals, if they're going to throw these things out with Dr.

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Geisler, they'd have to throw out all of his works if they're going to say it for that. They'd have to throw out a lot of the works from Augustine and Anselm, Calvin and Luther and all these other figures.

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So it's one of those where it sounds great to pull up these ideas, but all of us have issues that we can find disagreement with on somebody.

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And we shouldn't use that as a smoke screen to dismiss their good arguments on real topics that are applicable today.

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Yeah, that's a good word on that. I I've heard some people even talk to me about sort of that side of Norm Geisler, the more

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Armenian side and kind of raise an eyebrow. But I've seen some like just some really good work from him.

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And I mean, I appreciate you kind of like synthesizing it and bringing it to the surface, because like you said, he was so instrumental in the

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Chicago statement, which I mean, that's just I feel like it's just not emphasized the way it should be today.

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That should be what everyone's talking about. But I hardly ever hear it brought up. But it was big back when when

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Norm Geisler kind of headed that all up. And, you know, what what other ideas from Norm Geisler do you talk about in the book other than just inerrancy and objectivity?

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Are there are there other issues that you bring up? One of the things that I lay out just to understand the thrust of the book is

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I lay out the history of how did we get to this concept of modernity and what does it mean?

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And what does it look like? And I think for evangelicals, we realize that philosophical and theological modernity undermine an evangelical faith.

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For example, if Immanuel Kant and David Hume are true, if agnosticism and skepticism are true, we have no grounding for truth claims, metaphysical truth claims, the validity of miracles.

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And so we get that we understand ideas have consequences. I think we also understand that theologians have tried to synthesize those ideas, whether it's

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Schleiermacher with theological liberalism, Barth with neo -orthodoxy or even today where people are trying to synthesize modernity with postmodernism or what we're finding again with like critical theory.

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They're trying to synthesize evangelicalism with standpoint epistemology and critical theory in this sense.

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But what happens is these sort of mediating approaches, they don't really pull more liberals out of liberalism.

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They always have the tendency of pulling evangelicals out of evangelicalism. So in the first chapter, what

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I try to lay out is, is that evangelicals are not advocates of a synthesis movement.

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We're a resistance movement. Right. And let me illustrate it. You have Machen who was coming out of Princeton and founding

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Westminster. Did he synthesize the theological modernity or did he reject it and say, no, we can't have a middle ground.

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We can't have a third way. We can't have a, you know, this approach in which we're trying to find the best of this and the best of that on these diabolical views.

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No, you move forward by rejecting them outright. And that's Geisler's approach in evangelicalism.

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We don't synthesize with neo -orthodoxy. We don't synthesize with postmodernism. We reject these ideas from the very beginning.

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And that's what I do in the first chapter. That's one of the key points. But why is that important? Because everybody today tries to be

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Mr. Middleman and everybody tries to synthesize. Everybody tries to do this sort of middle of the road,

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Hegelian approach. And Geisler would say, let's have none of that. Give me either unvarnished evangelicalism or let's throw it all out.

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I miss that. I really do. I mean, that seems like almost everyone in the Republican Party and you call it,

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I mean, evangelicalism, I see that this same kind of like wanting to, you know,

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I'm I'm I'm a compassionate person. So I agree with these issues from the left or I give them kind of a space to operate.

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And but I'm really, truly one of you guys. And it's like, just, you know, get off the fence.

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Like, let us know who you really are. And Norm Geisler seems like the kind of guy who was just really a straight shooter.

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You just say, yeah, this is what I meant. And maybe maybe that offended some people that offend people the way he was, his directness.

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It really did. You know, Dr. Geisler lived by the principle. It's better to be divided by the truth than united by error.

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And let that sink in. It's better to be divided by the truth than united by the error.

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And when you look at his career, you know, he engaged people at all these different theological institutions.

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For example, would you allow a person to teach at your institution who denies the bodily resurrection, but they call it a spiritual body and a spiritual resurrection that's taken place?

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You'd be like, no, by no means. No. Why would you do that? Yeah. Norm Geisler was teaching at an evangelical school, a very prominent evangelical school.

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And one of the heads of their New Testament department was teaching the exact same view. By the way, that's the Jehovah's Witness view.

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Yeah. So Norm Geisler gave an entire address at a major philosophical society titled why

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X institution has hired a theological heretic and he gave it before the whole watching world.

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That's brave. It takes some guts to do that. Yeah. I don't know of any current examples like that where someone who gets to that level in academia, in the

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Christian world, is able to go into kind of correct and a whole institution. Generally, you would be called a discernment blogger or a fundamentalist or some pejorative for in the minds of the people calling you that if you did that.

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But Norm Geisler was brave and he stood up. Now, you knew him on a personal level.

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So any stories that you can share or just what was he like as a person in the relationship that you had with him?

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You know, Dr. Geisler and I had a really unique relationship because we had a very similar background. And what most people don't know about Dr.

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Geisler is that he came from Detroit, Michigan, and, you know, they look at him as this academic that published all these books and debated the top atheists and lectured at these major universities.

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But what most people don't realize is Geisler graduated high school virtually illiterate.

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They didn't discover until his senior year that he didn't know how to read. He came from a non -Christian family.

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He actually was saved from a in a local church that had a bus ministry that came and picked him up every day for about a decade.

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And as he's engaging, it takes, you know, years for him to learn how to actually read and engage these different topics.

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So it took him eight years to finish college. And then as he goes into graduate school at Wheaton and eventually got a

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Ph .D. at Loyola, he was 39 years old when he started his Ph .D. at Loyola.

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He had six kids, all of them still at home at that time period, running around with it.

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And what that did is that gave Geisler this idea that he realized that God can do great things with people who seemingly come from very minimal backgrounds, who have no exposure to the gospel.

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It can do great things with them for the sake of the cause of Christ. And why that's important is, is that people got to remember that the grace of God is operant in people like that.

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And that's what inspired me so much is that I came from a non -Christian family. I received incredible struggles early on in my conversion because of family and friends and community that were opposed to my conversion.

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I didn't come from a high and lofty academic family. And that's one of the things that was always encouraging is that Geisler knew what it was like to come from the common average family and do great things.

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And he wanted to equip a whole army of apologists from any background for that exact reason.

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That's one thing that was always, you know, very influential about him. But it also kind of determined a lot of his his personality.

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You know, Dr. Geisler loved puns. He loved jokes. He was, you know, just dedicated to loving his family, serving in his church very much.

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So he wasn't just a pie in the sky theologian. He was a churchman. He was an individual committed to the discipleship of believers around him just as much as he was to the academic pursuit.

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I can give you a million stories about him if you want, but there's there's a lot of time. That's great.

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Now, I appreciate you sharing that. And I encourage you to go out and get the book Defending Evangelicalism, the

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Apologetics of Norm Geisler by William C. Roach. Where can people get it?

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Amazon or you have another? Amazon is the best place. OK, and you got Kindle version,

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I'm sure there as well. So, yeah, go ahead and go out and get that. I have a copy of it myself and it's very affordable, actually.

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So not like some of those academic books where someone someone graduates and they publish their dissertation.

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They're like, hey, buy my book. And I'm like, yeah, but it's like 80 bucks. It looks like it's on Google.

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It's only seven ninety five. So you get a lot for that seven ninety five. Bill, as always,

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I appreciate it. Any final thoughts for us? You know, I think one thing that we need to look at with Dr.

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Geisler is we need to be encouraged by his pursuit of the nature of truth.

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I think during this time with an evangelicalism, there's a lot of people who are trying to water down this concept of truth, and they're usually doing it for the thing.

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Like we said earlier, Geisler always warned people don't put fraternity over orthodoxy.

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You know, we want to be committed to the body of Christ. But if we fundamentally undercut orthodoxy just because we want to keep friendships and associations alive,

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Geisler would again remind us that that can be a diabolical way to undermine orthodoxy.

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So let's be committed to truth. Let's be committed to the Bible. Let's be committed to the cause of Christ.

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And let's in many ways stand up for the gospel that was once for all delivered unto the saints and defend it with that lion -like heart of Norman Geisler and other classic evangelicals that went before.

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Amen. Well, I couldn't have said it better, Bill. Hey, I appreciate it. God bless you. And I wish you success on selling this book.