Apologetics 2 - The Goal (Reconsidered)
24 January 2008 by Gil
Given the previous discussion on what kinds of knowledge are available (personal and impersonal) and the implications that this might have for our understanding of truth and how we might approach it, it is important to return briefly to the goal of apologetics (at least as I’m conceiving it).
For me the question of whether or not this is a discipline that can prove central Christian beliefs is a non-starter. Of course it cannot. So the question is not whether or not we can prove Christianity to be true. The question is: Does beginning with the gospel and evaluating what life looks like from this perspective illuminate and explain human experience? Beginning here (where else could we who call ourselves Christians begin?) is it possible to build a powerful cumulative case for the plausibility of the Christian faith?
This will obviously seem like a huge assumption, a huge leap to begin with. Yet I don’t think that it’s possible for Christians to begin anywhere but here. As Newbigin puts it, “To look outside the gospel for a starting point for the demonstration of the reasonableness of the gospel is itself a contradiction of the gospel, for it implies that we look for the logos elsewhere than in Jesus.”
The objections are obvious (some of them are even my own). Newbigin himself was aware of how this would sound. He goes on to say, “To regard this as cognitively inferior to the rational demonstration of supposedly certain truths is to assume that the ultimate reality with which we have to deal is not personal but impersonal. In the investigation of impersonal realities we may ask for the kind of indubitable certainties that the Age of Reason demanded… But if the ultimate reality with which, or rather with whom, we have to deal is the being of the Triune God, then the response of personal faith to a personal calling is the only way of knowing that reality. To rule this out as unreasonable is to make an a priori decision against the possibility that ultimate reality is personal.”
This will no doubt frustrate some who wonder how such a commitment could be made prior to the fact. I feel that frustration myself but I confess that I can’t see a way around it. It seems to me that every option on the table begins in the same place. It is only from this place that we can begin the conversation on how the world looks, how we ourselves look, if we take a look from this perspective. And I think the best place to start is with the honest admission that this is where we all begin.
“To look outside the gospel for a starting point for the demonstration of the reasonableness of the gospel is itself a contradiction of the gospel, for it implies that we look for the logos elsewhere than in Jesus.”
I’ve puzzled over this statement of Newbigin’s before. It seems to me that one must first be persuaded, or at least open to the possibility that interpreting the world through the “lens” of the gospel could provide the most coherent, and existentially satisfying way of thinking and living in the world.
In other words, I’m not sure it’s possible to just “start with the gospel.” We require good reasons to prefer this starting point to another one. I don’t think I’m quite as resistant to something like inductive/natural theology as Newbigin seems to be (at least based on this quote that I have ruthlessly yanked out of context)
I’ve wondered about this too, he can definitely seem overly negative on natural theology. Newbigin goes on from that quote to talk specifically about the critique he gets from proponents of natural theology but I doubt that he would convince many of his critics.
He’s very committed to the question: OK where then should we start from? If not here, then where? He seems to view unaided human reason (particularly the ‘value-free’ reason that he was so opposed to) as something that would be set up over the gospel to which the gospel would then need to accommodate itself.
He says that natural theology has a role to play but that it tends to begin from the wrong place. He sees value in explaining how the world looks from the perspective of the gospel (whether or not it makes sense or coheres with reality) but is quite insistent that this is a secondary activity, not a primary one.
In a sense he’s right. There is no way that reason could lead you to something as counterintuitive as the claims of the gospel. Yet it seems to me that it would be well equipped to justify that decision after the fact and to investigate whether or not it is ‘existentially satisfying’.
At this point I guess I’m struggling with where else it would be possible to start from if this view was seen as inadequate. Obviously it would be impossible to believe for literally no reason at all. So some form of persuasion is necessary before the fact. Any suggestions on how to manage this?
I think that Peter Berger’s understanding of “signals of transcendence,” or Wright’s “echoes of a voice” might be good places to start. I guess I think that Newbigin - especially because he was a missionary - has to deal with the fact that people are socialized into different “starting points.” As a citizen of a Western nation, profoundly shaped by Christianity, I don’t find it prohibitively difficult to “start with the Gospel.” But I doubt that the same could be said for an average Iranian, or a Bangladeshi, or an Indonesian. The default “starting point” they are given (their “plausibility structure,” if you will) is different than mine.
Consequently, if I truly believe that the Christian package is the best one - that it represents the most rationally coherent and existentially satisfying one out there - there have to be criteria which I could appeal to in order to convince my neighbours who disagree with me to move from one “starting point”/”plausibility structure to another. Perhaps by appealing to things that are empirically given in the human situation - things like the need for order and hope, as Berger says - this could become possible.
I agree that reason alone could not lead one to the specific details of the Christian religion; but I do think that reason can lead one to consider the possibility that the counter-intuitive, historically contingent, “revealed” truths of Christianity might provide a better way of understanding themselves and the world. In a sense, reason can’t “produce” the Christian package, but I think it can lead one to consider the package once it’s already been “delivered.”