SRR #37 | Introduction to Apologetics

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You're listening to Semper Ephraim on the radio where the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of life
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There are many people who do not want to hear the truth because it will shake up the false Hope they have that they're going into heaven when indeed they are not
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Christ is our King Scripture is our law Scripture and the laws of our country now collide head -on now just to make it clear
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We don't bow down to Caesar So what does
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Paul do when he gets his big shot at the Areopagus watch him? Now not only has
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Paul not compromised in order to get here But once he's here, he says your worldview is wrong.
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Your philosophy is wrong. It's not just wrong It's an affront to God you ought to know better.
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You're in sin But the good news is God has extended to you an opportunity to repent.
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All right.
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Well, thank you everybody for joining us my name is Tim and I'm going to be your host for today and Right off the bat.
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What I want to do is is just give a little shout out to Lynn Pettis If you remember from last week's episode we were talking about the
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Disney movie and asking the question whether or not Christians should go and see the movie and then at the very end
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I I brought up a Challenge issued to Lynn by Greg Smith about the
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Wolverine movie and Greg Smith was was trying to get Lynn to debate him and Lynn's not interested in debating and I think that's fine.
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I mean we you know need to respect Where everybody's at but I I thought at the time, you know, that would be a pretty interesting debate but After after going over it again,
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I realized and I didn't even get to listen to my own episode again but I became a little bit concerned that I might have misrepresented
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Lynn and In that episode and here's what I'm talking about. So There was there were two conversations
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I believe that that took place and I was only viewing the second conversation in which
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Greg Smith Had and by the way, I appreciate both these guys, I appreciate
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Greg Smith and Lynn Pettis so I'm not taking sides, but Greg Smith had posted up a account a comment up on on the the wingnut page and part of that was a picture a screenshot of some of a conversation in which that included
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Lynn and Greg and The first the first thing that pops up in that picture is a comment by Lynn that says then get busy with your log, sir and in the episode
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I you know talked about how it really bothers me when Christians are Confronted about something and then they try to find fault with somebody else by saying well, you know you're a hypocrite or you have a log in your eye and I'm not sure if So here's what
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I want to do. I just want to make sure that Everybody knows that this comment and by the way
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I still haven't seen the original comment, but I was I was informed that Lynn's comment was not to Greg Smith and So I just want to make that clear
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And so my criticism wouldn't be applicable to Lynn So that's just in fairness to Lynn.
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And again, I really appreciate Lynn. I I Thought the you know when
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Greg said that he'll bury him in the name of Jesus, you know in a debate I thought that was
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I thought that was pretty funny. I mean, you know Lynn's a martial artist He had probably buried me in the name of Jesus if if we did, you know competition in martial arts, so Anyways, I appreciate both these guys.
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I've talked to both of them. I know a little bit more about where they're coming from and I just wanted to make that clear to our listeners and today what we are going to do is we're going to play a lecture from John Robbins from the
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Trinity Foundation titled introduction to apologetics and This really falls in line with where we're at at Semper Ephraim on the radio
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Somebody put up a question on I think some presuppositional. It's apologetic page on Facebook a question about you know
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What are the different names for presuppositional apologetics and somebody said something about reformed apologetics.
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Somebody else said there's covenantal apologetics and so I think a lot of people are trying to rebrand the name presuppositional ism and I would just say stick with scriptural ism.
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That's what we are. We're scripturalists and I think it falls falls in line beautifully with the the principle of sola scriptura and I would encourage everybody if you're interested in scriptural ism the presuppositional apologetic method of Gordon Clark and the
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Clarkian side check out the book the scriptural ism of Gordon Clark by dr. Gary Crampton I think it's excellent.
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It's a very small book in it, but it's a it's a powerful introduction to Clark and his his apologetic method and Let me see what else we are.
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Of course. Everybody knows that we are part of the Bible thumping wingnet Network so I want to say thank you to those guys a
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Ministry under striving for eternity with Andrew Rappaport. So say thank you to Andrew and Oh, this this is the other thing.
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So we we would like to encourage everybody to continue to pray for Paul Washer we here at Semper Ephraim on the radio absolutely love
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Paul Washer We we have Paul Washer a clip from Paul Washer in the introduction to our show a couple of episodes back we
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We defended Paul Washer from false accusations that he's a heretic Now we we may not agree with anybody 100 % on everything but we want everybody to know that Paul Washer is
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If you get a chance to check out Paul Washer's ministry if you get a chance to listen to his sermons we would definitely encourage everybody to do that.
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We highly recommend him and And our prayers and our support go out to Paul Washer, you know, we encourage everybody else to keep him in in prayer if you don't know what happened this last week
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Paul Washer suffered a heart attack and I've seen different people post different stuff, but from what
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I understand is that he's now recovering But I'm not really sure
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How difficult a road to recovery would be or what that entails so I don't have the information on that but God is sovereign he's in control of Pastor Washer's life just as he's in control of my life as well.
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So We we love the man. We're praying for him and we would encourage everybody else to do that as well
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And that'll be it for for us today. I hope you enjoy this this lecture by John Robbins From the
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Trinity Foundation and I want to say thank you to Tom Joe Davis for allowing us to play it and We'll be back next week
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That's TR a CT planet comm coupon code BTW n The first lecture is just an introduction to apologetics
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Then I will spend the second hour talking about some of the apologists of the early church by early church
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I mean from the year 400 Back to the year 100 A .d.
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Then we'll get into our first major thinker Aurelius Augustine Some people call him st.
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Augustine, but his name is pronounced Augustine a Good way to remember it is the st.
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Augustine is in Florida. St. Augustine is in heaven and So we'll be studying an hour on Augustine and his defense of the faith
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Tomorrow we'll be talking about some more major thinkers. We'll begin with on the film a major thinker in the
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Middle Ages Followed by Thomas Aquinas who is the doctor of the Roman Catholic Church?
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in the 19th century the Roman Catholic Church recognized Aquinas as A doctor that means in Latin a teacher
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He's the teacher of the church Followed following our discussion of Aquinas.
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We'll be talking about John Calvin and Martin Luther of the Reformers in the 16th century
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Then we'll turn to some more modern figures Some people perhaps have heard of Joseph Butler or William Paley or Schleiermacher or Kierkegaard some of these names are a mouthful and Then we'll finally get to the 20th century
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Wednesday evening Then that is the extent of our discussion of historical
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Apologetics by that I mean how apologetics has been done by various figures up until the 20th century
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Then we'll turn our attentions on Thursday Friday and Saturday to biblical apologetics
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How apologetics was done by Christ and the Apostles and how it ought to be done today quite different from historical apologetics
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You aren't going to find many figures in the past 2 ,000 years who actually looked at what
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Christ and the Apostle Paul for example did and said this is the way we have to defend the faith very few people have done that and And for the next three days
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Thursday Friday and Saturday, we'll be spending a lot of time in the Bible and I urge you to bring your
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Bibles with you bring notebooks bring pencils to take notes I'll be putting a lot of things up on the overhead
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I won't be having many handouts, but there are good many handouts on the table out in the lobby and If you'll pick copies of those up and read them if you can't get them all read this week at least read them
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As soon as possible because they're all relevant to what we'll be talking about this week there's probably a dozen different pieces out there, maybe more and I've got a couple of them up here that I would say are especially important this little
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Pamphlet entitled what is Christian philosophy and this little booklet entitled
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Christ and civilization I Would urge you to read those two and the others at your leisure
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So in the course of the week the questions that are posed on that other sheet you just got
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What is apologetics? What's the relationship between apologetics and evangelism you know if you go to a
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Christian college? Or if you go to a seminary virtually every seminary in the country, they will say well
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You have to take a course in evangelism, but apologetics is optional. You don't have to take the course in apologetics
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But you do have to know something about evangelism. Well. This is completely contrary to what
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Christ and the Apostles did And we're given a command by the
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Apostle Peter 1st Peter 315 To always be ready to offer a defense
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To give an explanation for the hope that is in us now. That's a command from Peter.
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It's not an elective It's not something that we can make optional
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It's not something that we can take or leave as we please it's a command and in the context of the church
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It apologetics ought to be practiced. I was very favorably impressed With the way that Westminster Presbyterian Church organizes its services in many churches they have what amounts to a protected pulpit a
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Protected pulpit what I mean by that is the minister stands up in the pulpit
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And gives a sermon and no one dares ask the question no one
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Makes a comment no one disagrees Now you won't find a single example of that happening in the
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New Testament every time Christ and the Apostles spoke They invited questions they entertained questions there was discussion after they spoke but the church has gotten into the habit of protesting the sermon as it were and Saying no, we're not going to entertain any questions.
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We're not going to entertain any comments. We're just going to go on We'll sing another hymn, and then we'll go So there's no discussion
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Well, what's one of the effects of that one of the effects is that the people in the church including the pastor himself?
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Doesn't learn how to do apologetics doesn't learn how to deal with questions Doesn't learn how to defend the faith
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He's protected by the institution from having to defend the faith So what's the option then for hearers?
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Well, they have two options. They can come and keep quiet or they cannot come and 150 million people don't come in the
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United States They simply don't come what's the point? They can't have questions.
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They can't have a discussion They may have some serious inquiries to make but it's forbidden in the church so What we're going to see over the course of the week
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I hope is that what Christ and the Apostles did is quite different from what many of these historical figures?
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Did for the first at least first 1 ,500 years of the
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Christian era? Well, let me begin Formally by offering a definition of apologetics
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Can anyone take a guess? What would you say apologetics is anybody have an idea?
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Yes, sir Defending the faith. Okay in broad terms defending the faith.
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What does that mean? Does that mean we all should own guns and Shoot everybody that disagrees with us
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Are we talking about defense in that sense? What kind of defense are we talking about?
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Logical answers to questions that people ask. Okay, we're talking about an intellectual defense
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We're not talking about a military or a physical defense, but we're talking about an intellectual defense of the faith
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Now, what's the faith? That's the other important phrase here. What is the faith?
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We're told in the Bible Contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints
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What is the faith? Okay.
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What do you mean by belief? Are you talking about? Believing or are you talking about the propositions believed?
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See it's ambiguous in Ordinary language what we mean by faith and what we mean by belief you may say
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I have faith And what we're what we mean by that is I I go through a certain exercise in my mind.
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I believe it's a psychological Thing I have faith But when we're told to contend earnestly for the faith
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It's something different It's an objective body of knowledge in that sense
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It's not a subject of believing but an objective body of knowledge
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Let me offer a Definition of apologetics and you might want to jot this down It'll stay on the overhead here
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Can everybody read that? Christian apologetics is the rational justification of the duty to believe the
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Bible The rational justification of the duty to believe the
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Bible Well, this is a little bit broader a little bit more full than simply defense of the faith
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It involves also Offense you've heard the saying the best defense is a good offense
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Well, we're going to see how that occurs in the New Testament in the Gospels in particular when
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Christ talks to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and Here you have a short definition of Apologetics Christian apologetics is the rational justification of the duty to believe the
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Bible Everyone has the duty to believe No one can believe on his own power
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The only reason some people believe is because God causes them to believe but everyone has the duty to believe when the revelation comes from God in the
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Bible it comes to every man and everyone has the duty to believe it when he hears it and Apologetics is the rational
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Justification of that duty to believe you have an obligation to believe it if you don't believe it if you hear
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The Bible if you read parts of it and don't believe it Your sin is greater than it was before Because you're failing in your duty to believe the
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Bible a more standard definition perhaps of apologetics is
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One something like we just gave here the intellectual defense of Christianity That's another way of putting it not quite as broad not quite as full or complete as the first one
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But that's a good and standard definition Now we have to be careful what we mean by Christianity Christianity is the propositions of the 66 books of the
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Bible It's what the Bible teaches Those propositions and all their logical implications
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This church adheres to the Westminster Confession of Faith I'm sure you've seen it in the back of the hymnal if nowhere else
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That's the best summary of what Christianity is that has yet been written the best summary but Christianity is the propositions of the
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Bible and all their logical implications Now it's important to keep in mind what
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Christianity is not as well Christianity isn't whatever Christians believe
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We get the idea sometimes that well, we're Christians and we've got this particular idea
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So this idea must be a Christian idea not so Many of us carry around and around in our minds ideas that are holdovers
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From the world they're not derived from the Bible But their ideas that we've had with us
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For some time or we've picked up from the culture from television from the newspaper for movies wherever We've gotten these ideas and just because they're in our minds and we are
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Christians doesn't make them Christian ideas So you have to be careful about The mistake of thinking that Christianity is whatever
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Christians happen to believe or people who claim to be Christian Christianity isn't common sense
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This is important to many people confuse the two They think well
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Christianity is only common sense Let me ask you a question here
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Let's suppose In fact, I'm going to ask you two questions to test your reliance on common sense one of them is this
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I want I want you to do some work for me and I'll give you a choice as to how you want to be paid.
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You want the job will take a month and I'll offer you $25 ,000 for that month's work
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Or I will start you at a penny for the first day First day you work.
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I'll give you a penny Second day you work. I'll give you two cents third day. You work. I'll give you four cents
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I'll just double that whatever it is every day By the time you get up to day five, you'll be making sixteen cents a day
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By the time you get to day ten You'll be making five dollars a day Which would you prefer $25 ,000 for the month's worth or a penny a day
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Double each day any any preferences anybody?
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You know, what's coming? 20 it doesn't sound like as much as 25 ,000
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You know, you're offering me $25 ,000 a day or I could make it a day for that matter $25 ,000 a month
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But look at these numbers As I say by the time you're up at day ten you're making five dollars and twelve cents a day
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But look at how those numbers increase Starting at a penny a day for a month the total for the month 21 million
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Now would any of you have guessed that if you started out at a penny a day doubled by the end of the month
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You would be you would have made 21 million dollars in 31 days
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The last day alone you make barely 11 million Day 31 you better hope the month is
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March and not February Because you're going to lose quite a bit of money if it's only 28 days
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But there's an example I gave an example last year of how people are misled by common sense
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With another employment example, and I'll put that one up again in case anyone's forgotten it.
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This is job a and job B Starting salary is the same 20 ,000 for each one is a $2 ,000 annual raise the other is a $500 semi -annual raise and $2 ,000
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Yearly sounds a lot more than $500 every six months
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But if you do the arithmetic again You're much better off Taking job
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B the $500 raise But it doesn't sound common sensical
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Now common sense has changed over the centuries what we would say is common sense today
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Might have been irrational 200 or 500 years ago people have common opinions and They think they understand things
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But they're actually quite wrong Common sense in the medical field a couple hundred years ago might have been bloodletting is good.
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We let blood When someone is ill Today that's not accepted in medicine bloodletting
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They used to drill holes in people's skull to let out the bad of Spirit they didn't mean by that what we mean by spirit, but humors they were called
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And so they would drill holes in people's skull To let these things out
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Again that appeared to be common sense that the medical men of those days But today it would be regarded as quackery
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So common sense changes Christianity is not some other things here.
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Let me get my Proper overhead up here. It's not the opinions of scientists. It's not the opinions of Medicine that it's not the opinions of physicians
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It's not the opinions of church leaders sometimes we think that If their leaders in a church
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Or if the churches get together in a council Then they're talking about Christianity.
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Well, they may or may not be talking about Christianity we have to stick with the definition of Christianity as the propositions of the
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Bible and all their logical implications and If we understand those things
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We can understand pretty much what apologetics is about Now how important is yes.
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Yes. No go right ahead I've been working on this problem because We were taught that the word
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Believe meant to be like something and if we believed in God then we would be like Jesus and that was not correct and so then
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I was trying to go back to the The other concordance and it said to adhere, to trust in, to have faith in and So I was working on that thing and then
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I heard somebody say I was talking about believing in Christ Believing in Jesus as God and as a boy, being a boy
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God and then I heard somebody on the radio or television saying something about 70 % of the population believes in UFOs and I thought oh now this is an interesting concept because if you're trying to teach somebody to believe in God and that means to trust him, to obey him and the world is talking about believing in something that exists but they don't mean to trust or put their faith in How do you explain to a person who's not a
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Christian what the word believe means? Well, that's a good question. The question, let me repeat it briefly is
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If there's a different meaning for the word believe in Christianity than there is in the world how does one explain what we're talking about when we use the word believe?
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And let me preface my comments by saying that most theologians don't know what the word means and I was going to ask you some questions
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Do you believe that 2 plus 2 is 4? Okay, now what do you mean when you say you believe 2 plus 2 is 4?
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You understand what the sentence means, 2 plus 2 is 4 and you agree with it, you agree that it's true and that's all belief is
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It's understanding and agreeing that it is true Belief is not obedience
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Obedience comes from belief But it's not the same thing
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It comes from it, it's a consequence of belief Augustine, one of the fellows we're going to study tomorrow
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No, I guess it's the third lecture this evening defined faith or belief, they're synonymous as understanding with assent
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A -S -S -E -N -T, understanding with assent If someone assents to it
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If they believe that it's true, if they agree that it is true They understand what the proposition is to begin with and they agree that it's true then they have faith or belief
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He emphasized both those elements are important Understanding, you cannot believe something you don't understand
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If I were to say to you Il pleut and ask you if you believe that What would your response be?
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What would be the proper response? Laughter There's a man that knows a little
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French But see, if you don't understand it It doesn't make any sense to say
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Well, yes, I believe or no, I don't believe I'm talking, I might as well be talking Greek To use the aphorism
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Understanding is fundamental This is what is wrong with the doctrine of the
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Catholic Church on faith and belief They say, they teach what they call implicit faith
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That is, they say it's not necessary that the person in the pew understand the doctrines of the church
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All he has to agree to is to believe whatever the church teaches
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He doesn't have to understand it He just has to say, well, I agree with whatever the church teaches
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And they call that implicit faith Calvin and Luther have ridiculed the idea
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Said, how can you believe what you don't understand? Of course you can't
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The other half of it is you have to assent to it It's not simply an intellectual understanding of the material
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Many people have a good solid intellectual understanding of Christianity Many unbelievers have a solid understanding of Christianity They just don't believe it
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Many believers have a solid understanding of Karl Marx or John Dewey But they don't believe what they taught
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They understand what they taught but they don't agree that it's true They don't believe it
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So it's not enough to have intellectual knowledge in that sense That's not the same thing as faith or belief
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You also have to agree that it's true and that makes it faith or assent
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Unbelievers can understand the Bible If you look at some of the unbelievers in Christ's time, for example
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The Pharisees seemed to understand better than the disciples what
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Jesus was saying That's why they persecuted him for Ligurism That's why they plotted to kill him
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They understood quite well that he was claiming to be God The apostles seemed to be slower to catch on The disciples,
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I should say They understood it, they just didn't believe it And they could not believe it
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Simply because that assent is a gift of God The natural man by himself cannot believe the
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Gospel to be true That is what's given by God And I hope if you do a word study on faith or belief in the
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Gospel or in the New Testament you'll come to the same conclusion People have attacked the statement, for instance
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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved as easy believism
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Well, there are two things that need to be said about that First, belief is impossible for the natural man so it's not easy believism
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And the second thing is that that's what's necessary for salvation and it's the only thing necessary is that belief
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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved Justification by faith alone or by belief alone
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Not by works Not by obedience But justification by faith alone
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Obedience will follow necessarily from that belief If you say you believe 2 plus 2 is 4 but when you balance your checkbook you always put down 5
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You really don't believe it If you say If you make a profession and say, well
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I believe 2 plus 2 is 4 but whenever you do your sums in your checkbook you put down 5
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You really don't believe it If you did believe it your practice will conform to your belief
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You will write down 4 in your checkbook And those who James, for instance, attacks in his epistle are those who say they have faith but do not read that verse carefully
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It says, if a man says he has faith James is not attacking a man with faith
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He is attacking a man who has an empty profession He says he believes but he doesn't believe
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Well, let me return directly to apologetics and I want to give you a quote next
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You might want to jot this down or you might want to read the book or at least the author one of his books
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His name is Machen spelled M -A -C -H -E -N
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And he was one of the greatest defenders of Christianity in the century
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He taught for years at Princeton Seminary He left
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Princeton Seminary and started a new seminary Westminster Seminary And he also started a new
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Presbyterian Church He was kicked out of the mainline Presbyterian Church And in 1936 he started a church called the
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Presbyterian Church in America the PCA And he was threatened with a lawsuit by the existing
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Presbyterian Church So they changed the name of the church to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church rather than the
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Presbyterian Church in America This is what
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Machen has to say about the importance of apologetics and the importance of ideas
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And I hope you'll pay attention to these words He says 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
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Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion
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Now that's a long sentence but you might want to jot it down and think about it later
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He says Under such circumstances when the ideas in the world and this is definitely the case in the 20th century and it's been the case for more than 200 years
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He says Under such circumstances what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle that is the obstacle that prevents
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Christianity from getting a serious hearing at its root He says
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Many would have the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught in its popular exponents
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Let me go on to the second page here That is
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They think the seminaries should be talking about Madeleine Murray O 'Hare or people of that sort the popular exponents of unbelief
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Has anybody heard any news about Madeleine? She's been gone for six or eight months No one seems to know where she's disappeared to But you don't attack
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Madeleine Murray O 'Hare in the seminaries Nathan says He says Instead of that the seminaries confuse their students with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the university
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He's talking tongue -in -cheek here That method of procedure is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas
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What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires
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What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires
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Now we've seen the truth of his words illustrated repeatedly in the 20th century
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What he calls the pervasiveness of ideas The idea of evolution for example
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Both the communists and the Nazis loved Darwin and the idea of evolution
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Marx, Karl Marx the founder of communism wanted to dedicate Das Kapital his book on capitalism to Karl Marx Marx refused to let him
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I'm sorry I've got that backwards Karl Marx wanted to dedicate his book to Charles Darwin and Darwin refused to let him do it
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Why did he want to do that? Well, it's because he thought that Darwin had discovered laws in nature just as Marx thought he had discovered laws in society that explained the development of society
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Marx's dogma was a form of survival of the fittest just as Darwin's dogma was
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In Marx it was survival of the economically fittest In Darwin it's survival of the biological fittest
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The same with Hitler Hitler's doctrine was a doctrine of the survival of the racial fittest
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The race that is the fittest The most superior race And it's okay to exterminate other races
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No problem Because they are inferior And Darwin has explained to us that the inferior must die
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Whether you call the inferior the bourgeoisie as Marx did or the non -Aryans as Hitler did makes no difference
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They both trace their intellectual heritage to Charles Darwin And those ideas in the 20th century have moved armies and pulled down empires
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Does anyone know how the Ayatollah That's a title perhaps none of you are too young to be familiar with The Ayatollah became the leader of Iran Anybody know how he accomplished that?
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He didn't inherit the job
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In fact he was an exile in Paris in the 1970s
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And what he did was he made cassette tapes And he collected a group of followers
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And they made massive numbers of these cassette tapes and shipped them into Iran People played them on their tape recorders
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And he convinced a large number of the Iranian people that he was right
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And the government collapsed in Iran It was done with cassette tapes There you have a good example in the late 1970s of ideas moving empires moving armies and pulling down empires
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Ideas are very powerful And Machen's argument is that as Christians we have to be engaged in intellectual battle
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We cannot afford to sit back and say well we're going to preach just the simple gospel
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Nonsense he said If you do that he said you're maybe going to get a person here or there He calls it a straggler here or there
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But the whole society is going to be death to Christianity You're not going to have any influence in the society whatsoever
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Well not everybody has been in favor of defending the faith For example here's a fellow and we'll hear more about him later in the week a
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Danish philosopher named Søren Kierkegaard And notice his comment here
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What do you think of this statement about apologetics? He says to defend anything is always to discredit it
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Let a man have a storehouse full of gold Let him be willing to dispense every ducat to the poor
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But let him besides that be stupid enough to begin his benevolent undertaking with a defense in which he advances three reasons to prove that it's justifiable And people will be almost inclined to doubt whether he's doing any good
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But now for Christianity yea he who defends it has never believed it
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He who defends it has never believed it Kierkegaard was attacking apologetics the whole idea of apologetics the idea of defending
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Christianity Yet he engaged in apologetics himself What do you think of his illustration?
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He's very good a very clever writer And he's always good at coming up with illustrations that confuse people or perhaps make them think
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That's a very plausible illustration here If I have a lot of money to give away and instead of just giving it away to the poor
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I start out by hiring a philosopher to explain what I'm doing and to justify it
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He says that's going to raise doubts in people's minds He says that's a stupid thing to do defend this sort of thing
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He says those doubts wouldn't arise unless the philosopher gets out there and defends it
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Well this raises the question What is the relationship between apologetics and evangelism?
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Which comes first? Any ideas? Yes, sir
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Aren't they all kind of intertwined? They certainly are I don't think they need to have some they need to have some setting in danger to the world without being apologetic
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OK OK They're both intertwined as the gentleman says
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You can't I've made the point here that you cannot be a good
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Christian and fail to descend to faith But that leaves us still with the question
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Do we start out with a defense or how do we start out? Do we do what
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Kierkegaard is accusing us of doing? Notice the words But let him besides that be stupid enough to begin this benevolent undertaking with a defense
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No, you don't begin with a defense You begin with the proclamation of the gospel
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And when we look at the practice of Christ and the apostles they begin with the proclamation of the gospel
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And then as questions arise they deal with those questions They don't begin with a defense
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The defense is secondary in nature Both things have to be done
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You have to have a proclamation of the gospel or evangelism and you have to have the defense
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But you don't go out with the defense You begin with the proclamation of the gospel
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Otherwise Kierkegaard has a point to make here If however the philanthropist goes out and he gives away his money and then the criticism comes then he defends himself
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But he doesn't respond to non -existent questions To do so is to raise doubts in the minds of the people
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He responds to real questions after the gospel has been proclaimed
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Let's look at a couple of other things and then we're going to have to break here shortly
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I don't know Judging by the speed I'm going I don't know if we're going to adhere to this schedule or not for the week
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But we'll see what we can do Look at these verses Actually one verse or two verses there from 2nd
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Timothy and then a quotation from the Westminster Confession The Confession of this church And I've put in dark type some words
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I want to emphasize here The sufficiency of the Bible is a central idea of Christianity On the bulletins here at Westminster Presbyterian you'll see four slogans on the front cover
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The first one is solo scriptura Latin phrase meaning the Bible alone
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The Bible alone It teaches not only that the Bible is necessary for knowledge
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It teaches that the Bible is sufficient for knowledge You don't need anything else
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It's the Bible alone We don't need church council We don't need philosophy
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We don't need science We don't need common sense It's the Bible alone
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And one of the verses that that slogan is based on is taken here from 2nd
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Timothy chapter 3 All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness
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Apologetics falls in that category That the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work
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Notice the words complete thoroughly and every We don't need anything else
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We don't need any of those things I mentioned Science, philosophy, common sense, decisions of church council
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Nothing The scripture equips the man of God completely for every good work
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Not for some good works Not for a few good works but for every work And then the
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Westminster Confession itself expresses the definition of Christianity that I gave you a few minutes ago
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And these words The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture unto which nothing
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Notice the nothing at any time is to be added Whether by new revelations of the spirit or traditions of men
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Nothing is to be added to it Whether by tradition or by alleged new revelations of the spirit
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Here you have the idea that Christianity is what the Bible says And it doesn't have to say it in so many words
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I think last year I gave you this example There may never be the sentence
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I haven't looked it up the check But the sentence may not appear in the Bible Absalom was the son of the king of Israel That sentence may not appear in the
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Bible Absalom was the son of the king of Israel But we're told that David was the king of Israel And we're told that Absalom was the son of David And we conclude by what the confession calls deduction by good and necessary consequence that Absalom was the son of the king of Israel And we're told that Absalom was the son of David And we conclude by what the confession calls deduction by good and necessary consequence that Absalom was the son of the king of Israel It's not just the words written in the
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Bible that we're required to believe But we're also required to believe all their logical implications
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We're required to believe that Absalom was the son of the king of Israel Even though it doesn't say it in the
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Bible in so many words It's a necessary inference This podcast is a member of the
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Bible Thumping Wingnut Network Alright, welcome everybody to another podcast episode with Semper Reformanda Radio Hi, welcome to Theology Gals Welcome everyone to the
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Logical Belief Ministries Podcast Well, welcome to School of Biblical Harmonetics Welcome everybody to Grappling with Theology What is going on guys?
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Shine those lights Coming at you Well, welcome to Slick Answers Good evening and welcome to Conversations from the
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Port Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Bible Thumping Wingnut Podcast The Bible Thumping Wingnut Network Ten podcasts