Blogs

11 Ways We Can All Nurture Our Mental Health
“Our mental health is not entirely outside our control. In fact, even when a genetic predisposition is present, or our circumstances are harmful, our lifestyle choices can prevent a disorder from developing, lessen its severity, or help us achieve better recovery. Regardless of our predispositions, experiences, or sense of health, it really doesn’t make sense for anyone to neglect the opportunity to protect and strengthen our mental health. No matter who you are, why not give some thought and care to your mental health this year? Here are 10 ways we can all do that.”

Disability and a Theology of the Body
“A “body is everything” theology (at least functionally speaking) leads to a near-exclusive focus on comfort and relief of bodily suffering in a ministry context. This may be associated with the assumption that suffering people in their particular state of disability bear little to no responsibility before God. They are sufferers much more than they are sinners. On the other hand, a “body is nothing” theology (again, functionally speaking) leads to a near-exclusive focus on soul care. Seeing people come to Christ and discipling them is where the action is. Suffering is primarily seen as a pathway to holiness rather than something to grieve and lament. But either of these two extremes actually dehumanizes people. How does Scripture provide a balanced view of the body?”

How to Reconcile with Another Christian
“How do we reconcile with fellow Christians? In my thirteen years of pastoral ministry, I have found that much of my calling deals with helping those who have been injured by other people—especially other people in the church.”

The Joy of the Old Testament
“After reading the New Testament multiple times over, while only reading small chunks of the Old Testament, I realized something was missing. One time, as I came to the end of the New Testament, again, I felt a void. The New Testament wasn’t coming together as I had hoped. I was not gaining the joy in God that it once had. I did not have a want for more.”

Preparing for Winter
“The response of Christian higher education to the coming winter must therefore be twofold: financial planning for the worst-case scenario, where not only federal money but also tax-exempt status is revoked; and careful reflection on how the curriculum can cultivate accurate and wholesome aesthetic judgment. And, given the very brief time colleges have to shape young people’s minds, they need to see their task as adjunct to the greater task of family and, above all, church—the vessels that carry us from the cradle to the grave.”

Will You Pray for Awakening? Download Your Free Prayer Guide
“We hope this prayer guide encourages you this year and in future years. Join us in praying fervently for a mighty movement of God’s Spirit today, thankful that He has graciously promised to hear us, and confident that He will answer our prayers according to His will.”

Kindle Books

For your non-Kindle book buying needs please consider using Reformation Heritage Books in the USA and Reformed Book Services in Canada. Good value prices and shipping.

Defending Your Faith: An Introduction by R.C. Sproul $2.99.

Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today  by David R. Helm $3.99.

Do No Work: Beat Burnout, Find Inner Peace, and Strengthen Your Faith by Studying the Most Overlooked of the Ten Commandments by Andrew Gilmore $0.99

Over a number of blog posts, I’ve been arguing for the addition of  ‘emotional’ apologetics to the apologists armory. I’ve been making the case that apologists should pay more attention to basic human needs, feelings, longings, and desires and the suitability of the Christian faith to meet and satisfy them. In a previous post, we looked at the biblical evidence for such an apologetic method and today we want to highlight examples of this approach in church history. Unless stated otherwise, the quotations are from Avery Dulles’s classic book, A History of Apologetics.

The Letter to Diognetus (@130 AD): This letter of disputed authorship was written by “a brilliant rhetorician who painted an appealing picture of Christian faith and life” and “it remains one of the most stirring presentations of the Christian ideal.” (29)

Clement (150-215): In his apologetics, he writes in a style “calculated to attract his readers and make them enthusiastic for the following of Christ.” Clement portrayed Christ as “the new song, which, like the canticles of David before Saul, drives out evil spirits and restores health to those disturbed in mind.” (32)

Tertullian (160-225): He “gives a moving description of the Christian way of life, reminiscent of that in Justin’s First Apology.” (41)

Origen (184-253): Christian minds, he says, “are marvelously filled with peace and joy” and experience “wonderful moral renewal.” (36-7)

Augustine (354-430): One of his books was entitled The Happy Life, An Answer to Skeptics. “The point of departure for Augustine’s apologetic is subjective and psychological rather than objective and systematic. He notes within man an inescapable drive toward happiness and, once the possibility of immortality becomes known, a drive toward eternal life. As he observes at the conclusion of his dialogue On the Happy Life:

This, then, is the full satisfaction of souls, this the happy life: to recognize piously and completely the One through whom you are led into the truth, the nature of the truth you enjoy, and the bond that connects you with the supreme measure. (60)

Dulles sums up the apologetics from the third to the sixth century as similar in structure to those of the second century but notes “they prefer to argue from the effects of the gospel on the minds and hearts of believers.” (70)

Aquinas (1225-1274): He develops “some very long and persuasive proofs based on the total harmony of revealed truth, the accord between revelation and naturally known truths, and the correspondence between the Christian dogmas and the needs of man.” (94)

John Duns Scotus (1266-1308): God “gives light and consolation to those who sincerely inquire and adhere to the Christian faith.” (99-100)

Raimundus Sabundus (d. 1436): His basic principle was ‘Believe whatever makes a person happier.’ “A fundamental principle of the author’s reasoning is that man ought to affirm ‘whatever is more for his profit, good, and improvement, for his perfection and dignity and exaltation, insofar as he is a man, whatever promotes joy, happiness, consolation, hope, confidence, and security, and whatever expels sadness, despair.’ On this basis Sabundus finds it easy to establish the existence of God as a belief that impels man to higher perfection and joy.” (95)

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498): Savonarola’s argued for Christianity based on the effects of embracing the Gospel. “Unlike many of the apologists so far examined he puts little emphasis on the proofs from prophecy and physical miracles. Far more central to his argument are the wisdom and goodness of Christ and the manifest effects that follow from a wholehearted acceptance of the gospel. One of the principal effects of the Christian life is peace, joy of spirit, and liberty of heart.” (109)

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): Although Pascal is often thought to be the pioneer of the more psychological needs-based type of apologetics, the evidence thus far shows that he was simply following a long tradition of apologists. Pascal’s basic question was ‘If man was not made for God, why is he never happy except in God?” He explains his method:

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.

After listing various religions and philosophies, he asks: “Do they give a plausible account of the actual state of man and do they offer any remedy that could give man happiness?” The aim of his argument says Dulles is to bring someone “to the point of wishing that he could believe, without having yet proved that Christianity is true (125)

In Existential Reasons for Belief in God, Clifford Williams highlights Pascal’s classic ‘Infinite Abyss’ passage:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

Or as he put it elsewhere “No one is so happy as a true Christian, or so reasonable, virtuous, and lovable.”

Williams notices how hopeful this existentialism is compared to the despairing existentialism associated with the French atheistic existentialists, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Yes, Pascal agrees, there are great human needs, but the Christian God can satisfy them all and has done so on many occasions. Whereas Camus and Sartre used the dark holes in humanity to run away from God, this existential argument uses them to drive people to God.

Pascal argued for the Christian faith not only because it is true, but because it satisfies heart-need, or, as he put it: “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

Jaques Abbadie (1654-1727): Like Pascal, his apologetic employs the “logic of the heart” and “shows how the intrinsic attributes of the Christian religion correspond with the religious needs of man.” (132).

George Berkely (1685-1753): He “defended Christianity against the skeptics on the ground of its tendency to good, its superiority to the other religions, its natural harmony with man’s needs, as well as the usual arguments from miracles and prophecy.” (140).

Schleiermacher (1768-1834): “Schleiermacher was perhaps the first to construct a thoroughgoing ‘inner apologetic’ that proceeds through the progressive unfolding of man’s innate longing for communion with God.” (161)

August Tholuck (1799-1877): “Tholuck extols the joyful experience of regeneration through Christ and maintains that the new life impressed upon men’s hearts by the Holy Spirit is its own guarantee.” (164)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): In his Aids to Reflection he warned the evidentialist school against a merely theoretical approach to Christianity that forgets the spirit and life at the heart of it:

Hence I more than fear the prevailing taste for books of Natural Theology, Physico-Theology, Demonstrations of God from Nature, Evidences of Christianity, and the like. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel his want of it, and you can safely trust to its own Evidence

Coleridge can say that-strong as are the historical evidences in favor of Christianity, the truth revealed in Christ … has its evidence in itself, and the proof of its divine authority in its fitness to our nature and needs;—the clearness and cogency of this proof being proportionate to the degree of self-knowledge in each individual hearer.” (168-9)

Thomas Erskine (1788-1870): “Sometimes called the Scottish Schleiermacher, he looked to the inner life of the believer for the rational basis of faith. In his best-known work, Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion (1820), he stresses the moral influence of the gospel and bypasses the usual arguments from miracles, prophecy, and eyewitness testimony…As a testimony to the inner life of a deeply convinced Christian, Erskine’s Internal Evidence is not unimpressive.” (171)

Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872): “At a time when England was being rocked by the controversy growing out of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, Maurice maintained that the current debates about documents could never lead to any religiously satisfying results. In faith, he argued, one knows God as He personally imparts Himself to man in experience, and this personal communion is for the believer its own evidence.” (170)

Like any Reformed reader of Dulles’s book, I wish he had given more attention to the high-calibre apologetics being produced in the Reformed Church, especially over the last century. However, there haven’t been many Reformed exponents of ‘experiential’ or ‘emotional’ apologetics in the same period. That wasn’t always the case, as I’ll show you tomorrow with a surprising example from Puritan times.

Previous articles in this series

What is Apologetics?
The Two Primary Aims of Apologetics
Experiential Apologetics
The Most Common Apologetic in the Bible?

Blogs

12 Ideas You Must Embrace to Affirm Theistic Evolution
“Theistic evolution is a viewpoint that God created matter and after that, God didn’t guide, intervene, or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes. But, what that belief implies is that there are actually twelve details in Genesis 1-3 that simply didn’t happen. If you hold to theistic evolution (in the most common form in which it is held today), you would say: ”

Sage Advice: The Teacher as Pastor
“I have long felt that if all I was in the classroom was a disseminator of information, I would fail. The problem today is that the seminary (or college, or graduate school) classroom is often too academic, and too few students fall in love with the process of exegesis and feeding their flock—even looking upon the act of “feeding” in terms of delivering simple topical messages. We must show students the relevance of the biblical text for their lives, stimulating them spiritually as well as intellectually. The truth is that they can find everything we are going to say in commentaries and other sources. What we need to do is show them how practical and refreshing deep exegesis can be.”

Are Some Sins Worse Than Others?
“Contrary to the current narrative, the Scriptures, the Reformed Confessions and principles of nature teach us that some sins are more reprehensible than others.”

Registered Sex Offender: A Sample Church Membership and Attendance Policy
“In this post, I have drafted a policy for how a church would think through the attendance and membership stipulations for someone who is under Registered Sex Offender (RSO) status. The enactment of this policy assumes that both (a) the sexual abuse episode has been reported and (b) that the legal process has concluded resulting in RSO status as the verdict; meaning the individual under RSO status has paid, or is currently paying their debt to society.”

The Year I Saw Billions of Dollars in Art
“As I think back to all I’ve seen in 2017, I marvel at what human artists can do with stone, canvas, and bronze. But it makes me consider: If a human artist can do so much and gain such acclaim through his use of the most mundane materials, think what the Divine Artist can do with a human canvas. Think how much acclaim he can gain from the likes of you and me—creatures who are created in his very image.”

Forgive, but don’t return repentant pastors to the pulpit
“To “forgive” a pastor means we don’t personally hold his sin against him and that we restore him to his office of church member. If he is repentant, he meets the qualification of membership. That doesn’t mean we should restore him to the office of pastor. Our forgiveness does not mean he magically meets those qualifications. His life, quite simply, is not above reproach.”

Kindle Books

Read the Bible for Life: Your Guide to Understanding and Living God’s Word by George Guthrie $2.99.

Hearing God’s Word: Expositional Preaching by Bobby Jamieson $0.99.

Why Everything Matters: The Gospel in Ecclesiastes by Phil Ryken $2.99.

Preaching Christ in All of Scripture by Edmund P. Clowney $2.99.

Here’s the video to show your kids at the end of Expedition Two. If you want to bookmark a page where all the videos will eventually appear, you can find them on my blog, on YouTube, or the Facebook page for Exploring the Bible.

If you haven’t started your kids on the book yet, you can begin anytime and use it with any Bible version.

You can get it at RHB, Westminster Books, Crossway, or Amazon. Some of these retailers have good discounts for bulk purchases by churches and schools.

Blogs

How To Teach Your Brain Something It Won’t Forget A Week Later
I’m a firm believer in “spacing.” See my post on it here at #10.

Preaching with Integrity
“I so appreciate the practical wisdom of Dr. Adrian Rogers when he said, “If my bullet fits your gun shoot it, but use your own powder.”  We don’t hear enough of that kind of practical, pastoral insight in today’s academically saturated church-world. So, how should a pastor who has to preach multiple times every week to the same congregation handle the issue of preaching and plagiarism? He’s my rule: Don’t be lazy and don’t be a liar. What does that mean? What does that look like?”

Ten Commandments of a Disability-Friendly Church
“What do you need to be a disability-friendly church? Do you need a staff person assigned to a formal disability ministry? Do you need a large budget and a special curriculum? All of those things can be helpful, but becoming disability-friendly is much simpler than that. I have both pastored and attended only small churches over the past two decades and have witnessed the loving and welcoming of those with disabilities. Any church can become a safe place that embraces people of all disabilities. I have an article on this in the current issue of Faith Today. But you can begin with these ten simple steps. ”

Your Child is a Work of Art
“Psalm 139 tells me that my son, with all his unique needs and diagnosis (spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, microcephaly) is a personal creation, a sacred work of art of God himself. He matters to God. Be encouraged, your child is a sacred work of art crafted by the Creator of the universe. And he knows every single detail of your child, they are his masterpiece.”

3 Lessons I learned from Burnout
“Pastors aren’t supposed to have breakdowns. We’re supposed to be in control, collected, stoic. Pastors exist to help others in their needs, and through our work, be able to rise above our own.  Unaware of what was brewing underneath the surface of my soul, I believed the lie that pastoral work required me to be fixed, resolved, finished. So I thought. Yet, God has humbled me, bringing me to the end of myself and the beginning of his grace.  ”

Saying “Yes”
“So many people I know have died over the past two years—more people than in the previous ten. A few died from disease, a few more died from suicide, but most died from overdoses. Among those who overdosed, the stories began to sound the same. They often began with legal narcotics when a physician prescribed something for pain relief (Percocet, Vicodin, Oxycontin). The drug worked until the person developed tolerance, and then looked for and found either more of the drug or—something worse. Heroin was cheaper and became the drug of choice. It was eventually supplemented by fentanyl or carfentanyl, and the person unintentionally overdosed. And the deaths keep coming.”

10 Theological Tenets for Covenantal Apologetics
“I want to suggest 10 tenets to keep in mind as you begin to have apologetic conversations with unbelieving friends and neighbors. These 10 tenets flow from biblical truth, and find agreement with what many have said in the Reformed tradition”

A Year in PRRD (Week 1) – Meet the Puritans
“Every Wednesday in 2018 Michael Lynch (PhD candidate at Calvin Theological Seminary) and our own editor Danny Hyde (PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) will be blogging through Richard Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics.

Kindle Books

For your non-Kindle book buying needs please consider using Reformation Heritage Books in the USA and Reformed Book Services in Canada. Good value prices and shipping.

Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life  by Donald S. Whitney $1.99.

The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures by Jayson Georges $3.99.

Developments in Biblical Counseling by J. Cameron Fraser $2.99.

What place do human emotions, needs, and desires have in apologetics? Should we appeal to the satisfaction of basic human needs and longings as a reason to consider Christianity? In a series of blog posts (here, here, and here), I’ve argued that although this aspect of apologetics has been much neglected, needs-based reasoning should have a significant role in an overall apologetic strategy.

To prove that this is not some unbiblical version of the health, wealth, and prosperity Gospel, I want to show you that this strand of needs-based (or experiential) apologetics is both present in the Bible and has been utilized throughout Church history. Today we will offer the biblical evidence and tomorrow the historical evidence.

Yesterday I distinguished two different kinds of experiential apologetics (evidentialist and existentialist). As it’s often difficult to distinguish them (especially in older writers), today and tomorrow’s survey will merely highlight the appeal to human need, desire, and emotion without categorizing whether these are evidential or existential arguments. My main point is to prove that biblical authors and Christian writers have frequently incorporated arguments based on the experiential benefits of Christianity (and the corresponding misery of the non-Christian life).

Below are samples of the biblical evidence, some of them including explicit appeals to need and others more implicit. Before you study them, bear in mind our definition of apologetics:

Christian apologetics uses arguments that defend and commend the Christian faith, and that critique non-Christian religions and worldviews, in order to persuade non-Christians to accept the Christian faith or to persuade Christians to greater faith.

Thirteen Basic Human Needs

In his book, Existential Reasons for Belief in God; A Defense of Desires and Emotions for Faith, Clifford Williams lists thirteen basic human needs that Christianity meets. We’ll look at each of them and supply biblical examples of appeals to these needs. Before doing so, though, let’s note Williams’s two qualifications. First, he is not claiming that everyone feels all thirteen of the needs (feeling only one of the needs is all that’s required to make the needs-based argument relevant). Second, he demonstrates that not all these needs are purely self-centered by dividing the thirteen needs into two categories.

• Self-directed needs: Aimed at getting something for ourselves.
• Other-directed needs: aimed at the good of others or is what is good (which incidentally and unintentionally gives us something too). 

I’ll list the needs, followed by a description of them, followed by both Old and New Testament evidence of appeals to need.

SELF-DIRECTED NEEDS

Cosmic security: We want to feel protected from difficulties and suffering; but if these do come, we want to be sure that all will still be well with us.

References: Psalm 91; Matthew 7:24-26; John 10:28-29; 14:27; Romans 8:28

Hope of life beyond the grave: That we will keep on being conscious even after we die.

References: Psalm 16:9-10; Daniel 12:2,13; John 11:25

Heaven: This goes beyond just existing after death, and describes the kind of blessed existence we crave.

References: Psalm 16:11; John 14:1-3; Revelation 21

Goodness: Despite the imperfection of this life, we still crave a good and virtuous life, and not just for ourselves, but for others too.

References: Deut. 32:47; Psalm 15; 34:11-16; Matthew 22:34-40. The existence of so many commands and instructions in the Bible (e.g. Exodus 20; Romans 12) imply that we feel the need for moral order and goodness and that we should want it for others too. 

A larger life: We want new experiences of things, people, and places, that we may experience amazement, exhilaration, and moral awe (i.e. the admiration of others’ goodness).

References: Psalm 4:6; 27:4; John 10:10

To be loved: For emotional security, we want to be known, loved, trusted, and enjoyed by our parents, by friends, by a spouse, by our children, and by others.

References: Psalm 63:3; Jeremiah 31:3; John 3:16; 13:35; Ephesians 5:22-33; 1 John 3:1

Meaning: A sense of significance, purpose, and destiny.

References: Genesis 1:26-28; Job 23:10; Isa. 43:10; Matthew 4:19; 6:33; 28:18-20, 1 John 3:2-3.

Forgiveness: For going astray, and especially for transgressing in our pursuit of love and meaning.

References: Psalm 51:7; 1 John 1:9

I’d also add the need for refreshment and rest (Isaiah 55:1-2; Matthew 11:28; John 7:37).

John Piper has counted more than forty times in the Gospel of Luke where promises of reward and threats of punishment are connected with the commands of Jesus.[1]

OTHER-DIRECTED NEEDS

Surely “other-directed needs” is an oxymoron. How can needs be other-directed? Don’t needs spring from self-concern? Williams admits the seeming contradiction, but insists that these desires are both other-directed and self-satisfying. Although these needs spring not from self-concern but concern for others, yet they also enrich the self when satisfied and impoverish if unsatisfied.

To love: We want to love others (including God) and have the opportunity to express it

References: 2 Samuel 1:26; Psalm 116:1; 133:1; Acts 2:40-47; 1 Corinthians 13

Awe: Experienced through encounters with a magnificent landscape, powerful people, or moral heroism, and especially when we encounter God.

References: Exodus 15:11; Psalm 8; 104; Matthew 7:28-29; 27:54; John 7:46; 20:28; Rom. 11:33

Delighting in goodness: We take pleasure in the goodness of our beloved. The classic example of this is the Song of Solomon. The Bible records many examples of commendable moral courage for us to rejoice in. For example, Joshua and Caleb (Numbers 14:6-9); Daniel and his three friends (Daniel 1; Daniel 3); the Acts of the Apostles. The Apostle Paul holds out the prospect of cheerful goodness (Rom. 12:8).

Being present: Enjoying being with those we love.

Again, the Song of Solomon is a superlative expression of this. Jesus chose the twelve disciples “to be with him” (Mark 3:14).

Justice and fairness: The desire to see justice done for ourselves and others. We want to see the wicked punished and the victims compensated.

References: Genesis 18:25; Psalm 98:7-9; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 20:11-15.

Conclusion

These and other verses indicate that God can meet those needs and therefore it is worth believing in him. Every time Christian teachers extol the benefits of being a Christian, they are assuming a human need, claiming that Christ can satisfy that need, and therefore faith in him is justified. This existential argument from need is intended to be inviting, appealing, and persuasive. In some ways, the entire book of Proverbs is an existential argument from need.

On the flip side, the Bible is replete with examples of how false religion and irreligion fail to satisfy the deepest needs of humanity. A classic example of this is the book of Ecclesiastes. Also in the latter part of Romans chapter one, the Apostle Paul portrays idolatry in the most hideous of terms both in its causes and effects.

In fact, when you survey the biblical evidence, might it be said that experiential apologetics or needs-based apologetics is the most frequently used apologetic in the Bible?