My name is Stephen Bedard, and it's an
honor to be here to be able to share with you this afternoon, as I've been sitting
in the different sessions and sitting at lunch, been listening to some of the
conversation that goes on, and people all trying to gauge who is from where.
Are you a wesleyan?
Are you a Pentecostal?
And people are trying to figure these things out.
Well, I come to you as a back Baptist.
I don't know how I got in there.
Maybe it's because it's Gary Nelson's, a Baptist.
That's probably there you go.
So in some ways, it's an interesting
subject for me to look at, although I am not totally divorced from this setting in
that, like John Wesley, I was raised Anglican.
That was a big part of my life.
I spent over 20 years in the Anglican
Church and went from the Anglican Church to the Pentecostal Church.
So was baptized in the Pentecostal Church.
And so I have a great love for Pentecostalism as well.
But I am a Baptist pastor.
But I come here to talk to you not specifically as a Baptist, but as a pastor
and as a New Testament instructor and as a Christian apologist.
Christian apologetics is a very important part of what I do in all of those areas.
And when I heard about the topic for this
symposium, it really had my mind going about the opportunities that were there
and thoughts that had been in the back of my mind from my experience within the
Pentecostal Church, from my reading of John Wesley.
And so I am very much looking forward to
sharing with you about experience as a Christian apologetic.
Now, there seems to be a renaissance going
on within the church these days when it comes to Christian apologetics.
There are more apologetics related books being published than ever before.
There are countless blogs and websites and podcasts and all kinds of other online
resources, as well as evidence that this is more than just a popular fad.
You'll see that a lot of Bible colleges
and seminaries, not only are they offering apologetics courses, a growing number of
them are actually offering apologetics majors for their degrees.
So there is something real happening
within the church, a recognition that Christians need to respond to the
questions and the concerns that people have.
This apologetics movement is largely
within the evangelical wing of Christianity.
However, evangelicalism is a really wide tent.
And the question we have to ask is, is Christian apologetics just limited to the
part under the tent that really focuses on the intellectual aspects of faith, or are
there opportunities elsewhere under the tent?
What I'm going to try to do is demonstrate
that Pentecostalism is and always has been positioned very well to be effective in a
Christian apologetics in the context of experience.
And what I'm going to do is try to define for you what Christian apologetics is and
explain the role of it in the church and how experience can be better utilized as a
Christian apologetics in the skeptical world.
Now, for me, as a New Testament person who
studies and teaches New Testament, it's important for me to start with the Bible.
And so when we think about apologetics,
very often we go to a passage like one Peter 315, where we're told to have an
answer or a defense for the hope that is within us.
The Greek word there for defense is
apologia, and it means to provide a reason for a belief.
Apologetics is larger than Christian apologetics.
Apologetics has been around centuries before Christianity.
Plato wrote his apology of Socrates.
It's basically giving a reason why this is true or this is important, that Christians
are called to be ready to give an answer is clear.
But Peter doesn't really give us a lot of detail about how that's supposed to be
done, other than that it is to be done with gentleness and respect.
And whatever apologetic method we have, we definitely need to keep that in mind.
Some examples from the Apostle Paul might
help us to see what kind of content can be a part of Christian apologetics.
An important passage for us is from Paul's Evangelistic preaching in Acts chapter 17.
Now, many apologists, when they look at Acts 17, will go directly to his
experience in Athens, and I'm going to get there.
But I think it's worth taking a little look at his experience in the Jewish
synagogue in Thessalanka, in Acts 17, one to nine.
In this passage, we're told that Paul
argues with the Jews, he argues with them, and some of them have come to faith.
If I have heard one objection that has come up more than anything else
when it comes to Paul Jackson, you cannot argue someone to Jesus.
And yet, if you read Acts chapter 17,
verses one to nine, you see Paul arguing and people coming to faith.
Of course, it's the Holy Spirit that is
bringing the person, but the Holy Spirit can use anything.
And in those cases, Paul is using arguments.
Now, more commonly, we go to the last part of chapter 17, verses 16 to 34, where Paul
interacts with philosophers and some other intellectuals.
Paul speaks to them on their level and in
their style, even quoting some of their Greek poets.
Now, for many people within church, that is the apologetic method.
That is how you do it.
You do it through a purely intellectual level, interacting, quoting from
appropriate sources, and that's how it's supposed to be done.
However, we're going to take a look at another example, and the second example
comes from Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians.
Now, when Luke is talking about Paul and
Thessalanca, he's focusing on the intellectual part of what Paul is doing.
But Paul, when he's writing to the
Thessalonians, he rounds it out with a different picture.
This is what he says in verses 14 and 15 from the first chapter for we know,
brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you because our Gospel came to you not
only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction.
In addition to Paul's words, there was an
experience of the Holy Spirit that helped to bring confirmation.
There's more that we could say about what the Bible has to say about apologetics,
but I want to get into some modern definitions as well.
William Lane Craig is probably one of the
most prominent apologists today, and this is how he defines apologetics.
Apologetics, from the Greek apologia a
defense is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational
justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith.
Apologetics is thus primarily a
theoretical discipline, though it has a practical application.
Now, in this definition, Craig is focusing on the intellectual aspect.
Alistair McGrath has a similar definition.
He defines Paul Jackson, the field of
Christian thought that focuses on the justification of the core themes of the
Christian faith and its effective communication to the nonchristian world.
Now here McGrath is focusing on apologetics as an aspect of evangelism.
However, this is the definition that I'm going to go with.
This is by John Stackhouse in his book Humble Apologetics.
Thus, I suggest that anything that helps people take Christianity more seriously
than they did before, anything that helps defend and commend it properly, counts as
apologetics and should be part of any comprehensive program of apologetics.
That's the definition that I'm going to
use with because the reality is both seekers and Christians struggle at times
with their confidence in the truth claims of Christianity.
And it is also true that some people respond to intellectual arguments while
there are others who need other types of evidence.
For many Christians, including myself, it
is a combination of the two that is required.
When many people think of apologetics, one
of the first names that's going to come up is that of C.
S. Lewis.
When we think of C. S.
Lewis, we probably think of his intellectual style of apologetics.
And he was indeed brilliant.
And yet when he looked back on his own
faith journey in his book Surprised by Joy, he makes this very interesting
statement what I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing.
You may take any number of wrong turnings, but keep your eyes open, and you will not
be allowed to go very far before warning signs appear.
You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you.
The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.
Experience is an important aspect of the Christian journey, and this is going to be
demonstrated with just a few examples from John Wesley and also Pentecostalism.
John Wesley, while not a systematic
theologian or a professional philosopher, had more than enough intellectual rigor to
participate in traditional intellectual apologetics.
Albert eltler describes Wesley as having the habit of pitching on to the vulnerable
links in an opponent's argument and trying to smash them one by one.
That sounds pretty much like what we think
of apologetics happening and how it happens in certain contexts.
Anything we see about Wesley's understanding of the confidence in the
Christian faith must acknowledge that he had the capability to provide
an intellectual defense for the Christian faith.
What Wesley sought for himself, and what he sought for other people as well, was a
confidence and an assurance of being a true Christian.
In order to provide confidence, Wesley did
not go for the traditional arguments for God's existence.
Wesley was already well trained in
theology, and yet even in his early ministry he doubted his own salvation
until the Aldersgate experience, when his heart was strangely warmed.
Albert Elder's comments on Wesley's
understanding of experience deserve to be quoted at length the essence of faith,
whether at the threshold or in its fullness, has always to do with man's
immediate and indubitable assurance of God's loving presence in his heart.
Wesley followed Locke in the denial of innate ideas and appears never to have
taken seriously the traditional arguments for the existence of God.
In their place, he put an alternate notion
of the self evidence of God's reality as strictly implied in the faithful man's
awareness of God's gracious disposition toward him.
This awareness of God's gracious presence
is what Wesley meant by experience, and it was for him as real and
unmistakable a perception as any sensory awareness might be.
This doctrine has been construed as a
subjective theory of experience in general.
In Wesley's view, however, it is a theory
of religious knowledge, a corollary of his view of revelation.
For Wesley, it was possible for a Christian to have confidence in the
Christian faith and assurance of personal salvation.
Wesley believed that something real
happened at a conversion and that Christians could expect some sort of
experience of God's presence throughout their life.
Wesley presents a clear description of what this looks like.
In his essay The Witness of the Spirit
Discourse Two, wesley describes the importance of understanding the nature of
the witness of the Spirit, and this is what it looks like
it is the more necessary to explain and defend the truth because there is a danger
on the right hand and on the left if we deny it.
There is a danger lest our religion degenerate into mere formality, lest
having a form of Godliness, we neglect it, if not deny the power of it.
If we allow it, but do not understand what
we allow, we're liable to run into all the wildness of enthusiasm.
It's therefore needful in the highest
degree to guard those who fear God from both these dangers by a scriptural and
rational illustration and confirmation of the religious truth.
In his essay here on the Witness of the
Spirit, wesley was able to distinguish between experience and enthusiasm, which
was a criticism that the methodists were facing.
The distinction was that true experience
was a type of religious intuition rather than perceptions and feelings.
In this essay that Wesley writes, he
measures religious experience to scriptural standards.
Experience is seen in the light of Romans
816, where God's spirit witnesses with the person's spirit.
This isn't just a subjective experience.
There are outward signs that tell us when this is happening.
Christian experience must be accompanied
by the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit.
While there is room for the timing and the
manner in which the Spirit's work is taking place, total absence of the fruit
of the Spirit should lead to questions of the validity of the experience.
John Wesley expected that when a person was confronted with the Gospel and they
responded with faith that something real was taking place, conversion was more than
just mental ascent to a certain creed or formula.
The Holy Spirit was active in such a way
that a person experienced assurance of salvation.
The truth of Christianity, while able to
be defended on other grounds, was revealed in the ongoing transformation of the
Christian and then turning briefly to Pentecostalism in its origin.
The Pentecostal distinctive is that
experience can be used as evidence, specifically that speaking in tongues is
evidence for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Receiving of the baptism is not something
that needs to be guessed at, but rather is accompanied by a manifestation.
It's accompanied by something happening by the Holy Spirit.
Glossalalia is not the only spiritual
evidence of the existence of the presence of God.
The earliest revivals, such as Azuza
Street, produced changes in people's lives.
That evidence that something real was taking place into the 21st century.
It's still said that Sunday morning is the
most segregated hour in America, and yet 100 years ago, blacks and whites worshiped
together in unity, not putting one before the other.
It was said that the color line was washed away in the blood.
Revivals were evidence of the reality of God and the truth of God's Word.
Frank Bartleman, who was one of the witnesses and the participants of the
Azuza Street revival, quotes Ch Spursion, who I will note is a Baptist.
With these words, the presence of God in the church will put an end to infidelity.
Men will not doubt his word when they feel his spirit.
Now, skeptics may claim that improved race relations are possible without God.
They might claim the Glossalia cannot be verified as authentic.
But there was other manifestations that were taking place as well.
Robert M.
Anderson quotes makes this statement about some of those early revivals every manner
of disease and disability was alleged to have been cured, and the most spectacular
miracles were claimed, including the growth of new fingers on the hand of a
woman who had lost the originals in an accident.
Numerous persons testified to having seen the dead restored to life.
Participants in the revivals were not
naive enough to think that every claim of the supernatural came from God.
Bartleman, in his book on Azuza Street,
often laments in his accounts of the revival that there were the presence of
spiritualists who were coming to the meetings as well as people who operated
the flesh and who were just trying to make a name for themselves.
Nevertheless, for those who were seeking a faith that was real and a God that was
active, there was more than enough credible evidence.
How does this all fit with Christian apologetics?
Going back to Stackhouse's definition of
apologetics as anything that helps people take Christianity more serious than
before, anything that helps defend and commend it properly counts as apologetics.
There's a tremendous opportunity here for the experiential side of Christianity.
Apologetics is appropriate in the context of evangelism, when a seeker is
considering faith but is being held back by doubts and other misgivings.
Apologetics is also appropriate in the context of discipleship.
As Christians grow in their confidence in
the Christian faith, authentic spiritual experiences can make a difference.
In both cases, authentic experiences of
and testimonies to healings and other dramatic answers to prayer can be a
powerful apologetic to the truth of Christianity.
However, such apologetic value requires
much more than just preaching a message of signs and wonders.
One of the challenges to the apologetic value of experiences comes within the
charismatic movement itself, specifically the Prosperity Gospel.
The Prosperity Gospel claims that
blessings such as health and wealth are entitled to every Christian and all they
have to do is to claim it and to ask it and they will receive it.
The problem with the Prosperity Gospel,
among other things, is not that it is too experiential, but rather it is
not experiential enough, since experience demonstrates that not
every faithful Christian is healed, claiming all will be healed when that's
not reality actually leads to more disbelief.
Another challenge for experience as a
Christian apologetic is accepting the limitations of religious experience.
When Mormons are challenged on their faith
and about the lack of archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon and other
problems, they will fall back on what they call their testimony.
Their testimony is the experience they had
after reading the Book of Mormon, praying to God about the truth of the Book of
Mormon and feeling what they call the burning in the bosom.
And if they feel the burning in the bosom
that's God signed that yes indeed, the Book of Mormon is true.
Now, what's the difference between this
Mormon burning in the bosom and Wesley's strangely warmed heart?
There is a major difference.
The difference is Wesley's experience worked in cooperation with all the
historical and rational support for Biblical Christianity.
While the Mormons evidence is in
substitute for any other support within the pentecostal experience of signs.
The same limitations are there.
Even Frank Bartleman, who was there at a Sousa street and participated in so many
things with all of his confidence in the way the Holy spirit was working in various
churches and missions, still fell into the error of oneness Pentecostalism.
A religious experience, while pointing to
something that is supernatural, does not necessarily confirm theological accuracy.
Experiential apologetics must be held to a
standard of biblical authority and historic Christianity.
I want to take a look at experience and a
way forward for us how this can be practical for us.
What role is there for experience as Christian apologetics?
C. S.
Lewis, in his book Miracles, said this
if anything extraordinary seems to have happened.
We can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion.
If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we shall say.
What we learn from experience depends on
the kind of philosophy we bring to the experience.
Some, especially among the new atheists
today who firmly hold to a modernist worldview where science can explain
everything, will never accept religious experience or miracles as evidence for the
existence of God or the truth of Christianity.
However, in a culture that is at least strongly influenced by postmodernism,
there is an opportunity for some nonchristians.
The arguments from experience will carry
far more authority than the claims of the Bible or ecclesiastical leaders.
That doesn't mean experience is more important than biblical teaching, but
rather apologists will need to work hard to demonstrate the truth that the
experience of the true God is the God who's revealed in the Bible.
A good beginning for this renewed effort
in experiential apologetics is Craig Keener's two volume book Miracles.
Craig Keener is both a Pentecostal
Christian and one of the most highly respected New Testament scholars.
In his book, Keener presents a solid study
of miracles in the New Testament and in the ancient world.
However, the largest section of his book is on modern miracle accounts from around
the world, in the majority world and in the west as well.
Keener seeks to demonstrate that there is some good evidence for credible
supernatural experiences that are consistent with biblical witness.
This is what Keener says
examples can readily refute misinformed claims that people do not experience many
highly unusual recoveries that they attribute to prayer, in particular
extraordinary cases or an accumulation of mildly extraordinary ones.
They may also shift the probability toward supernatural explanations if one's
starting assumptions do not rule out such explanations.
As Lewis warns, bringing a strict
naturalistic philosophy will allow readers to reject Keener's claims.
However, for others, reports of miracles
and supernatural experience in a sober and credible manner may help accomplish the
goal, as Stackhouse has stated, of taking Christianity more seriously.
And I'll just end just with a personal note for myself as someone involved in
Christian apologetics and involved in Christian ministry.
If someone comes to me and says, what is the one reason why, you know, that God is
real and Christianity is true, what would I say?
Well, you know what? It's going to depend upon the day on a
week like this Holy Week, good Friday, Easter Sunday.
I'm thinking of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
I believe that the resurrection of Jesus
is one of the most historically verifiable events in all of religious history.
But you know what?
You ask me on another day and I think of
some very specific answers to prayer that go far beyond coincidence.
Religious experiences that I've had in
that way that I don't see as happening by accident.
And on those days, those are the ones that I hold on to.
So I think there's a role for both.
We need to be using our minds in terms of rational apologetics, but certainly we
should be taking seriously the Holy spirits and the supernatural experiences
that we might experience in our walk of faith.
Are there any questions.
Based on Sacramento definition?
Would you think it's valid to say that
compassionate ministry and seeking for justice is apologetics?
Oh, definitely.
There's a book by
Ron Cider and he's written a whole bunch of books on this kind of topic.
But he does make a statement in one of his
books about something he calls holistic apologetics and being active in
social justice and helping the poor and all of those types of things.
Definitely there is an important role for
that as an apologetic, and I think it's one of the most important ones.
Because
of certain things that have happened in certain churches and public personalities,
there's a need to rebuild our reputation for why we're doing what we're doing.
So definitely, yeah, the idea of apologetics really is very wide.
Very wide.
Anything else?
I like your comment about John Wesley.
I've been watching some debates, for
example, Alice McGrath, and that did cross my mind about two
things the character issue, but also the confrontation with the living God.
Whether that comes into it.
Because this guy is
he's saying things to the living God, not just Alastair McGrath.
He doesn't think, okay, somewhere I just wonder whether the apologist
doesn't have some kind of upper hand, which is what John Western seems to
indicate, that because of his being immersed in Scripture, in the life of God
and in prayer, perhaps some of this other stuff, god was in a sense, with him.
So when he was in confrontation with someone, there was that intangible sense.
I kind of wondered that when I saw some of these and Craig as well.
If you have some comments on that, maybe your experience or someone else in this
room that intangible in the face of the young believers existence.
Well, as you're talking about that, it
made me think about Billy Graham's preaching.
And if you watch Billy Graham preach, I
mean, obviously he's the most effective or successful evangelist.
But if you just listen to his sermons
purely on a homolettic level, just that he's not the best preacher.
I mean, he's very good, but he's not the best preacher.
So I would listen to his sermons.
Why is he effective?
Why are people responding?
And then it hit me.
He really believes this stuff.
But you know what I mean?
He's confident about it.
I could present a message on something that I really like, some topic
that I'm interested, but it comes across when you have a confidence
in what you're saying because of your experience.
And we could do a long study of what was the difference between Billy Graham and
Charles Templeton because they both hit the same problem of their confidence.
And there's a story in Billy Graham's biography, I think.
He goes off into the woods and he puts his Bible on a stump and he's wrestling with
the questions that he has and something happens to him there.
Something happens to him there that didn't happen to Charles Templeton.
Just to add to that, Charles Templeton has there's an experience of Charles Templeton
where he prays for a baby and the baby's healed and he refuses to.
Believe it because he did that's. Right.
Yeah. And that goes to what CS.
Lewis says.
If we are determined to bring something, we bring our philosophy.
Either it's complete naturalism or
whatever, we're going to be affected by that.
But what I'm seeing in people today and this is whether it's online
conversations I have or within my church or community, people are open to it, that
there's some kind of there's more explanation.
That modernist view that science explains everything.
People don't necessarily buy that anymore.
I mean, there's an opportunity for the
church to jump onto that and to demonstrate.
But we have to keep that level right between that balance between experience
and Bible, because again, we could follow Frank Bartleman.
Lots of experience
won this pentecostalism, and it happens very easily.
So it seems to me in our.
Time.
A lot of issues.
We want to settle them.
We look for a well designed experiment.
What are the effects of global climate
change and how we prepare for well, let's get together a group of scientists the
Harvard government criticized because they didn't seem to defer to the scientists.
So let's get the numbers, whatever field.
So it seems at least what we're being told
is that we should be moved by the scientifically well designed experimental.
And I wonder if that's itself a
distinctive challenge for apologetics in the Christian faith.
That what it is we are trying to validate, if you want.
It doesn't give itself to that kind of thing.
I mean, there are well designed experiments about the power of prayer and
the distance and all that sort of stuff, but in some ways they seem to me like
that wasn't the kind of evidence I was really needing.
You follow me?
I understand persuasive power of the well designed experiment seems so much to be
sought these days, but seems somehow at odds with the kinds of things that the
Christian faith needs as the persuasive tools.
Lewis in miracles actually anticipates
those experiments, and he's imagining that we did this kind of thing.
And he talks about why that doesn't really
matter, as if God is going to feel trapped.
Oh, they ask the question.
I guess I have to answer.
It doesn't quite work out that way.
What I'm finding for apologetics people do not necessarily need the
airtight answers that I need to know exactly how everything happened.
What's the age of the Earth?
I get asked, what's the age of the word?
And I have a ready answer. What the age of the word?
I know the age.
This planet Earth has been around for at least 47 years.
I know it okay.
And so, yeah, these things aren't so important.
But I find that people want to know that their questions matter
when they're trying to understand why is God allowing suffering going on?
How can there be all these different religions that people actually want to be?
The space to talk about those things.
The Hemorrhaging Faith study that was done
a number of years ago, very important in terms of what's happening with faith
experience of people in the young adult generation.
And one of the concerns that came up is
that they didn't have that space to ask those questions.
Now, the response for apologists is not necessarily, here, read this.
The conversation is over.
It's about discussion, saying, you know what?
Some thoughtful people have looked at these things and reflected upon them.
And the Bible, historic Christianity, has something to say on this.
And oftentimes apologetics keeps
Christianity on the table and not long enough for the Spirit to do his work.
And not just before conversion, but after
conversion as well, because we need those reminders.
So again, one of the things that come up
is, well, apologetics, they don't really leave a lot of room for mystery.
I have lots of mystery. Okay.
There's a lot of things that I don't know, but on some of the major things of did
Jesus claim that he was more than a person?
Is there a reason to believe that he actually physically rose from the dead?
We can talk about these things,
and there's room for it, and there's a biblical basis for it.
Thank you very much.