Title: Recovering Christian Confidence: Proclaiming the Gospel in an Age of Skepticism and Cynicism Lecture
1Recovering Christian Confidence Proclaiming the
Gospel in an Age of Skepticism and
CynicismLecture 2
2Points of contact for faith
- What are points of contact?
- How can we explain the attraction of the gospel?
- Its truth?
- Its relevance?
- Its beauty?
3Theological Foundations
- Apologetics is not opportunistic!
- It rests on a rigorous theological foundation,
grounded in an understanding of the character of
God, and the nature and destiny of humanity - Apologetics therefore demands a specifically
Christian understanding of human nature to
which we now turn.
4Human Nature
- While Christians believe that humanity is part of
the created order, this does not mean that we are
indistinguishable from the remainder of creation.
We have been set a little lower than the angels,
and been crowned with glory and honour (Psalm
85).
5Human Nature
- Men and women are created in the image of God
(Genesis 127). This brief yet deeply significant
phrase opens the way to a right understanding of
human nature, and our overall place within the
created order.
6Key text
- So God created humanity in his image
- In the image of God he created them
- Male and female he created them.
- (Genesis 127, NRSV)
7Key questions
- What does it mean to say that we are created in
the image of God - What difference does it make?
8Three classic approaches to the image of God
- The image of God as affirming divine ownership
and authority. - The image of God as a statement about our
capacity to understand the world, as Gods
creation - The image of God as a statement about our ability
to relate to God
91 Divine Ownership
- In the ancient near East, monarchs would often
display images of themselves as an assertion of
their power in a region (see, for example, the
golden statue of Nebuchadnezzar, described in
Daniel 31-7).
10- To be created in the image of God could
therefore be understood as being accountable to
God.
11- This important point underlies an incident in the
ministry of Jesus Christ (Luke 2022-5).
Challenged as to whether it was right for Jews to
pay taxes to the Roman authorities, Jesus
requested that a coin be brought to him.
12- He asked, Whose image and title does it bear?
Those standing around replied that it was
Caesars. Christ then tells the crowd to give to
Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is Gods.
13- While some might take this to be an evasion of
the question, it is nothing of the sort. It is a
reminder that those who bear Gods image that
is, humanity must dedicate themselves to him.
142 Rationality
- The image of God can be taken to refer to some
kind of correspondence between human reason and
the rationality of God as creator. On this
understanding of things, there is an intrinsic
resonance between the structures of the world and
human reasoning. This approach is set out with
particular clarity in Augustines major
theological writing On the Trinity
15Athanasius on the Image of God
- God knew the limitations of humanity and though
the grace of being made in the image of God was
sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word,
and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard
against their neglect of this grace, God also
provided the works of creation as a means by
which the Maker might be known.
16Athanasius on the Image of God
- Humanity could thus look up into the immensity of
heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation,
come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father,
whose sovereign providence makes the Father
known to all.
173 Relationality
- The image of God means that we have the created
capacity to relate to God - Therefore our hearts long for God
- We are unfulfilled until we relate to God
- Human experience is distinguished by a longing
for God, often mistaken for something else
18C. S. Lewis
19C. S. Lewis
- Develops the idea that nothing created or finite
can satisfy our longing - Knowing Gods creatures makes us long to know
God, as their source and origin - Therefore the beauty of nature cannot be
captured it will only lead to dissatisfaction
and frustration
20Implications of this insight
- Sigmund Freud God is just an illusion we invent,
a wish-fulfilment. We invent God because we need
a father-figure. - C. S. Lewis we are made to relate to God, and we
are going to be restless until we do so.
21Good book!
- Armand Nicholi, The Question of God C.S. Lewis
and Sigmund Freud debate God, Love, Sex and the
Meaning of Life (Free Press, 2002) - Nicholi is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School
22The Creation of HumanityMichaelangelo, fresco
in Sistine Chapel, 1515-16
23- God made us
- We are created to relate to God
- We have nothing to offer God
- Our ultimate destiny lies with God
24Applying these insights
- Human nature is characterised by being made in
Gods image, yet being sinful and fallen. We
never lose Gods image through sin, even though
it may be weakened or attenuated. - There is thus a tension between our divine
origination and intended goal, and our present
situation as fallen inhabitants of a fallen world
25Three points of contact
- The beauty of nature
- A sense of longing
- Awareness of mortality
261. The beauty of nature
- The world around us is Gods creation
- In some way, that world reflects the glory of God
- The heavens declare the glory of the Lord
(Psalm 191) - So how can we gain a better appreciation of Gods
glory?
27Basic idea
- Armed with the Christian doctrine of creation, we
see nature as Gods creation - Ecologically, this leads us to respect it
- Spiritually, this leads us to gain a deeper
appreciation of the creator - Apologetically, it allows us to build on
someones delight in nature, moving from the
creation to the creator
28Key points
- Nature can be very beautiful, and evoke our sense
of wonder - But it is not nature itself that is the real
object of our love and longing - Nature points beyond itself
- The creation points to the creator
29Jonathan Edwards on Nature
- The Son of God created the world to communicate
himself in an image of his own excellency . . .
He communicates a sort of shadow of his
excellencies, so that when we are delighted with
flowery meadows and gentle breezes, we see only
the emanation of the sweet benevolence of Jesus
Christ.
302. Mortality Fear and Anxiety
- Human mortality is very threatening
- In recent years, many have tried to deny it,
evade it, or suppress it - Classic analysis of this in Ernst Becker, The
Denial of Death
31- Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the
culmination of a lifes work, Ernest Beckers The
Denial of Death tackles the problem of the vital
lie the refusal of human beings to acknowledge
their own mortality. - So what can we say? And how can we use this point
of contact wisely?
32C. S. Lewis
- I believe in Christianity as I believe that the
Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but
because by it I see everything else.
33Seeing nature The Night Sky
34What does this aspect of the created order say to
us?
- Meaninglessness
- Cosmic vastness
- The brevity of human life
- Being overawed at the immensity of the universe
- Being reassured of the love of God
35MeaninglessnessOmar Khayyam (c. 1250)
36MeaninglessnessOmar Khayyam
- And that inverted bowl we call the Sky,
- Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die,
- Lift not thy hands to It for help for It
- Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
37MeaninglessnessUrsula Goodenough
- Leading American cell biologist
- Wrote fascinating book entitled The Sacred Depths
of Nature (1998)
38MeaninglessnessUrsula Goodenough
- As one of North Americas leading cell
biologists, Goodenough recalls how she used to
gaze at the night sky, reflecting on what she
observed. Each of the stars she saw was dying,
including our own special star, the sun.
39MeaninglessnessUrsula Goodenough
- Our sun too will die, frying the Earth to a
crisp during its heat-death, spewing its bits and
pieces out into the frigid nothingness of curved
spacetime. - She found such thoughts to be overwhelming and
oppressive.
40MeaninglessnessUrsula Goodenough
- The night sky was ruined. I would never be able
to look at it again. . . . A bleak emptiness
overtook me whenever I thought about what was
really going on out in the cosmos or deep in the
atom. So I did my best not to think about such
things.
41Psalm 8
- When I look at your heavens, the work of your
fingers, the moon and the stars that you have
establishedWhat are human beings that you are
mindful of them, mortals that you care for
them?Yet you have made them a little lower than
God, and crowned them with glory and honour.
423. A sense of longing
- Augustines prayer to God
- You have made us for yourself and our heart is
restless until it finds its rest in you. - Blaise Pascal the God-shaped abyss within us
43C. S. Lewis
- Sermon The Weight of Glory
- Title comes from John Donne, who spoke of the
exceeding weight of divine glory - Preached in the University Church, Oxford, on 8
June 1941
44University Church of St Mary the Virgin
45C. S. Lewis
- The books or the music in which we thought the
beauty was located will betray us if we trust to
them it was not in them, it only came through
them, and what came through them was longing.
46C. S. Lewis
- These things - the beauty, the memory of our own
past - are good images of what we really desire
but if they are mistaken for the thing itself
they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of
their worshippers.
47C. S. Lewis
- For they are not the thing itself they are only
the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo
of a tune we have not heard, news from a country
we have not visited.
48Questions for discussion
- What other points of contact can we identify?
- How can we go about finding them?
- And how could we go about applying them?
49Worldview Apologetics Introducing Francis
Schaeffer as an apologist
50What is apologetics?A brief reminder . . .
- From Greek word apologia, meaning defense or
argument in favour - Used in New Testament
- Most famous example 1 Peter 315
- Believers are urged to give a reason for the
hope that lies within them.
51Two key aspects of apologetics
- Negatively, it is about countering objections to
the Christian faith - Positively, it is about explaining the truth and
vitality of the Christian faith - Both are necessary parts of our task!
52Worldview Apologetics
- Which big picture is best?
- Not a question of proof all worldviews,
including atheism, lie beyond rational or
empirical proof - Rather, a question of best fit
- Which gives the best account of what we observe
and what we experience?
53Inference to the best explanation
- Idea developed by Gilbert Harman
- There are many potential explanations of the
world - So which offers the best fit?
- The simplest? The most elegant?
- Not a knock-down argument but an important
attempt to evaluate how we make sense of complex
situations
54The idea of empirical fit
- What worldview makes most sense of what we
observe in the world? - What "big picture" offers the best account of
what we experience? - Inference to the best explanation" is about
working out which explanation is the most
satisfying
55The idea of empirical fit
- The real question is this does belief in God
amount to the best explanation of what we
observe and experience? - These things cant be proved or disproved
56So who should we learn from?
- Two excellent 20th-century role models
- Francis Schaeffer
- C. S. Lewis
- Weve touched on Lewis already, so lets look at
Schaeffer.
57Francis Schaeffer
58LAbri Schaeffers base in the Swiss Alps
59Schaeffers approach
- Latent within every non-Christian belief system
is a fatal contradiction - Our task is to find that point of contradiction,
and show that the belief system is unworkable - This means listening to others, helping them to
find this fatal flaw, and appreciating its
significance for their beliefs.
60- Let us remember that every person we speak to .
. . has a set of presuppositions, whether he or
she has analysed them or not . . . It is
impossible for any non-Christian individual or
group to be consistent to their system in logic
or in practice . . . A man may try to bury the
tension and you may have to help him find it, but
somewhere there is a point of inconsistency. . .
.
61- He stands in a position which he cannot pursue to
the end and this is not just an intellectual
concept of tension, it is what is wrapped up in
what he is as a man.
62Exposing weaknesses The analogy of the shelter
- It is like the great shelters built upon some
mountain passes to protect vehicles from the
avalanches of rock and stone which periodically
tumble down the mountain. The avalanche, in the
case of the non-Christian, is the real and the
abnormal fallen world which surrounds him. The
Christian, lovingly, must remove the shelter and
allow the truth of the external world and of what
man is to beat upon him.
63An Alpine Shelter
64An example of contradiction An incident at
Cambridge University
- A Sikh started to speak strongly against
Christianity, but did not really understand the
problems of his own beliefs. So I said, Am I not
correct in saying that on the basis of your
system, cruelty and noncruelty are ultimately
equal, that there is no intrinsic difference
between them? He agreed. . . .
65The incident . . . continued
- The student in whose room we met, who had clearly
understood the implications of what the Sikh had
admitted, picked up his kettle of boiling water
with which he was about to make tea, and stood
with it steaming over the Indians head. The man
looked up and asked him what he was doing, and he
said with a cold yet gentle finality, There is
no difference between cruelty and noncruelty.
Thereupon the Hindu walked out into the night.
66Another example
- Jean-Paul Sartre was one of Frances most trendy
thinkers in the 1950s and early 1960s - He held the very radical view that ethics was not
about the decision you reached it was about
exercising your freedom in reaching that decision - The decision is thus ethically neutral the
important thing is the process of judgement
67Jean-Paul Sartre
68Schaffers response
- This means that ethics is not about right and
wrong - But can Sartre live with this view?
- Is it not true that some decisions are good, and
others evil? - Is it not true that some things are good, and
others bad?
69The Algerian Manifesto
70The Algerian Manifesto
- Algeria was formerly a French colony
- Fought for its independence in 1960
- Vicious war, which caused disquiet in France,
especially amongst intellectuals - The Algerian Manifesto was a call for ending
this dirty, immoral war - Sartre signed it
71Schaeffers MasterstrokeThe Algerian War
- Sartre took up a deliberately moral attitude
and said it was an unjust and dirty war. His
left-wing political position which he took up is
another illustration of the same inconsistency.
As far as many secular existentialists have been
concerned, from the moment Sartre signed the
Algerian Manifesto he was regarded as an apostate
from his own position, and toppled from his place
of leadership of the avant-garde.
72Using Schaeffer
- Against relativism
- Against atheism
- Other examples . . . .
73End