The Intellectual Components Of The Great Commission

"The hardest thing to raise funds for, that I know of, in Christendom is for Christian education. You want to raise money for evangelism, it's easy. You want to raise money for helping starving children, it's easy. You want to raise money for mercy ministries, it's easy. And it's good that it is. But the hardest thing is for Christian education, because people don't really think it's all that important. 'Let's get them converted. And if we can get them converted, we'll change the world.' Well, when a person is converted, they may be fifty-five years old biologically, but spiritually, they're one day old. They're babes, and babies don't change the world. It's adults that make a difference. Fifty years ago, I read the first biography ever written on Billy Graham, and Billy Graham said the thing that kept him up at night were all the people who made decisions for Christ at his rallies, he said, and he wondered, 'Who's following up? Are they being taught? Are they being grounded in the things of God?' In the first century church, the strategy of the church was, first of all, proclamation, the kerygma. The apostles went out and preached. People were converted. They brought them into the church and immediately put them into didache, teaching them, grounding them, so that they would not just be converts, but that they would be disciples. And a disciple is a student. A disciple is a learner who is enrolled in the school of Rabbi Jesus….We don't really apply ourselves to being disciples. And the Great Commission says, 'Don't just convert them. Ground them. Teach them. Bring them to maturity in their conformity to the image of Christ.'" (R.C. Sproul, 25:07 here)

Classical apologetics

A few observations about classical apologetics:

In my anecdotal experience, Calvinists who oppose Van Tilian presuppositionalism often take R. C. Sproul as the standard-bearer of classical apologetics. But there are some basic problems with that:

1. Sproul isn't the most competent exponent of classical apologetics. He's a generalist and popularizer. Winfried Corduan, W. L. Craig, Richard Swinburne, and Stephen Davis are more adept exponents of classical apologetics than Sproul. 

From an earlier generation, I'd classify Warfield as a classical apologist, although there are many current topics that he doesn't cover. 

There's a kind of Reformed chauvinism that latches onto someone simply because he's a fellow Calvinist–one of us–so we first turn to representatives of our own position. However, the fact that Sproul is a Calvinist is completely unrelated to his philosophical competence as an exponent of classical apologetics.  

Another well-known proponent of classical apologetics is Norm Geisler. Geisler has mentored a generation of protégés. However, Geisler spreads himself very thin, and he's not a topnotch. 

In fact, Corduan is a Calvinist! Although Corduan generally writes for popular consumption, he's more sophisticated than Sproul. 

Sorry if this comes across as elitist, but apologetics is an intellectual field. We're up against the best minds that secularism and non-Christian rivals have to offer. So it's necessary to have a standard of comparison. 

2. Theologically, Craig, Corduan, Swinburne, and Davis range along a continuum. Swinburne is the least orthodox while Corduan is the most orthodox. 

And that draws attention to another point. Classical apologetics uses a two-stage argument: the first step is to use natural theology to establish God's existence while the second step, building on the first step, is to establish Christian theism. That means there's no integral relationship between classical apologetics and Christianity, or any particular Christian tradition. A classical apologist can be a Calvinist, Thomist, Molinist, open theist, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Catholic, Muslim, or Orthodox Jew. Because the first step isn't Christian, a Christian second step isn't entailed by the first step. Although the second step is inseparable from the first step, the first step is separable from the second step.

Because the first stage of the argument is compartmentalized in that regard, the initial stage is not and cannot be informed by Christian theism. The second step can't feed back into our understanding of the first step, which is theologically neutral in a sectarian sense. 

That's another reason why it's arbitrary for a Calvinist to reach for Sproul as the go-to guy on classical apologetics. There's no internal relationship between Calvinism and classical apologetics. 

Notice that thus far I haven't offered a value judgment on classical apologetics. I'm just offering some clarifications. 

3. There's a sense in which truth is circular: a system of logically implicated truths and causally implicated facts. Contingent truths and necessary truths. That gives rise to the cliche that "all truth is God's truth". 

But in that event, there's no necessary starting-point in apologetics. You can break into the circle at any point. 

Moreover, unlike a two-step apologetic, which is unilinear and irreversible, a circle runs clockwise and counterclockwise. One set of truths will illuminate another set of truths, in no particular order. For reality is holistic. If Christian theism is true, then that truth permeates truth in general. If Christianity is true, then reality is Christian in general–in which case you can't artificially isolate a non-Christian starting-point from a Christian conclusion. 

Rather, there's an emerging pattern. The pattern was always Christian, but that may be inevident until more of the pattern is on display. 

Classical apologetics is defective in that regard. That's one reason I'm a presuppositionalist rather an a classical apologist. 

Is the canon a fallible list of infallible books?

To put it briefly, Rome believes that the New Testament is an infallible collection of infallible books...The historic Protestant position shared by Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and so on, has been that the canon of Scripture is a fallible collection of infallible books…Also there was the issue of authority, and the principle that emerged among Protestants was that of sola scriptura, which means that Scripture alone has the authority to bind our conscience. Scripture alone is infallible because God is infallible. The church receives the Scripture as God’s Word, and the church is not infallible. That is the view of all Protestant churches. 

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/qas/we-talk-bible-being-inspired-word-god-would-men-wh/

i) I believe this distinction originated with Sproul's mentor, John Gerstner, which Sproul popularized. But it's unclear what that distinction really means. If each and every book in the collection is infallible, then in what sense is the collection still fallible? Presumably, Gerstner/Sproul don't think the canon is actually in error, for if it mistakenly included one or more fallible books, then it wouldn't be a collection of infallible books. 

ii) Someone might object that I've committed the composition fallacy. But that depends. It's invalid to infer that if every engine part weights less than 50 lbs, then the entire engine weighs less than 50 lbs, but it's valid to infer that if every engine part is metal, then the entire engine is metal. 

iii) In theory, a fallible canon might mistakenly omit one or more infallible books. Every canonical book would be infallible, but not every infallible book would be canonical. Yet that doesn't seem to be what Gerstner/Sproul have in mind.

iv) Rather, they seem to mean it's possible that the canon is in error. But in that event, it's possible that the canon contains one or more fallible books. 

v) I think what they're trying to say that while the canon might be mistaken, there's a high probability that the canon is correct. The canon is possibly in error, but not actually in error. And there's sufficient evidence to be confident about the canon.

vi) It's not uncommon for Protestants to believe that God providentially guided Christians to canonize the right books. But if that's the case, then is the canon still a fallible collection of books?

vii) In addition, the locus of alleged fallibility is ambiguous. Is the canon said to be fallible because the evidence for the canon, while adequate, is less than conclusive or rationally compelling? Or is the canon said to be fallible because any uninspired human judgment is fallible no matter how conclusive the evidence?

viii) Furthermore, does the fallibility of the canon have reference to internal or external attestation? If a canonical book is inspired, and if it contains internal evidence regarding its own inspiration, or if an inspired book cross-attests the inspiration of another book, then is the canonicity of that book merely fallible?  

I think the Gerstner/Sproul formulation is too equivocal to be useful.

A Skeptic Of Christianity Complimenting R.C. Sproul

Listen to the first few minutes of Robert Price's latest podcast. He also makes some positive comments about John Warwick Montgomery. Price doesn't believe in the existence of God, he's a Jesus mythicist, and he's debated William Lane Craig, James White, and other Christians.

Sproul on suffering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brRHBBY1T14

R.C. Sproul, From Dust To Glory

To add to what Steve Hays has posted, John Piper has a good article on Sproul. He was an unusually good communicator who held such a high view of God and of scripture, and he was willing to fight a lot of battles that needed to be fought. Since Sproul communicated so many important truths so well, you could cite so many examples of how good of a teacher he was and why he'll be missed. Here are a few that stand out in my mind at the moment, and I'll probably think of a lot more later.

On how he'd explain to his mother the difference between a Protestant understanding of justification and the Roman Catholic view.

On imputed righteousness.

Shortly after my father's death in 2012, I watched the conclusion of Sproul's Dust To Glory series with my mother. During the closing minutes, he discusses God's glory in heaven. I initially watched this with my father in mind, but it's applicable to R.C. Sproul as well.

Mohler on Sproul

https://albertmohler.com/2017/12/14/bright-burning-light-robert-charles-sproul-february-13-1939-december-14-2017/

Frame on Sproul

John Frame

R. C. Sproul and I were born two months apart, in the same city, Pittsburgh. Both of us were profoundly influenced by John Gerstner. RC went to Pittsburgh Seminary to study with Gerstner; I went to Westminster to study with Gerstner’s teachers. But I visited Pittsburgh Seminary a few times. Once in Gerstner’s class, there was a young fellow who dominated the class discussion. A friend later introduced the student to me as “Bob” Sproul. Later that year I visited the Wheaton Philosophy Conference, and again there was Bob, going at it with the other conferees. Those meetings were sufficient to pick up my ears when I heard Bob’s name. I remember hearing of him working with Jerry Kirk in Cincinnati, teaching at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and other ministries. Then came the Ligonier Valley Study Center. I spoke at one of the early conferences— on inerrancy— and for the first time I was able to say I knew RC— formerly Bob.

We could have been good friends, I think. We were the same age, Pittsburghers, Calvinists, and most of all disciples of Jesus Christ. But alas, we belonged to different clubs. I followed Van Til, Gerstner’s teacher, but Gerstner did not follow Van Til, and RC followed Gerstner. I always felt his heart and mine were in the same place. From time to time I saw, or thought I saw, hints of Van Tillian presuppositionalism in RC’s writings. I think of his exegesis of Rom. 1, which was very much the same as Van Til’s. And he once, at Westminster, described himself as a “proto-suppositionalist.” I took that to mean that whatever you think about apologetic method Scripture must always have the final say. I too am a protosuppositionalist. And in the final analysis that’s all there really is to presuppositionalism.

But RC was nevertheless in one club, and I was in a different one. So we never actually had a good talk, even about old times in Pittsburgh.

But I greatly admired dear RC, and I ranked him as the best communicator of Reformed truth in my time. So now I lean over the wretched boundaries between our respective clubs, and I pray God’s comfort in Jesus to his family, his church, and his great movement. And I pray God’s prosperity on all of these wonderful brothers and sisters. For our love far transcends the boundaries of our clubs.

R.C. Sproul (1939–2017)

He didn't waste his life:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/r-c-sproul-1939-2017/

Roman Catholicism Teaching Series (CD) by Dr. R.C. Sproul

TODAY ONLY - for a donation of any amount - Roman Catholicism - Teaching Series (CD) by Dr. R.C. Sproul *one offer per household*

https://www.ligonier.org/rym/offer/

Or listen to it for free at Ligonier.Org

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the one, true church established by Jesus Christ. The Reformers of the sixteenth century rejected this claim, pointing to numerous conflicts between Scripture and Roman Catholic doctrine and practice. What are the differences that divide Roman Catholics and Protestants? Are they important? In this series, Dr. R.C. Sproul carefully and respectfully looks at the doctrines that are at the heart of the Catholic-Protestant divide.

HT: Hugh McCann via Facebook

Reformation Day Free Download: R.C. Sproul’s Luther and the Reformation

As of this morning, I was still able to download this lecture series [audio version] and study guide for free.

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/reformation-day-free-download-rc-sprouls-luther-and-reformation/