In past articles, we have discussed such things as the possible size of the earth and number of people in the antediluvian world and the possible stature of the gigantic men who lived in those days. We shall proceed with articles that discuss the structure and the size of the Ark; how many animals might have been in it; how the perils of the journey and the logistical problems that were presented might have been handled; the geological and the paleontological evidences of the universal flood; and some related issues. Before getting into that I want to talk a little about Christian Apologetics, The Faith, the theological issues raised by that juxtaposition, and how Historic Orthodox Christianity views these issues.
What Is/Are Christian Apologetics?
First of all, what is a Christian apologetic? One of the reasons for confusions in these areas is that the question itself is fraught with ambiguity and the answers are often vague and vacillating. To dramatize the kind of uncertainty that I am talking about, I recall an incident that happened in Modesto, California in the early 1960's. Dr. John C. Whitcomb, then of Grace Theological Seminary and a co-author along with Dr. Henry Morris of The Genesis Flood, was giving an apologetic lecture. In a discussion afterward he fully agreed that Christian apologetics are of little or no use in bringing men to Christ and have very limited value in helping them to develop a walk of faith. C. S. Lewis, after years of writing some of the most brilliant, widely read, and admired philosophical apologetics in the history of the Christian Church, confessed that he was totally disillusioned with the intellectual and apologetic approach to God and that his philosophical lectures, sermons, and writings left him in fear and uncertainty about his own spiritual condition. Mortimer Adler, in a discussion with Bill Moyers a number of years ago on "Bill Moyer's Journal," said he did not feel that anyone, not even St. Thomas Aquinas, had offered proof of the existence of God. He was writing a book dedicated to proving, epistemologically, noetically, and ontologically, the existence of God. When Moyers asked him if he expected to succeed, Addler said that he did not. When Moyers asked him what he would do after that, Addler said that if he failed, which he fully expected to do, he was going to give up on proving God's existence. Adler, by his own later admission, did fail, and came to the conclusion that God could only be known from the pages of the Bible by faith. By this Dr. Adler, like Augustine before him, meant faith as opposed to reason. Mortimer Adler repented, called upon Jesus Christ to save him, was baptized, and joined the Orthodox Christian faith according to Bill Moyers on a later series called "Bill Moyer's Journal Revisited."
Apologetics, Anti-Apologetics, Orthodoxy and Genesis
What does all this mean? And what, if anything, does it have to do with conclusions about the economy of historic and scientific information given by the Bible? Let us take a bit of space to see if we can find out.
In its simplest form, Christian Apologetics is a concept that is easily and briefly stated. Both the New Random House Unabridged and the New Webster's dictionaries define it as "proofs offered in defense of the Bible and of Christianity."
Certainly this definition could be argued; everything can be argued. But for our needs of the moment we will take that explanation as valid and move on by asking this question: Where does Christian Orthodoxy stand on this matter and where, according to Orthodoxy, does the Bible stand on it?
By Revelation, Not Reason
Historic Orthodox Christianity does not believe in Christian Apologetics as just defined. To Historic Orthodox Christianity, God cannot be known by human intellect or reason. The Bible, according to Orthodoxy, is clear on the subject. God's ways are not man's ways and God's thoughts are not man's thoughts according to Isaiah 55:8, 9. The difference between the two in that passage is illustrated as the distance between the highest heavens and the lowest earth. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!" wrote St. Paul in the Roman 11, "how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out." In these Scriptures we see that God's ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts; they are higher than we are; His wisdom is too deep for us, as is His knowledge. No one has been able to search out His judgments, and His ways cannot be found out or discovered by us.
Writing to the philosophers in Greece, St. Paul identified the very nature of this problem by two things. The first is in I Corinthians 1:18-31 where he says that, when God in His wisdom saw that man, by man's wisdom, was never going to come to know Him, God devised a way that man could know Him, irrespective of his lack of wisdom. It was by the foolishness of preaching which is humiliating to the intellectuals and infuriating to the religionists. But in it is the power that is necessary to save men. This method of God is the way God has worked, is working, and will work, said St. Paul. Then he goes on in chapter 2 and verses 6-16 to say that we are not talking about ignorance. We teach wisdom to those that are maturing. But it is a wisdom that is altogether different in kind and source from the wisdom that natural man knows. This wisdom does not come to us by way of the eyes,the ears, and the mind. These things represent that natural learning process and ability: the eyes seeing it; the ears hearing it; and the mind thinking it. This method and approach is completely impotent to receive and know the wisdom of God with respect to what God, in His Kingdom, has done for us, is doing, and will do. This is a different kind of wisdom that is learned a wholly different way. It is revealed by the Holy Ghost, according to our belief in God and His Word the Bible.
In orthodox Christianity, belief in God is not the product of seeing and knowing. Rather, seeing and knowing truth are the products of believing. Until a man is born again he has no capacity to see and know. When the noted religious leader and thinker, Nicodemus, came to Jesus and tried to engage Him in a religious discussion, Jesus said to him in effect that until he was born again in the Spirit he could not see or comprehend anything about God or truth. Since the spiritual birth by the new Adam into the New Creation has nothing to do with human wisdom, logic, rationalism, philosophy, science, or any other apologetic pursuit, Orthodoxy feels that it is not only useless, but counterproductive. It misleads people, Christian and non Christian alike, into believing that they are getting somewhere when in fact they are going nowhere and misleading others with them. All religious efforts to know God based on the observing and reasoning powers of the mortal mind and positive thinking (which is counterfeit for faith) are Old Testament in their theology. These simply cannot succeed.
In Colossians 2:2-4, 6-10, the Apostle talks about how we receive Christ, how we walk in Christ, where the storehouse of wisdom and knowledge is, how it is accessed by the Christian, and how we must resist the worldly way of thinking in order to do so: "...unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words...Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."
In I Timothy 6:20, 21, St. Paul warns the young evangelist about getting caught up in the pseudo-Christian vanity of science which is falsely called a fact in evidence. It is not a system of facts in evidence at all but a system designed to deny the Bible, distort the testimony of creation, and provide an alternative that is always and ever contrary to God and His Word. That is true even in those misleading places where it appears not to be. Many young men, vain about the intelligence that they may have but for the most part mistakenly think that they have, are being drawn into this error for the sake of ego and image and have make a ship wreck of their Christian lives: "...avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith."
Evangelical Conservative Christianity is the Enlightenment departure from Orthodoxy. In Orthodoxy, truth is revealed by God through the Bible. Reason and empirical evidences have nothing to do with it. The test of truth is: "Thus saith the Lord." The test of any man's belief is revelation; not reason. Life comes from the Tree of Life, not from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Carnal knowledge, most often religious, comes from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil but the end is death; not life.
The Enlightenment theologian, in rejecting this ancient Orthodox precept, developed a motto of his own: "A reasonable God can be known by reason, and reasonable man examines a reasonable universe." Men like Francis Shaeffer, the philosophical apologist, made a rational argument for the correctness of this creed with his upper-story-lower-story hocus pocus. No one understood what that meant but it went over very well with arrogant scholars and intellectuals who were just waiting for someone to remove the restraints. Like F. J. A. Hort, they were itching get their grubby little Enlightenment-stained hands on the treasure of the Church, wrest it away from an old and outdated God, and computerize it to analogue with the age-of-reason religious eclecticism of the West. This Enlightenment approach is simply wrong. Orthodox Christianity has never bought into it and never will. In spite of this, every Enlightenment corruption of Orthodoxy from Calvinism, to Arminiansm, to Evangelical Conservatism, to Christian Apologetics, to the Theonomy Movement, to Modern-Translationism has sought to give itself credence by slapping an "Orthodox" sticker on its bumper. This is only adding insult to injury. Historic Christian Orthodoxy does not accept reason and science as the test of truth or the avenue for acquiring truth.
The Heavens Declare the Glory of God
Yet throughout the history of the Church there has been a dialogue about the reality of, and the place of importance of, General Revelation. The discussion is involved with this kind of a proposition: God is only revealed to man for salvation through Special Revelation, meaning through Jesus Christ, the Cross, the Resurrection, and the preaching of the Gospel. But God is revealed to all men, not for salvation but as to His existence and reality, through nature and the creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God" said the prophet King David in Psalm 19:1-4, "and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."
In Romans 1:18-25, St. Paul said that men have seen the truth of the existence, greatness, and goodness of God because it has been revealed in the creation. While they did not see God create the earth, they do see the evidences of the genius and the handiwork of the Creator. But fallen man, being the vain, self-seeking, self-glorifying creature that he is, has deliberately denied God in order to try to use these things to direct attention to himself. It is as if by discovering them, man is greater than the Creator who made them. This he does by saying he cannot tell from these things that there is a God and that He is the Creator. This is obviously a bald faced, ulterior-motivated lie, and therefore he is without excuse now and will be even more so in the Day of Judgment.
The orthodox theologian does not deny that the existence of God can be seen in these things. But General Revelation does not come to us apart from Christ and grace. This too is Special Revelation. God made the worlds and all things that exist by Jesus Christ, that Christ was slain in the councils of God before the world was formed, and God has never done anything where this creation and man is concerned except through Jesus Christ and through grace. Therefore, to Orthodoxy, it is not autonomous truth that comes to natural man through the powers of his fallen mind with no movement toward him by God and no revelation to him through Jesus Christ and grace.
Natural Theology
There is also a natural-theology aspect to the General-verses-Special Revelation argument that goes off in a different direction. Natural man cannot only see God without being saved, but he can also know something about God's moral law to the good of his community. Therefore it is the duty of the Church, in her social responsibilities to the needs of the saved and the unsaved alike, to teach them this moral law and encourage them to keep it, not by the power of the Holy Spirit through the new man in Christ and the community of the Church, but by the powers of natural observation, social conscience, and the good of society. This Theistic doctrine, previously referred to as the Natural Theology of Rome, has broken all barriers in Christendom and is the guiding principle of Neo-Evangelicalism in our time.
What Is The Value of The Testimony of Nature?
Neither Natural Theology nor General Revelation is the point of interest to us at the moment and I am not going to go further on that now. The question of importance at the moment is this: what good is this knowledge? Is it a necessary first realization to the accepting of the Gospel? Must man first be convinced of the existence of the Creator by empirical observation and rational argument before he can put his trust in Christ and believe His Gospel? It is just here that Apologetics and Orthodoxy part company. Apologetics says yes to this; Orthodoxy says no.
Orthodoxy and Psalm 19
But for Orthodoxy, the question still remains. If God says these things in His Word, and if indeed natural men sees God in the creation and this means that they are without excuse, then it must have some meaning and value. If so, what is the nature of it? And what, if any, responsibility does the Church have to call attention to these empirical and scientific evidences? The Orthodox Fathers have answered in this way. In order to teach the whole counsel of God, we must say what the Bible says. This is not only a permissible option, but a duty and a necessity. But, in order to not detract from the simple truth of the Gospel, we must be careful to say nothing more than that - in principle and in spirit and in truth of course. So the question then becomes: "What, in the eyes of the Orthodox Christianity, does the Bible mean for us to say and to convey?" How do we discover what and where the line is so that we do not step over it and lead men away from truth rather than to it?
One thing that we are not to do is to put any confidence in the importance of winning the argument or being able to bring men to Christ by proving to them that the faith is scientifically and philosophically honorable. In this, C. S. Lewis and Frances Schaeffer were not orthodox. We have noted St. Paul's warning to Timothy in I Timothy 6:20, 21. Now a sensible exposition of this passage shows a warning to Timothy against the pseudo sophistication of the scientific arguments that were corrupting the simplicity of the faith, making those who were not educated feel inferior, and generally confusing, side tracking, and defeating those who got involved in it.
In Colossians 2:8-10, the argument, simply put, is that there is wisdom to be learned in Christ. But the teaching of this wisdom must not become a complicated and confusing ego trip that takes us away from Christ who is the center, away from the Cross, the literal creation, the Holy Trinity. The wisdom of the Church must not put the issue of the inspiration of the Scriptures into the hands of a conclave of power-mad humanists who dare to suggest that, after two thousand years we have better textual evidence of what the real Bible is because the technological age and the cheekiness and impertinence, irreverence of liars and frauds like Fenton John Anthony Hort. The claim of new and better evidence and manuscripts is a dishonest and self-serving claim by self-appointed authorities like James White who make up evidence as it suits their purpose about texts, many of which never existed as texts (as it is now evident that Hort's Alexandrian did not). These modern day Pharisees are asinine and arrogant enough to think that they are actually in a position to pass judgment on the mighty and timeless old King James which, by God's sovereign design, has been the guiding light of His English speaking Church for three centuries. The teaching of the wisdom that is hidden in Christ must never become involved in theories of creation and religion that cannot be explained or known in Jesus Christ who manifests all truth to us through His person and through His Word. When the religious teaching of wisdom makes the acquisition of the knowledge of the Bible and truth a scholarly pursuit that is not available to simple and unlearned men of faith - then beware!
In Christ Are Hidden All the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge
Not only everything we need to know but everything there is to know, if it is true, is in Christ. Not only is it "in Christ" but "In the simplicity that is in Christ." In II Corinthians 1:12, the Apostle says, "For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward." In II Cor. 11:3, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him where all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist," said St. Paul in Colossians 1:15 through 17. In Ephesians 1:8, he said that God, through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ, has abounded to us in all wisdom and prudence. The word prudence is a Greek word phronesis and it means intellectual or moral insight and power.
The Word of God Takes Precedence Over All
In Orthodox Christianity our science and philosophy are not to conflict with the Bible, the new life in Christ, or the principle of wisdom and knowledge by revelation through faith (as contrasted to human intellect and the dialectic, rational, philosophical approach). This is simply being ignored by Enlightenment theologians today. What they call "blind faith" and make light of is actually Biblical faith that calls upon men to approach God simply believing, not because of what they can see with the eyes of the mind, but what the Bible reveals. Jesus' words, "Blessed is he that believes without seeing," are railed upon as if they were the depth of ignorance. It is for this very reason that Orthodoxy rejects Enlightenment Theology. Anyone who thinks that he is wiser than Jesus, whom he considers to be ignorant for encouraging men to believe what they cannot see, is no friend of Christ, His Church, or Her mission in this world. It is he who is the fool, lost in the tangled maze of his own darkened mind.
Evangelical Conservative Theology is Based on Reason, Not Revelation
To Orthodoxy, Evangelical Conservative Theology, which is a product of Enlightenment Theology, is based upon a fundamental fallacy. A reasonable God cannot be known by reason as reasonable man examines a reasonable universe. The mind of man, while still retaining some of the image of God and still in possession of the free will, is fallen and unreasonable. The mortal mind is free to make choices but has no wisdom upon which to make those choices until enlightened by the Gospel. The creation, being under the curse, is distorted and fallen from the excellent condition that God pronounced it to be in before the Fall. It is not a perfect universe, having been corrupted by the Fall, and the examination of it could not lead man to God, even if man could find God in that way, which he cannot and never could. The first and second laws of thermo-dynamics teach us that everything is in a state of disorganization and deterioration and that there is nothing being created. While it is true that nothing was being created after the first six days before the Fall, it is also true that nothing was corrupting or in a state of deterioration and decay. All of that is the result of the Fall. So the universe is abnormal, it is distorted and unreasonable in the final analysis.
God Himself declared in the third chapter of Romans that man being fallen is no longer capable of reasonable thought as God counts reason. They have no understanding, He said in Verse 11. We have just seen how St. Paul, said in Chapter 1 that they are blind fools and what they think they see is only vain imagination. In I Corinthians 2:14, he said that the natural mind cannot and will not receive and believe the truth. The natural man does not have the Holy Spirit of God and so he cannot discern between truth and error. God, by natural man's standard and understanding, is not reasonable. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. So in the Orthodox Christian doctrine we have unreasonable man in an abnormal universe, trying to comprehend God who man considers to be unreasonable, with a mind which is incapable of reasonable thought according to Romans 3:11.
But What About Psalm 19?
All of that not withstanding, it does serve God's purpose to demonstrate the truth of His existence, His word, and His judgments by the things that natural man can see. It is, therefore, the duty as well as the prerogative of the prophets of the Lord to point these things up as we go along. We do not seek to lead anyone to God by rationalism, nor do we propose to prop up the faith of the weakling by giving him something to see and feel since he finds it hard to walk by faith. These kinds of explanations and motives are self-condemning. "Without faith it is impossible to please God," said the writer of Hebrews in the eleventh chapter and verses 4-6. "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."
But there are liars and blasphemers in this world - teaching school, doing pseudo scientific programs on educational channels, writing books, and a host of other things - who are telling people that science has disproved the Bible. One of the values of taking a practical and reasonable look at these things is to show that those who make such claims are liars. There is not one shred of proof in this world--not the tiniest bit anywhere--that calls into question one single claim of the Bible. There is no proof of organic, biological, or uniform evolution between the species and there is no proof - no proof - that the earth is older than 5,000 years. Anyone who says otherwise is misinformed, uninformed, dishonest, or all three. He may choose to believe that the earth is older, but he knows that he cannot prove it. The fact that he has deceived most of the people in this world into believing that the has proven it does not alter the reality.
The Heavens and the Earth Declare
On the other hand, there is abundant proof of devolution and there is monumental proof of the universal Genesis Flood. There is undeniable proof to the honest mind and open mind that false religion and myths, whether Zoroastrianism, yoga, metaphysics, Hinduism, Greek and Roman mythology, eastern mysticism, or new age religion (which is all that is worst and most blasphemous in the others) are all perversions of the Bible and its truth. The Genesis story of creation and the Flood, the Old Testament worship of the nation of Israel as described in the Bible involving the blood sacrifice, and the Gospel of Christ that according to St. Paul in Romans 10:17, 18 had gone into every nook and cranny of the world as early on as his day, are evidently the bases from which these other religions have sprung.
The Mission of the Church
This does not mean that missionary work does not need to continue, because it does. But the point is that the Gospel has been there before and the religions of the world are what is left after the humanists, unbelievers, blasphemers, Satanists, and pseudo-Christian scientific apologists, have gotten through with it. The Gilgamesh Epic is nothing but a distortion by the river cultures of the Genesis flood story. Zoroaster's Hero is a distortion and a perversion of God, of Adam, and of the looked for Messiah. The Hindu laying on his bed of nails and suffering all day is the perverted remnants of the Gospel story of the glory and the saving of one's life that comes for suffering for Christ's sake. The Dyak in Borneo sprinkling blood on the land before he plants his crops to atone for its evils and drive off evil spirits, is the perverted leftovers of the Christian message of redemption. The sacred cow of India is the warped descendant of the sacrificial red heifer on the Day of Atonement, and on and on it goes. The common theme, perverted though it is, is proof positive, anthropologically speaking, of the authenticity of the Biblical account and proves that the Bible was the original from which all religious beliefs and myths concerning God, creation, the Garden of Eden, the serpent, man and his origins, good and evil, the Ark, and the universal flood have sprung.
Because the institutes of public learning, the media, the seminaries, and the government have been taken over by lying, deceptive, brainwashing, evangelists and disciples for the counter gospel of the dark kingdom of the dragon, people are almost convinced at times that the Bible really has been disproved and that evolution has been proven. In other articles we have (and we will to) exposed those lies by dwelling a little on the Ark, the Flood, dispersion and origin of the different races, and other relevant issues. We will show the honest person who is able and willing to think independently that not only could these things have happened they ways in which the Bible tells us, but they are the only sensible explanations for what we see in geology, the fossils, cultures, and the religious pluralism in the world around us.
The Bases Upon Which Men Make Choices By Faith No effort is made by us to force people to believe the Bible or the Gospel because man must believe by faith. That is the only way it can be and the only way God wants it. God not only cannot but will not force those who do not want to believe by physical, social, educational, economical, governmental, rational, psychological, or scientific coercion. But it will testify to the reality of those truths for those who want to believe.
Speak the Word of This Book
These are the instructions and the limitations to the prophets of the Lord by the Orthodox Fathers as we can discern them. I realize that a much more thorough and informative discussion could and perhaps in some instances should be made, but the constraints of time and space constrain me to leave it here for now. I trust that this will give you a Biblical and theological context into which you can fit the real and honest scientific, philosophical, anthropological evidences about the creation and the universal flood. Hopefully, then you will not be confused or misled by false men who rely upon mass psychology, misinformation, scoffing, chiding, and arrogance to conceal the ignorance of their darkened minds and the nefariousness of their motives.
Copy Right, Earl Cripe, 2001
