Can We Know Anything? (Prof Doug Groothuis)
Christian apologetics is the rational defence of the Christian worldview as objectively true and subjectively meaningful. By ‘objectively true’ I mean it’s true whether or not you believe it. By ‘rational’ I mean to give compelling and convincing arguments for its truth; not merely saying I believe it or I know that I know it my knower that it’s true, but giving reasons that are publically available, that can be presented to the unbeliever such that you hope and pray that the unbeliever will come to faith, at least partially through good reasoning. And ‘subjectively meaningful’ means that the truth claims that we are articulating have consequence — they matter – they are matters of life and death; literally heaven and hell.
Now the discipline of apologetics, an an endeavour, assumes that saving knowledge of God is possible and desirable. If Christianity defends the objective truth of the gospel and claims that it is rational to believe Christian truth, we need to talk about not merely faith, or blind faith, or I have faith and I hope somehow I might be right or it might be true. The goal should be not mere opinion, or guess work, or a blind leap of faith in the dark, but rather the knowledge of God. And scripture speaks of ‘the knowledge of God’ (2 Peter 3:18, Proverbs 1:7, Proverbs 9:10, Proverbs 3:13, Proverbs 24:3, Romans 11:33,36, Ephesians 1:17, and many more).
So the challenge of Christian apologetics is to support the Christian worldview rationally and to face the intellectual challenges from other worldviews. Paul discussed ‘taking every thought captive to Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor 10:5) and dealing with objections to the faith. The question really becomes, can we know any worldview is true or false? Can we have knowledge that Christianity is true? Can we have knowledge that other worldviews like naturalism, or pantheism, or polytheism are false?
Now we can talk about how Christianity has changed our life or personally how the Lord Jesus has transformed us and has made a difference in our lives. We can talk about how it is subjectively meaningful to us. But we have to realise that we have other people making those same sorts of claims that are not Christians, such as Mormons, and Muslims, and even atheists who sometimes talk about how ‘freeing’ it is to finally be out from under the control of religion. So a mere testimony is not sufficient as part of the apologetic agenda. It is important, but it is not sufficient.
If we a going to engage in powerful, persuasive Christian apologetics I think apologists should argue that Christianity is not only rationally permissable but rationally obligatory. That is, given the full palate of evidence and arguments for the truth of the Christian worldview, and given a full palate of arguments and evidence against non-Christian worldviews, one ought to believe the message of the Bible. Ought! Some philosophers and apologists leave it at the level of permission – one is entitled to believe it, but the unbeliever is equally as entitled not to believe it and we we could both be rational in so doing. I can believe p and you can believe non-p — of the can’t both be true because they are contradictory — but you might say there is not enough evidence either way to know.
Can we know that Christianity is true with certainty? The question, really, is not ‘absolute certainty’, but ‘justified true belief’. One does not have to have 100% deductive certainty to have a justified belief. We go through life all the time on the basis of probabilities – even strong probabilities. We do know some things on that basis. The skeptic says, ‘Unless you prove this to me with absolute certainity, I will not believe it.’ Even the skeptic believes a great many things where there is not absolute proof, and yet this doesn’t stop them from believing something if it is more rational than the alternatives. That’s all you need – that Christianity is more rational and makes more sense than other alternatives. Of course there is always a ‘step’ of faith – not a ‘leap’ – that it makes sense, that I can see that I can accept it. This step is entering in through trust and committment. Someone needs notion (a proper and accurate understanding of Christian claims), assent (intellectual agreement with these claims) and personal trust in the truth and power of these claims – so-called ‘saving faith’.
Prof Doug Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy, Denver Seminary, transcribed from the audio presentation Can We Know Anything?)
