OBJECTIONS TO APOLOGETICS
There shouldn’t be any resistance to apologetics – the reasons to believe that the Bible is God’s Word. However, we often encounter this resistance. There are even some “Christians” who call themselves “Christian Agnostics.” When asked why, they often respond that “No one can really know for certain. It’s just a matter of blind faith.”
Sadly, they don’t seem to want to read the Bible for its evidences. However, it is obvious that many have come to know with certainty. If doubting Thomas had been told that there was no way for him to know of the resurrection for certain, he might have laughed and said, “I met the risen Savior.” Even according to many skeptical historians, it is certain that the Apostles were convinced that they too had met the risen Jesus. This is also true for a great portion of the early Church who had witnessed Jesus and His miracles (1 Corinthians 15:5-8).
We find the concern for an evidential basis for the faith woven into the fabric of Scripture. The Book of Acts is largely a book about the rationale for believing. Luke starts with an assertion that there are many “proofs” for the faith:
∑ He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)
Apollos was no exception. He too resorted to the proofs for the faith:
∑ When he [Apollos] arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ [the Messiah] was Jesus. (Acts 18:27-28; Also Paul - 17:2-4; 18:4; 28:23-24)
How had Apollos “greatly helped those who through grace had believed?” He “refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ [the Messiah] was Jesus.” He provided proof from the Hebrew Scriptures, demonstrating that Christians didn’t have to close their minds to the facts in order to believe. Instead, Apollos showed that the evidence favored faith.
We too need to know why we believe, and not just what we should believe. Moses had this very concern when he was talking with God in the midst of the burning bush:
∑ Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’” (Exodus 4:1)
Moses correctly understood that the Israelites would have to be convinced about the “why” question. They needed evidence, and God was prepared to provide that evidence:
∑ The LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the LORD said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— “that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” Again, the LORD said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” (Exodus 4:2-9)
God had provided Moses with a set of three miraculous proofs instead of ordering him to tell the Israelites, “Just believe.” In fact, in the Bible blind belief is never commanded. Moses never told the Israelites, “Just believe.” He didn’t need to. Instead, he merely reminded them of God’s miraculous workings on their behalf (Deut. 4:34-35).
Biblical faith always rested upon reason and the evidences. In contrast, atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins disparages faith as the rejection of evidence and rationality:
• Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
However, this isn’t the bible’s idea of faith. Faith is not a blind leap into the abyss of mindlessness, but a willingness to step forth into the light of the evidence. This has been the consistent insistence of Scripture. When God asked Israel to love and obey Him, He never intended Israel to follow as a dumb beast. Instead, He asked them to recall the miracles that they had all witnessed:
Jesus directed His disciples to not believe without confirmatory evidence:
∑ “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:37-38)
According to Jesus, there were also other forms of confirmatory evidence:
∑ “If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me.” (John 5:31-37)
Of course, Jesus’ testimony is true, even without the evidences. However, His disciples were not to regard it as true without the supportive evidences. Jesus was merely harkening back to the biblical principle that everything had to be established by at least two or three witnesses (Deut. 19:15).
Jesus never asked His disciples to blindly believe but forbade it. The faith had to be based on the bedrock of fact. God had put into place rigorous requirements for anyone claiming to speak the words of God. They had to meet various demanding tests (Deut. 13:1-5; 18:20-22).
Biblical faith was always meant to be a rational faith. Therefore, loving God wasn’t just a matter of serving Him with our hearts but also with our “minds”:
∑ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. (Matthew 22:36-38)
Consequently, faith was never a matter of turning off our minds but of turning them on in service to our Lord. Faith doesn’t require a mental lobotomy. In fact, this is forbidden. Instead, Jesus nurtured the faith of His disciples with proofs like prophetic fulfillments:
• "I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am He.” (John 13:19; 14:28-29)
Apostolic preaching was not of matter of “just believe.” Instead, there was a consistent appeal to consider the evidences, as Peter had preached:
• “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.” (Acts 2:22)
In light of the wealth of Biblical evidence that God gladly provides proof, how can these Christians deny the Bible’s proof claims? Well, they can’t, but they erroneously cite two verses to support their denial. After Jesus appeared to doubting Thomas, he believed and worshipped Jesus. However, He rebuked Thomas:
• Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29)
Some Christians wrongly understand “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed," to mean “blessed are those who believe without any evidence for their belief.” Such a misunderstanding represents a failure to appreciate the context:
1. Everyone was aware of Jesus’ miracles, even His detractors. In many passages, the Jewish Talmud acknowledges that Jesus was a miracle worker, although they ascribe His miracles to Satan.
2. Thomas lived with Jesus two or three years and had seen many of His miracles – perhaps hundreds. He also had the testimonial evidence of his fellow disciples who had claimed that they had seen Jesus after His resurrection. Therefore, Thomas already had abundant evidence. Therefore, a lack of evidence wasn’t his problem.
3. Thomas wasn’t simply seeking evidence of the resurrection. He was demanding it, or else:
• So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." (John 20:25)
The disciples had claimed that they had “seen” Jesus. However, Thomas refused to accept their testimonies! Instead, he obstinately demanded to also “see,” despite the fact that he already had adequate evidences.
In view of this, when Jesus affirmed the blessedness of “those who have not seen and yet have believed," He was affirming their willingness to believe without making demands of seeing for themselves. Jesus was also chastening Thomas’ demand to see the resurrected Jesus and his refusal to believe without seeing.
The notion that Jesus would praise those who had faith without any solid reasons for faith contradicts all of Scripture, even His own say-so! It even contradicts the next verse:
• Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31; emphasis added)
John acknowledged that belief must be accompanied by reasons to believe. Although the great majority of John’s readers had not seen the resurrection, this shouldn’t prevent faith. According to John, there were other evidences for faith—namely the testimonial evidences that John and other eyewitnesses had provided. It would seem highly unlikely that John would have written against an evidence-based faith and then offer evidences so “that [they] may believe.”
Some Christians cite a second verse in an attempt to prove that faith was intended as a mindless, evidence-less plunge into the darkness:
• Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)
However, this verse says nothing against an evidence-based faith. Even if faith is our only assurance—and it’s not—faith is not devoid of the evidential foundations for belief, whether very personal or objective. For example, many of the following examples of faith in Hebrews 11 clearly depended upon prior evidences:
• By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. (Hebrews 11:29)
Although the Israelites couldn’t be certain that the piled-up waters of the Red Sea wouldn’t engulf them as they passed through, they were convinced that God had miraculously led them out of Egypt and split the sea. They had seen the ten plagues that had devastated Egypt. Therefore, theirs wasn’t an evidence-less, blind faith. Instead, it rested on an evidential foundation. God had already proved Himself to them. Nevertheless, they still had to pass through the sea by faith.
While it is true that the Bible commands us to have faith, never once does it command us to have faith in the absence of evidence. Although we are taught to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7), this walk presupposes the fact that we have already learned to “walk” based upon the work—the evidence—of the Spirit “as a guarantee” (2 Cor. 5:5-6).
However, I must admit that certain aspects of the Christian life cannot rely directly on our knowledge and understanding. For example, I do not have any direct perceptions or evidences of heaven. However, I do believe in heaven because I believe in the Scriptures. But this belief in the Scriptures is not a blind belief or faith. It is a faith based upon the many evidences that the Bible is truly the Word of God. This is my very purpose for writing this book.
Faith is only irrational to those who are looking in from the outside, like Martians observing humans swaying and clapping to music. They may hear the musical notes, but, to Martian ears, they fail to come together in any meaningful way. In fact, the Martians might even seek to disparage the swaying and clapping as “mindless” and animalistic and use it as proof that humans are an inferior race, fit only for food consumption.
However, if the Martians were willing to examine us further they might better appreciate us. I think that the same thing pertains to those who are willing to examine the foundations of Biblical faith. Even more so, it also pertains to all of us of “little faith.”
