Archive July 2005

The Scientist as Evangelist

By John W. Robbins
© The Trinity Foundation

I am very honored and pleased to be able to speak to you this morning on the subject of "The Scientist as Evangelist." It is a most important subject, and a much neglected one. I believe that entirely too little attention has been paid to it; at least, Christians have paid too little attention to it. Carl Sagan has been a very effective evangelist for his own anti-Christian philosophy of science. But Christians have not given the subject the attention it deserves. The reasons for Christians ignoring the matter are many. I’d like to discuss a few of them with you.

First, many Christians have an inadequate idea of evangelism. "Everyone knows" that evangelism is the proclamation of the Gospel to the world at large. It is handing out tracts, going from door to door, inviting your friends and neighbors to church. All of these activities can be performed by members of any profession—scientists, secretaries, and social workers. In this view of evangelism, there is nothing special to say about the scientist as evangelist; he simply does what everyone else is doing. But this is an inadequate idea of evangelism, and it is the first reason for the neglect of the subject of the scientist as evangelist.

The second reason for this neglect is an inaccurate idea of science. By this I do not mean that our definition of science is too narrow and that it ought to be expanded to include theology and politics. I intend to use science in its common, ordinary meaning, not in some broad meaning that would encompass all disciplines. No, by our inaccurate notion of science I mean that we, non-Christians and Christians alike, have fundamentally misconceived the limits and uses of science. Because of this misconception, we have failed to see how a scientist can be an evangelist.

A third reason for our lack of attention to the subject of the scientist as evangelist is the commonly accepted separation between Christianity and the intellect, between faith and reason. We are told that reason has nothing to do with faith; science has nothing to do with Christianity. According to that view, the whole topic of "the scientist as evangelist" is fundamentally wrong. One might as well talk about the homemaker as Marine Commandant.

It is these three errors—an inadequate notion of evangelism, an inaccurate notion of science, and a mistaken belief about the relationship between science and Christianity—that I would like to discuss with you this morning. Once we get clearly in mind what we mean by evangelism, by science, and by the relationship between Christianity and science, we will be able to discover how the scientist can function as an evangelist. It is sometimes said that asking the right question is solving half the problem. Well, in this case, and in most others, defining the terms is almost all the solution. Let’s begin by defining science.

What Is Science?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines science as "knowledge acquired by study, acquaintance with or mastery of any department of learning." In this sense, the word science is used in the King James translation of the Bible in 1 Timothy 6:20 where the apostle Paul warns Timothy to "keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so-called." The word science occurs only this once in the New Testament and only once in the Old, in Daniel 1:4, where we are told that the choicest children of Israel were without blemish, "well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science." These children were captured by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and taken to the king’s palace to learn the "learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans."

Now it is obvious that in both these verses, the word science does not mean what it does for us today. Three hundred seventy-four years ago when the King James translation was made, science meant what the Oxford Dictionary said: "Knowledge acquired by study, acquaintance with or mastery of any department of learning." Yet I am sure we have all read Christian writers who use the New Testament phrase "science falsely so-called" to attack the views of modern scientists in the narrow sense, and more importantly, to argue that there is a true science, that is, a science that furnishes truth. This elementary failure to recognize that the word science has changed in meaning in the past three and a half centuries makes a lot of modern arguments invalid. Paul was not attacking false science and defending true science; he was attacking false information and beliefs and defending true knowledge.

The definition from the Oxford English Dictionary that I read to you is the second definition listed in that dictionary. The modern meaning of science does not appear until definition 5b, where we read that science is "synonymous with ‘Natural and Physical science,’ and thus restricted to those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws." If the citations in the Oxford English Dictionary are to be trusted, this change in meaning from knowledge to natural science occurred sometime during the eighteenth century, at the time of the growth of rationalism and the Enlightenment. Having clearly in mind what we mean by science, let’s turn to the mistakes we make in understanding science.

Science Is Always False

The first mistake that the man in the street and many Christians, including many Christian scientists, make is to regard science as a method for discovering truth. This was the common belief among philosophers and scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but no reputable scientist and few reputable philosophers would today assert that science discovers truth.

There are exceptions to this, of course. As late as 1936, the American Nobel Prize winner in physics, Robert Millikan, wrote, "In science, truth once discovered always remains truth." How this brilliant man could make such a stupid remark is a subject for another lecture, but he did in fact say it, despite the history of science in which scientific laws replace one another with the speed of light. Since it may surprise some of you to hear that scientists and philosophers no longer believe that science discovers truth, let me quote the actual words of the scientists and philosophers.

Einstein and Popper

Perhaps we should begin with the most famous scientist of all, Albert Einstein. In a conversation with Chaim Tschernowitz about how nature really works, Einstein remarked: "We know nothing about it [nature] at all. Our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children…. We shall know a little more than we do now. But the real nature of things—that we shall never know, never."

Turning from Einstein to a less well known philosopher of science, the Briton Karl Popper, we find Mr. Popper writing: "All scientific statements are hypotheses, or guesses, or conjectures, and the vast majority of these conjectures … have turned out to be false. Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; … our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; … it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths.

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was an English mathematician and philosopher, and he also understood some of the limitations of scientific method. By limitations I do not mean to imply that science is capable of discovering some truths but not others, that through science we can discover truths of astronomy, physics, or botany, but that we must rely on the Bible for theology. That is a fundamentally wrong view of the limitations of science, and Russell had no such delusions about science. Science is based on observation and experiment. But induction, Russell admitted a little reluctantly, "remains an unsolved problem of logic." Put more bluntly, induction is a logical fallacy. Just because one observes a thousand white swans, one cannot conclude that all swans are white. Number 1001 may be black. Just because the Sun has come up every morning for the past one hundred years does not imply that it will come up tomorrow. Or, to give you a more theological example, non-Christian archaeologists used to claim that there was no evidence whatsoever for the existence of the Hittite nation, and therefore the Bible must be mistaken. Today there are more Hittite documents in our museums than the archaeologists have had time to translate. Induction is always fallacious, yet science is based on induction.

A second problem with science that Russell saw is the problem of experimentation. Science proceeds by testing hypotheses through experiments. From a hypothesis a scientist deduces that if X is done, Y will occur. He then proceeds to perform an experiment; Y occurs; and therefore, he concludes, the hypothesis is confirmed. This form of argument is another logical fallacy, and all laboratory experimentation commits this fallacy. Its formal name is asserting the consequent: If p, then q; q; therefore p. If Einstein’s theory of relativity is true, then light will bend in the presence of massive objects; light bends passing the Sun; therefore Einstein’s theory of relativity is true. Or to put it less scientifically, if it is raining, the streets are wet; the streets are wet; therefore, it is raining. Russell wrote:

All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: "If this is true, that is true: now that is true, therefore this is true." This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say: "If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone, and stones are nourishing." If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the arguments upon which all scientific laws are based.

Gordon Clark

However, Einstein, Popper, and Russell may not be to your taste. Let me mention, then, the greatest Christian philosopher and theologian of this century, a man who wrote a book about science entitled The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God. In that book, Dr. Gordon Clark said of physics, which is the most advanced of the sciences: "All the laws of physics are false." Moreover, he gives ninety-five pages of arguments demonstrating why this must be so. I have already mentioned two of those reasons, the fallacies of induction and asserting the consequent, and there are many more. But Clark, and logic, show far more than that all the laws of physics are false; they show that all the laws of physics must be false. Clark wrote: "Instead of being the sole gateway to all knowledge, science is not a way to any knowledge."

Now this view of science is quite different from the view held by the common man and by many Christian scientists. It takes decades, sometimes a century, for the opinions of philosophers to become the common opinions of mankind; and Americans in 1985 still believe, by and large, what was taught in the nineteenth century, that science discovers truth. It is not simply intellectual inertia in this case; for the science teachers in our high schools and colleges have a dim understanding that there is a religious issue involved here, and that if they were to admit that science does not discover truth, indeed cannot discover truth, the battle between Christianity and science would be over. So they have a vested interest in perpetuating the myth that science discovers truth. It is not until graduate school, if then, that the student is told about the limitations of science. Until then, he is intimidated by the modern equivalent of "Thus saith the Lord": "It has been scientifically proved." The high school and college student is not told that it is impossible to prove anything scientifically and that the phrase "scientific truth" is a contradiction in terms. He is, in fact, told the opposite: nothing is to be accepted unless it has been scientifically proved, and nothing has any claim to be called true unless science acknowledges that claim.

Christians Defend Science, Not Christianity

This, then, is our inaccurate idea of science. Christian theologians and scientists have picked up on this false notion and have been teaching it as though it were true. Ironically, there are perhaps no more ardent defenders of the scientific method today than Christian theologians and scientists.

At least part of the explanation for this defense of science is a desire to use the second law of thermodynamics to prove a doctrine of creation in the finite past. But the scientists who want to use the second law in this way are simply ignorant of the arguments demonstrating the fallaciousness of the scientific method. They persist in defending it, even while the most intelligent non-Christian scientists and philosophers admit that all scientific laws are false. This topsy-turvy situation destroys the ability of the Christian scientist to evangelize, for he is busy defending a source of truth other than the Bible, while those he ought to be teaching have learned the lesson better than he. The Christian generally, and the Christian scientist in particular, has a totally inaccurate view of science and therefore cannot properly relate science and evangelism.

If that is the case, what is the proper view of science? What are its limitations? Of what use is it?

The Limits of Science

Let me begin answering these questions by listing very briefly some of the reasons that science is not a way of discovering truth. I have already mentioned two, the logical fallacies of induction and asserting the consequent. Let me mention two more, both of them dealing with physics. I choose physics because it is, quite clearly, the best and most advanced of the various natural sciences; and therefore what applies to physics holds a fortiori for biology, for example. Perhaps one can get through a biology course with little more than a good memory; but a physics course, precisely because it is more advanced, requires the ability to think rigorously.

Some may be inclined to argue that even if all the laws of physics are false, they are still highly probable. In response to that, I quote the words of Karl Popper, the British philosopher of science: "All theories, including the best, have the same probability, namely zero." Why does Popper say such an outrageous thing? The argument is simple: A scientist, after he has performed a number of experiments and made a number of measurements, plots a graph. How many lines can pass through the points on a graph? An infinite number, of course. The nice smooth slopes we put in our science textbooks, even our Christian science textbooks, are but one line out of an infinite number that might have been drawn. The scientist has chosen the line he draws, he has not discovered it. But if it is possible that there is an infinite number of slopes, it follows that the probability of the slope that is chosen and the equation it represents being the right one is one out of infinity, or zero. Therefore, "all theories, even the best, have the same probability, namely zero." Q. E. D. Popper repeated that statement many times in his books, and I wish some Christian theologians and scientists would read them.

But there is a fourth reason for believing that the scientific method is a tissue of logical fallacies. It is quite easy to grasp, as are the first three reasons. Science, especially physics, does not deal with the world we live in. It deals with an imaginary world where there are absolute vacuums, frictionless surfaces, bodies whose masses are concentrated at a geometrical point, and tensionless strings. The law of the pendulum, for example, applies in such an imaginary world; it describes no actual pendulum. The law of freely falling bodies applies in such an imaginary world; it describes no actually falling bodies. Science does not describe the behavior of the things we see, but of the things scientists imagine, including electrons, protons, and quarks.

The Usefulness of Science

Science, then, is not a way of discovering truth. What is its function? Well, it can have at least two legitimate functions. Science is not true, but it can be useful. The thousands of inventions scientists have made in the past two centuries are nothing if not useful. Chemistry, physics, medicine, mechanics—all have made our lives much more comfortable than they were for our grandparents and even for our parents. But these inventions can also be misused, and science cannot select the purposes that are legitimate and those that are not. That guidance must come from some other source. Nuclear energy can be used to light cities or reduce them to ashes. Chemistry can improve nutrition or make nerve gas. Biology can make vaccinations or germ weapons. Science furnishes neither truth nor moral values. But guided by the right nonscientific ethical principles, it can be a great benefit to man.

Science itself can be useful and science education can be useful in the training of people how to think. Physics is the most advanced science because it uses the most mathematics, and in math—unlike physics—conclusions follow necessarily from the premises. A course in physics can be a good training in rigorous thinking—or at least it should be. So science does have a function, but it is not what many people think it is.

Evangelism

Now let’s turn to our second term, evangelism. What is evangelism? It is, of course, proclaiming the Good News of Christ. After all, the root of evangel, gospel, means good news. But Christian knowledge has declined so far in this century—despite our zeal for evangelism—that many no longer know what the Good News is and how it is to be proclaimed. Christians generally have an inaccurate and grandiose notion of science and an inadequate and lowly notion of the Gospel and evangelism. They tend to believe that evangelism consists of asserting a few unconnected truths about salvation and exhorting the world to believe them. Sometimes they even get the few truths they do teach mixed up.

We cannot, therefore, look to contemporary evangelism to find out what evangelism is. Much of what passes for evangelism today has very little to do with Christianity, and very much to do with secular psychology. To learn what evangelism is, we shall have to study the methods of the experts: Christ and the apostles.

Let’s look in some detail at how the first Christians evangelized the world. We might begin with Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, found in the second chapter of Acts. Does Peter mention the four spiritual laws? Does he call upon the people who heard him to commit their lives to Christ? Does he tell his listeners that they need to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Hardly. What he does is this:

First, he explains the ability of the Christians to speak in foreign languages by quoting from the Old Testament at length. How many times would we think of using the Old Testament, let alone committing whole chapters to memory, in our evangelism? But Peter and the other early Christians understood that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. Today Christians have a very truncated gospel in which at least two-thirds of the Bible is ignored.

But Peter went further than that. He not only quoted the Old Testament at length, he accused his listeners of being sinners: "You have taken Jesus of Nazareth by lawless hands, have crucified and put him to death. And God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." Peter accused them of being sinners and of committing the most heinous of sins: murdering the Messiah.

The accusation of sin is missing from what passes for evangelism today. There is no mention of God’s holiness, his righteousness, and his law. After all, we are in the dispensation of grace, aren’t we? But Peter taught no such nonsense, and he accused his hearers of sin, indeed of a specific sin.

Now, any professor of homiletics worth his salt will tell you that that is just bad form. Accusing your listeners of sin violates all the rules that Dale Carnegie laid down for winning friends and influencing people. One must be irenic; one must seek to understand people and not offend them. But Peter the evangelist was not interested in winning friends: He was interested in proclaiming the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

After quoting at length from the Old Testament, not once but twice, and then accusing his audience of being sinners, Peter makes another mistake: He argues theology. Today we all know that argument is futile and theology is controversial. Evangelism, we are told, is the simple proclamation of the simple truths of the Gospel. But Peter disagrees. He argues theology. What a miserable excuse for an evangelist Peter was. He would undoubtedly be expelled from the staffs of many so-called evangelistic organizations in this country. He quotes the Old Testament, he arrogantly and impolitely accuses his listeners of sin, he argues, and he talks theology. Worst of all, he mentions predestination and God’s absolute power over the decisions and thoughts of men: "Christ, being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands and put to death." Today everyone knows, don’t they, that evangelism is incompatible with Calvinism? Peter, and all the rest of the early Christians, violated every major principle of modern-day evangelism. In one short sermon he taught that God is holy and almighty, that his listeners were pawns and sinners, and that their understanding of theology was, at best, inadequate. What was the result? Verse 37 tells us, "Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ " Peter’s evangelism cut them to their hearts, and they were changed by the words he spoke. We’re told that "about three thousand souls were added" to the Church after that sermon, and that "they continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine and fellowship." Many famous, twentieth-century, so-called evangelists have claimed many times three thousand "decisions for Christ"; but how many of those so-called converts continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine? It is very likely that they knew no doctrine to begin with—no creed but Christ is the modern view of evangelism, I think.

Peter’s sermon is not the only instance of such preaching. It was typical of early Christian evangelism. Another of his sermons is recorded in Acts 3, where he says:

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our Fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate…. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead.

And then he mentions predestination again. And then he quotes the Old Testament. After his sermon, Peter was arrested by the priests and the Sadducees, but "many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand."

Peter’s sermons were effective, but were he preaching today, he would undoubtedly be arrested by seminary professors and sentenced to two years of remedial homiletics. So much for modern evangelism.

I urge you to study the sermons in the book of Acts. Read Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7. There couldn’t be a sermon more calculated to offend his hearers, and they were "cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth." But Stephen, "being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into Heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God."

What conclusions can we draw about evangelism based upon the activity of the evangelists in the book of Acts? There are several, almost all of which are antithetical to what we believe about evangelism today.

The Definition of Evangelism

First, evangelism is the proclamation of the truth. Evangelism is not the proclamation of human wisdom or men’s opinions, but of the truth revealed to us in the Bible. Paul emphasizes this in the first chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians: "Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect." Much of what passes for evangelism today is not true, but consists of so-called human wisdom, that is, knowledge falsely so-called.

Second, evangelism is the proclamation of the whole truth. Paul said that he was innocent of the blood of all for he had not failed to declare the whole counsel of God. Not only is evangelism the proclamation of the truth, it is the proclamation of the whole truth. This means that the position of fundamentalist churches is unscriptural. Paul did not say, I am innocent because I taught you the fundamentals; he said he was innocent because he taught the whole counsel of God, not a few fundamentals and a lot of prophetic speculation. Surprising as it may seem to some Christians, there is a complete system of truth taught in the Bible, a Christian philosophy that covers all aspects of faith and life. Paul was innocent of the blood of all men because he taught them the whole counsel of God. He didn’t skip predestination; he taught it repeatedly and thoroughly. He realized, as few do today, that many people believe in some sort of god, but unless they believe in the Almighty God who causes all things that happen, they do not believe in God. This concern with the whole truth led the early evangelists to quote at length from the Scriptures. They did not ignore certain books as inapplicable for today.

Third, evangelism contains nothing but the truth. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul even rejoices that Christ did not send him to baptize, but only "to preach the Gospel." Today there are growing factions in many denominations that disparage doctrine, belittle preaching, and emphasize experience, healing, gifts, liturgy, activity, and ritual. Anything but teaching. But evangelism involves proclaiming nothing but the truth. If evangelism is the proclamation of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, two questions follow: What is the source of this truth? and, How is it to be proclaimed?

The Source of Truth

The Reformation’s, and the Bible’s, answer to the first question is: The Bible alone is the source of truth. The most excellent summary of what the Bible teaches, the Westminster Confession of 1645, expresses the answer in this way:

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 at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men.

Peter expresses the view in the following words from 2 Peter: "His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue." God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness through theology—the knowledge of God. The source of truth is the Bible alone.

The second question is the method of proclaiming the truth. Today we usually think of using radio or television, tracts, books, sermons, music, and so on; and all legitimate methods are to be used. This is not what we mean by method. How should the message be packaged? Should there be preaching, that is, assertions alone, or arguments also? What did the early evangelists do? Acts 17:2 says that Paul "as his custom was, went in [the synagogue] to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead." Paul reasoned, explained, and demonstrated. How much evangelism in our day has any of those three elements in it? More often than not, it is the assertion of some platitude or falsehood, such as God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, followed by a call for a decision for Christ or a commitment to Christ. You will never find such practices in the accounts of the early evangelists. Acts 18:4 and 19 repeat the account: Paul went to the synagogues in Corinth and Ephesus and reasoned with the Jews. Of Apollos, Acts 18:28 says he "vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ."

Evangelism by the early church was almost entirely an intellectual affair. It was not emotional; there were no long, drawn out altar calls or invitations; those practices are not found in the Biblical accounts. The extraordinary power of the early evangelism came not from emotional appeal but from the boldness with which the Christians preached the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. God used the words they spoke to convince the unbelievers of the truth; there was no slick salesmanship or television advertising trickery involved. The Gospel, not human wisdom, is the power of God. And Paul reasoned weekly in the synagogue and daily in the marketplace with "those who happened to be there" (Acts 17:17).

Science and Evangelism

At this point we are finally ready to begin putting science and evangelism together to understand how the scientist can be an evangelist.

Evangelism, as we have seen, should not be narrowly understood as seeking the salvation of souls, but as the proclamation of the whole truth. The Great Commission, Christ’s final command, puts it this way: "Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you." Evangelism is not merely getting people saved, but making disciples, teaching all nations all things that Christ commanded. Because evangelism is all encompassing, because it involves teaching, the scientist can be an evangelist. How, specifically, can he do this?

The first and the most important way for the scientist to evangelize is to tell the truth about science. This means that Christian scientists must stop pretending that science discovers truth. It does not. This is extremely important in the education of the young. Students reading both secular and Christian textbooks have read that science discovers truth. Students attending both Christian and secular schools have been taught that science discovers truth. The difference between Christian and pagan views has been only the amount of truth that science can allegedly discover: In secular schools and textbooks, science is regarded as the key to a complete interpretation of the universe. In Christian schools and textbooks, truth about the world around us is attributed to science, but religious truth comes from another source. How these two sets of truths are to be reconciled with each other becomes a major problem for Christian thinkers who believe that science discovers truth. These men fail to understand either science or the Bible, for the Bible claims to have a monopoly on truth, and science is not a tool of cognition. Peter, in a passage I’ve already quoted, says that all things pertaining to life and godliness come through theology, not physics. Paul says that scripture completely equips a man of God for every good work; there is no need for a supplement from science or philosophy. Peter refers to the Scriptures as "a light that shines in a dark place." Not a dim place, but a dark place. The principle is the Bible alone, sola Scriptura. There is no other source of truth. To be an evangelist, a Christian scientist must witness to this truth: The Bible alone is the truth. That is the Good News. That is the first duty of the scientist as evangelist. He has to tell the truth about science and about Christianity. For far too long, Christian scientists have been trying to draw water from broken cisterns.

The Place of Logic

The second job of the scientist as evangelist follows from the first: He must insist that both science and theology be governed by the rules of logic. There is no excuse for sloppy thinking in science, and even less excuse in theology. Paul reasoned with the Jews in the synagogue weekly and with the Gentiles daily in the marketplace. He demonstrated that Jesus was the Christ. He demonstrated that Christ had to suffer and die. As educated men, Paul and Apollos obviously were familiar with the laws of logic and knew how to construct valid arguments. In 1985, some Christian scientists, but few theologians, can reason or demonstrate; in this, they do not imitate Paul as he commanded them to do.

If you think my emphasis on reasoning and logic is unbalanced, there is no more masterful logician in Scripture than Christ himself. Listen to Christ’s reply to the Pharisees who were accusing him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub:

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

Christ’s argument is a syllogism. But Christ does not leave the matter there; he wants to drive the argument home:

And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

This argument is a simple dilemma: If Christ cast out demons by Beelzebub, so do the sons of the Jews who were following Christ. But if Christ cast out demons by God, then the kingdom of God has come. The master logician, the Logos of God, had destroyed the argument of the Pharisees.

On another occasion, the Sadducees confronted Christ with a question about the resurrection. They obviously thought they had an airtight argument against the resurrection, but they weren’t prepared to deal with the logic of Christ. He replied to their question in this way:

You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God…. concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken by God, saying,

I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Christ deduced the resurrection from the tense of a verb. The Sadducees were too stupid or irrational to make the deduction.

There were three reactions to Christ’s rigorous use of logic: First, we are told that the multitudes were astonished at his teaching. Second, Matthew tells us that he silenced the Sadducees. Third, the Pharisees, seeing an opportunity to show their superiority to both Christ and the Sadducees, thought they could outwit Christ where the Sadducees had failed. They posed a question about the greatest commandment, which Christ answered with ease. But then he, knowing what was in their hearts, asked them a question about the Messiah that they could not answer. What was the result of his arguments? Matthew says, "And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question him anymore."

The Scientist’s Job

That my friends, is the function of the Christian scientist: to silence the scientific enemies of Christ. As an intellectual, the Christian scientist must serve as a bodyguard to the truth of Scripture, defending it from pagan attacks in those areas in which he is a specialist. The Christian archaeologist must expose the logical fallacies that the pagan archaeologists use to attack the Bible. The Christian archaeologist must demonstrate that archaeology cannot prove anything, let alone disprove the truth of the Bible. The Christian biologist must defend the Bible against those who deny the truth of the account of creation, exposing their irrationality to all the world. If the job of the Christian scientist as evangelist is properly done, no scientist will dare question the Bible anymore.

Unfortunately, too little of this type of evangelism has been done; for Christian scientists, by and large, have accepted the notion that science can furnish truth. As a result, they spend the time they ought to use defending the truth of the Bible defending the authority of science. This mistake is fatal to Christian evangelism, for as Christians we are not interested in defending a method that cannot be deduced from scripture, nor are Christians interested in defending a generic god of the sort that some scientists believe in, a universal designer. Those who believe in such a god are Masons, not Christians, and unless they repent, they will go to Hell.

But there is more for the scientist as evangelist to do than to tell the truth about science and to insist on rigorous thinking in both science and theology. The first of these tasks, telling the truth about science, is part of reinforcing Christianity’s claim to have a monopoly on truth and salvation: One book, one Lord, one faith, one God, one baptism, one name by which we must be saved. The second task, insisting on rigorous thinking, contributes to the accomplishment of the first task by embarrassing those who oppose the truth. The third task of the scientist as evangelist is the explication of those passages of scripture that have a bearing on the various disciplines of science: astronomy, biology, zoology, botany, and so forth. If science cannot furnish truth but merely useful opinion, truth is to be found only in the propositions contained in the Bible and in logical inferences made from those propositions. The scientist as evangelist must try to deduce from the Bible as many propositions relating to the natural world as he can. How many are there? I have no idea. Nor does anyone else. Perhaps the truths deduced from the Bible would be quite short compared with the vast amounts of misinformation that now fill our science books. But, however few, those propositions would be true, something that cannot be said about propositions arising from the scientific method.

In conclusion, the task of the scientist as evangelist is to remove the obstacles that secular science has put in the way of belief in the truth of the Bible. When those obstacles are removed, the message of the Gospel will obtain a much better hearing than it has at any other time in the past two centuries. Both Christ and the apostles answered the objections of unbelievers and then reduced the opinions of the unbelievers to self-contradictory nonsense. This is not an easy task, but it is one task that must be done if the Christian scientist is to bring all thoughts into captivity to Christ. The scientific critics of the truth must be silenced, and the scientist as evangelist must do it. Christ expects nothing less.

Solitude and Contemplation

(The following is an edited email correspondence.)

I am having problems focusing on God and doing my devotions. For example, when I am reading a book or listening to a sermon on tape, I would often think about doing other things. Sometimes I would stop so that I can catch a TV episode or do some other stuffs. You can say that I don’t stay still often.

That said, there are times when I can lay aside distractions and become very focused. However, all too often there are distractions or periods of discouragement that often take my attention away from God.

What would you suggest? Is it a lack of devotion and love (or as you put it, an obsession) toward God? If I truly love God, then shouldn’t I always prefer to study the Bible or listen to a sermon?

Love for God first comes with regeneration and conversion. If you are a Christian, then you do love God, but there are still sinful urges and external distractions that hinder you. You are not the only one who feels that he is running upstream when it comes to spiritual exercises.

But God is inherently and irresistibly attractive, and the more you understand him, the more you will become obsessed with knowing him. So, do not become too discouraged by your present performance — not that it is unimportant — but make sure that you are growing in your understanding of God, and then follow through by obeying his commands in everyday life. Eventually, Christian study and contemplation should become both work and rest, so that you will not have to do so many other things for relaxation. That is, entertainment for you will not consist of only those things that distract your attention away from God.

The modern man is very busy, at least partly due to his own choice (as one can always become a hermit), I have been urging [name of common friend] to take time off every weekend to go out by himself for solitude and biblical meditation — this is in addition to the time that he should be spending in prayer and study each day. He can take a walk or sit at a coffee shop, or find any comfortable setting.

During this time of at least 45 to 60 minutes, he should reflect on his relationship with God and his understanding of God. He should reflect on his thought and conduct over the past several days and consider his spiritual progress, as well as how he may improve and become more devoted to God. He should think about life itself — that is, the purpose of his life relative to the general plan of God — instead of letting his focus drift back to work or other things, things that he thinks about for hours everyday.

I started to regularly practice this exercise of spiritual meditation when I was first converted, and it did great things for my spiritual life. I would remind myself of God’s grace, patience, and faithfulness, and gratitude and reverence would freshly well up from my heart. I would also spend this time to resolve any fears, desires, and other internal struggles by carefully weaving the word of God into the fabric of my thinking, and casting down every thought would rise against the knowledge of God. This has been my practice since my conversion. Since almost all my hours are dedicated to spiritual things, I can do this throughout the day, although I wish that I could do it even more consistently. You should start doing something like this also.

This is an enjoyable practical procedure that can yield tremendous spiritual benefits when regularly performed. I should emphasize that it is not enough to allocate only a short time for this each week, but for many people, it is already much more than what they are doing, and so it is a great start for them. It is not too difficult to begin and maintain — any person should certainly be able to cut away one hour from his weekend to spend in solitude and meditation.

Some ministers are very busy. From the time they wake up everyday, they are instantly taken up with administration, travelling, counseling, teaching, and other things. They are constantly interacting with people, and seldom take time away to be alone, and be with God. Very soon, the quality of their ministry suffers; they become mechanical and superficial, and their teachings become narrow and repetitive. You have also heard of those ministers who preach more than 300 times a year. They are destroying themselves, and neglecting many important things along the way.

Now, I am also busy, but I am busy only relative to the time that I allot to ministry work each day. So it is a real "busy," but not a destructive or sinful "busy." Unlike many other busy people, I refuse to allot the whole day to things that take me away from study, solitude, and contemplation, and then only give what time I have left to these necessary spiritual disciplines. Rather, I make my schedule revolve around this spiritual foundation of my life, and allot only a limited amount of time each day to administration, ministry, teaching, interacting with people, and so forth.

Of course, I allot enough hours to these tasks to remain productive in ministry, but I am not going to let ministry take over my personal spiritual life. I would rather shut this whole thing down than to do that. If I fail to pray, read, meditate, and if I do not maintain right fellowship with God and continue to improve in all aspects of my spiritual life, then my usefulness to the kingdom of God will soon plateau, if not diminish.

This affects ministry policy. For example, even if I were to become so in demand one day, I would never allow myself to preach 300 times a year. I am going to take the long-term approach, and have time each day to be alone with God, with my thoughts and my books, and also to spend time loving my wife and raising my children. This in turn affects ministry policy in another way, namely, I would refuse to commit to so many costly ministry projects (TV, radio, etc.) that I will have to preach 300 times a year just to raise enough money to pay the bills.

I understand that things are different when you are working a regular job or running a business, but the same pattern of time management can be implemented — that is, at least don’t let your job or business take over your entire life so that you have no time to be alone with God, your thoughts, and your books.

To start, I suggest assigning a significant block of time each week — and if possible, each day — to be alone in spiritual meditation. For example, spending 45 to 60 minutes on each Saturday or Sunday, and at least 10 to 30 minutes on each of the remaining six days, in solitude and contemplation, will add much depth to your spiritual life. And again, this is time spent in addition to the time that you usually spend in prayer and study.

Recommended:

Vincent Cheung, Prayer and Revelation (PDF, p. 71–76)

Vincent Cheung, Renewing the Mind (PDF, ch. 1 and 2)

Edmund Clowney, Christian Meditation

Nathanael Ranew, Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation

Christian vs. non-Christian Meditation

(The following is an edited message on the topic of Christian vs. non-Christian meditation. I have not expanded it, so like the original, it is not very detailed.)

Remember what they are trying to do — they are trying to blank themselves out, or erase their inner selves, or merge with the universe, or achieve an altered state of consciousness.

The Christian, on the other hand, "meditates" by actively engaging God’s word and applying it to his own heart. This is not a mystical engagement or application, since we do not repeat God’s word as some sort of mantra without thinking about its meaning.

Instead, we carefully think through the meanings and implications of the biblical passages, relating it to other passages, and then apply it to our thought and conduct. As all Christians should know, this involves serious intellectual effort, and it can often be painful to work through one's sinful and unrenewed thinking.

Christian meditation, therefore, is not a way to escape from the self or to lose the self, but to honestly confront it by the only power that can transform it.

So, do not be deceived — even the seemingly gentle Buddhist monks are corrupt to the core. Some of them make a superficial acknowledgement of it, and have written about it. However, none of their writings and exercises have the converting and transforming power that is only available from God through Christ, by means of Scripture, as applied and energized by the Spirit.

Eastern religions want you to lose yourself. Pop-psychology urges you to accept your filthy self as it is. But Christianity teaches that you must confront and examine yourself by the word of God, and then it is by means of this same revealed word from God that he will sanctify and transform you.

Joshua 1:8
Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

1 Corinthians 11:28
A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.

2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test?

Philippians 2:12-13
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed– not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

James 1:21-25
Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it — he will be blessed in what he does.

Recommended:

Vincent Cheung, Prayer and Revelation (PDF, p. 71–76)

Vincent Cheung, Renewing the Mind (PDF, ch. 1 and 2)

Edmund Clowney, Christian Meditation

Nathanael Ranew, Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation

Whitefield to Wesley

Here is a letter in which George Whitefield responds to a sermon John Wesley preached against the biblical doctrine of election.

A long time ago, I distributed this letter as a teaching aid to a small group of people who were just starting to learn about this doctrine. Since my aim was not to preserve history but to teach the doctrine, and since I did not at the time intend to widely distribute it, I made a few minor changes to the text to make it easier to read and understand. So if you need the exact text of the original letter, you should find an unedited version elsewhere.

To help the individuals mentioned above, I also annotated the text with several explanatory footnotes. As I glanced through them just now, I noticed several typos. However, they are minor and do not affect comprehension, so rather than taking the time to correct them, I have decided to leave them there.

It is available as a PDF file:

http://vincentcheung.com/files/pdf/whitefield-wesley.pdf

Recommended:

The Author of Sin

The Author of Confusion

Why God Created Evil

Compatibilist Freedom

Augustine and Compatibilism

"Soft" Determinism

Determinism vs. Fatalism

Creatures Cannot Initiate Motion

Preservation and Providence

Vincent Cheung, "The Problem of Evil"

Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology

Vincent Cheung, Commentary on Ephesians

Gordon Clark, Predestination

Gordon Clark, God and Evil

Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will

How Do We Learn?

By Gordon H. Clark
© The Trinity Foundation

During the second half of the twentieth century, several apologetes—most of them otherwise orthodox—have tried to develop a theism based on sensory experience. Some of them are satisfied with a Thomistic cosmological argument for the existence of God without explicitly producing a complete empirical epistemology. Others seem satisfied with even less: Sometimes called evidentialists, they have tried to prove the truth of the Bible by archaeological discoveries. One at least is chiefly interested in history. A few go some distance into epistemology, but they usually—I could even say always—ignore basic questions, such as the production of abstract ideas from memory images. Examples of these somewhat varying groups are Stuart C. Hackett in his The Resurrection of Theism; Gordon R. Lewis in his Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims; and several works by John Warwick Montgomery, Clark Pinnock, and R. C. Sproul. There are differences among them, of course. Some are more explicit than others. Some are more consistent than others. But in general they are empiricists, denying a priori forms of the mind, and implicitly basing all knowledge on sensation.

Empiricism

This view has had a long and illustrious history. It began with Aristotle, from whom Thomas Aquinas derived his basic principles; John Locke had a slightly different version of it, which Augustus Toplady unfortunately pretty much accepted; plus John Gill, and with certain modifications, Charles Hodge, and B. B. Warfield. Probably because of the latter two, the Platonic or Augustinian view has been often frowned upon. The Lutherans too, as for example Leander S. Keyser, have generally been Aristotelians. But not all. Dorner in his A System of Christian Doctrine (Edinburgh, 1881, Vol. II, 82) asserts that "the soul is never a mere tabula rasa, … there is in it a world of the unconscious. If in our knowledge there is already inherent no innate relation to what is rational and good—a relation that is an original dowry of our nature and not our own work—then knowledge of truth and goodness as such is absolutely out of the question." This is a statement worth reading a second time.

If further Lutheran documentation is desired, one will find a less explicit and no doubt a different point of view in Francis Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics (Concordia Publishing House, 1950). In the section entitled "Man before the Fall," he agrees that "image and likeness are synonyms," citing the verses quoted here. Though using slightly different language, he also accepts knowledge and righteousness as its components. But surely he exaggerates the extent of Adam’s knowledge when he says that Adam "had such a grasp of the natural sciences as is unattainable today by even the most diligent study" (I, 517). Did Adam really foresee the recent upsetting discoveries about the rings of Saturn? Or the implanting of a mechanical heart in a human being? Aside from such imaginations, the basic difficulty, from the point of view of this discussion, is that Pieper seems to have no interest in the epistemological problem and therefore simply avoids it.

John Theodore Mueller, in his Christian Dogmatics, emulates his Lutheran predecessor. He is slightly more explicit than Pieper, and continues the exaggeration of Adam’s knowledge. The difference is that Adam’s whole scientific knowledge is pictured as a priori. Disturbed by evolution he wrote, "The evolutionistic view, according to which man was originally a brute, without the faculty of speech…is therefore anti-scriptural…. In addition to perfect moral endowments man was blessed also with great intellectual endowments, so that he possessed…an intuitive knowledge of God’s creatures [science] such as no scientist after the Fall has ever attained" (206). Note that whereas Pieper simply assigned to Adam the same extensive knowledge, Mueller adds that this knowledge was "intuitive." If Adam’s correct knowledge of the speed of light was not empirical but intuitive, the term intuitive seems to mean a priori. In any case, no such extensive knowledge is ascribed to Adam in the Scriptural verses Mueller quotes, viz., Genesis 2:19-20, 23-24. Neither writer is sufficiently clear, but the phrase "great intellectual endowment" and the word "intuitive" favor apriorism much more than they favor empiricism.

Unfortunately, however, Mueller had previously approved of the cosmological argument for the existence of God (143) as Pieper also had done before him. The two authors lack consistency. Neither of them seems interested in the present problem, nor is either so clear as Dorner.

Dorner rejected the blank mind. Even some Roman Catholics, a few centuries ago, defended apriorism: Descartes, Malebranche, Pascal, and the Jansenists. But all the wit of Pascal did not save them from the Jesuits.

Scripture Refutes Empiricism

Now, it seems to me that even the skimpy material in Genesis is sufficient to refute empiricism with its blank mind. First, since God is a God of knowledge, eternally omniscient, how could a being declared to be his image and likeness be a blank mind? Even apart from the explicit statements in the New Testament, Genesis says that God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Since at that time they had no sensory experience of other people, must they not have had some innate intelligence to understand this command? Of course, an empiricist might insist that they had learned the meaning from observing animals. But this assumes that a fair length of time intervened between the creation of Adam and God’s imposition of the obligation. One can better suppose that God gave instructions to Adam more immediately. This is rather obviously true of Genesis 2:16, 17. The command was given only moments after the creation. Of course, such a command was not a priori knowledge, but the intellectual equipment to understand it was.

There is more, too. Adam not only understood the command: He understood that it was God who gave it. Are we supposed to believe that he laboriously worked out the cosmological argument, including the physics that underlies it? And did he derive the concept of moral responsibility from his sensations? Though the account is brief, it seems that Adam knew he was obligated to worship God and obey him. But empiricism’s cosmological argument is surpassed in its fallacies by the impossibility of deducing moral evaluations from factual premises, even should these premises be true. If an empiricist insists that the Genesis account is too brief to support such an interpretation, we can at least rely on the Pauline epistles. Genesis is not the only book in the Bible.

A subsidiary point is Cain’s fear of punishment after he had murdered Abel. Evidently God had given Adam and his boys what we call the sixth commandment. They must have recognized this as a moral imperative. But is it at all possible to develop the idea of a moral imperative by watching trees grow in a garden? Note the point: The commandment itself may not have been innate, but the idea of morality must have been or the import of the commandment could not have been understood. Sensation at best might possibly give some factual information; but though this would be knowledge of what is, empiricism can never produce acknowledge of what ought to be.

Universal Propositions

Underlying all these details of both physics and morality lies the necessity of universal propositions. Not only are murder and idolatry wrong, but the laws of physics are asserted as applying universally. They are not supposed to have any exceptions. Physics is the clearer example. The law of the pendulum, to take an elementary example, is that the period of the swing is proportional to the square root of the length. The law asserts that this is true of all pendulums, all that exist now, all that have existed in the past, and all that will exist in the future. The law is a universal proposition; that is, it has no exceptions. Clearly this law cannot have been deduced from experiment or observation, for no one has observed all present pendulums or all past pendulums, and no one has observed any future pendulums. Hence empiricism can never justify any law of physics. If, now, sensory experience cannot justify a knowledge of natural phenomena, how could it possibly be of any use in theology? The principles of theology are all universal propositions. Of course theology includes certain historical statements such as "David was king of Israel," and this does not seem to be a universal. Actually it is, for David as the subject term is a class by himself, and all of that class is a king of Israel. But aside from propositions with individual subjects, the principles of theology—which give meaning to the historical events—are plain, ordinary universal statements. They cannot therefore be based on observation. For that matter, God cannot be observed.

The Laws of Logic

In addition to the failure of empiricism due to universal propositions, there is an even more fundamental factor. Every statement, even if particular, depends on the law of contradiction. Truth and error are incompatible. If all marhoucals are rhinosaps, there cannot be a single marhoucal that is not a rhinosap. We do not have to inspect the infinite number of the latter in order to assure ourselves that none can be found. Given the premise, we do not need to examine even one. That O ab cannot be deduced from A ab is a necessity of logic. And if our minds are not so constructed, we can never distinguish truth from error. But empiricism furnishes no necessity, no universality, no all, no none.

Indeed, it furnishes no some either. Whether the logical form be universal or particular, the proposition must have a subject term. All dogs are vertebrates; some dogs are black. Suppose now that the subject term, dogs, had five meanings. This is not unusual for English words. Consult Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Look up the words fast, curb, domestic, race, land—not to mention love, emotion, grace, religion, and virtue. Each one will have possibly four, five and sometimes six different meanings. This frequently introduces considerable ambiguity, with the result that an argument, apparently logical, is actually fallacious. The fallacy can be avoided, sometimes with a bit of trouble, by specifying meaning one, meaning two, and meaning three. But there is a deeper problem. Suppose a given word has an infinite number of meanings. The word fast would then mean every word in the dictionary from the article "a" to "zyzzogetan," plus an unimaginable greater number. "Fast fast fast fast" would mean, "Today is last Tuesday" and "Washington discovered America in 1066." That is to say, a word that means everything means nothing. But this which is so obvious could not be deduced from any finite number of observations. It is a principle which must be accepted even before the term "observation" could be given any meaning at all. Therefore the use of any single word in an intelligible sentence depends on an a priori principle. No blank mind could ever discover this principle. One could phrase the principle as "a word, to mean something, must also not mean something"; or, "if a word means everything, it means nothing." Like the law of contradiction, it is a way of maintaining the distinction between truth and falsehood. And this distinction is the basic element in the image of God.