Southern Seminary Magazine (Vol 90.1) The Light of Truth: Apologetics in the 21st Century

playing offense
Scripture, but reason as well. But if it’s reasonable, it will
never be at odds with Scripture. If there are reasoned
justifications for the ethics we espouse that satisfy the
criteria for rational soundness, then where that truth is
located—whether in special revelation or general revelation—is
irrelevant.
What matters is whether the argument in question is
true or false. No tenet of Christian ethics will ever be
at odds with what reason can know as true. Therefore,
when we speak of “Christian Ethics,” we speak of an inherently
public discipline because Christian ethics are
grounded in creation, divinely attested to in Scripture,
and confirmed by reason. The truthfulness of our ethics
is not a private, self-disclosed reality.
Deploy the Full Range of
God-Given Arguments
What I want to encourage you with in this brief essay
is not so much the correctness of Christian ethics upon
such matters as abortion, sexual ethics, and gender—and
indeed, they are true—but how Christians should think
about our arguments in themselves. I say this because
there is a tendency among Christians to think that our
viewpoints only have merit because they are found in
Scripture. Of course, they have infinite worth because
they are found in Scripture, but their soundness expands
beyond just Scripture. Their truthfulness reflects the pattern
of an orderly creation patterned by God. Practically
speaking, it means the pro-choice advocate or transgender
activist is revolting against both reason and revelation.
But I’d like to suggest that grounding our ethics and
the call to public apologetics in Scripture alone is to bypass
the full range of arguments that God gives us. We
should never appeal any less to Scripture. We are, after
all, Protestants who believe in sola Scriptura. But sola
Scriptura is not solo Scriptura. It has never been the position
of Christian ethics that authority is found only within
Scripture, but that Scripture is our ultimate authority.
The basic question this raises is whether there are other
valid sources of authority that Christians should consider
when making public arguments. Sound reason that
comports with God’s creation is one of them.
All matters of public policy and cultural flash-points
subject to intense debate in the public arena, if they are
essential to organizing our shared life around, ought to
and can be debated on the basis of reason, which is never
disconnected from theology, but merely its entailment.
Further, any principle of public policy that a Christian
would want to see codified as a sound reflection of biblical
morality would necessarily be grounded in the natural
law. Any cultural debate that requires Christians to
offer a definitive response must never be at odds with
reason; if it were, it would not be grounded in God’s eternal
law from the start.
For example, it is either reasonable or unreasonable to
kill an unborn child in the womb. This is either a morally
good act or a morally evil act. What it cannot be is morally
benign. Reasoned arguments that are grounded in a
scriptural worldview require us to consider whether the
principle that would license abortion is in fact worthy of
our affirmation. But both reason and revelation testify to
abortion’s unreasonableness. It constitutes the unlawful
taking of human life, which is a violation of the right to
life and God’s authorship of life, and it is therefore a violation
of the sixth commandment (Ex. 20:13).
But to determine whether abortion violates the sixth
commandment, I need to apply principles of reason to
determine whether the unborn child meets the threshold
of a right to life. That requires understandings of hermeneutics,
philosophy, biology, embryology, and ethics. All
this means is that in a topic like abortion, we need to argue
from all sources that coordinate to the truthfulness
of abortion being sinful.
Total Ethics, Total Christ
The task of public apologetics is to bear witness to the
total Christ. The Christ who redeems is the same Christ
who creates and orders (John 1:3; Col. 1:15-17). Where
Christ is rejected, nature and reason are dismissed as well,
which produces the very pottage of decay all around us:
an anti-culture basking in the absurd and the perverse.
Perhaps the greatest non-canonical theologian of the
church, Augustine, echoed such a similar refrain when
he admonished his readers:
Let us attend to the real matter in debate, and let
our arguments appeal to reason and to the authoritative
teaching of the Divine Scriptures, dispassionately
and calmly, so far as we are able.
There’s no principle of Christian morality, whether decreed
in Scripture or attested to in nature, that is not
simultaneously ordered to God’s glory and our good. If
good, an ordinance of reason; if reasonable, it is sound; if
sound, it is binding; if binding, it is God-ordained.
Christianity provides the most consistent, coherent account
of morality necessary for the task of public apologetics.
It offers God as the source of our ethics, reason as
the basis of moral knowledge, and an all-encompassing
goal: our good, but chiefly, God’s glory.
Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
and Apologetics and Associate Dean of the School of Theology.
30 the southern baptist theological seminary