Christian Apologetics Past and Present (Volume 2, From 1500)

A Primary Source Reader

William Edgar, K. Scott Oliphint

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781433531699
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

Amid a revival of apologetics, "few things could be more useful than an acquaintance with how Christian faith was defended down through the ages, " say the editors in their introduction to this two-part anthology. "Access to both historical and contemporary texts gives us fresh insight into how our fathers in the faith responded to the questions facing them."

Volume 2 in this one-of-a-kind resource takes a sweeping look at apologetics from the Reformation to the present. Readings from twenty-six apologists, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Blaise Pascal, Jonathan Edwards, Søren Kierkegaard, Francis Schaeffer, Alvin Plantinga, and William Lane Craig are included. With editorial commentary and questions for reflection, Christian Apologetics Past and Present will prove a valuable text for students as well as a unique resource for those interested in defending the faith.

PART ONE

The Reformation, Post-Reformation (Protestant), and Catholic Reformation

Part 1 Introduction

We enter the very early years of the modern era. The so-called Middle Ages were on the wane.¹ Although it is oversimple to do so, we may speak of the emergence of two broad, overlapping movements: the Renaissance and the Reformation.

First, a new cultural mode emerged that would later be characterized as the Renaissance. It began much earlier than the Reformation, lasting roughly from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. The great poet Petrarch (1304–1374) was perhaps the first to reject the traditional way of organizing history and to call the previous era “medieval.” Indeed, it became common currency to speak of the Middle Ages somewhat pejoratively as a term for an intermediate period between the glorious classical past of Greek and Roman antiquity and the “modern” period in which the ancients were rediscovered and the authoritarianism of the church could be challenged. Petrarch so admired the contemporary Italian poet Dante that he deemed his work to be a renascita, a “rebirth” of poetry as good as or better than anything written in classical times.² The word conveys the idea that something new was happening in Europe, built on the foundation of antiquity, thus a new birth.

At the heart of the Renaissance spirit was humanism. A new respect for the humanities had spread across Europe. Humanism (not to be confused with the derogatory modern sense of that term) was a new form of learning that critically reexamined basic sources for education, society, and the church. Humanists wanted a return to the sources (ad fontes), and they looked for a rebirth of classical languages, of Greek rhetoric, of science and art. Many reasons lay behind the desire to look again at such fundamental issues as philosophy, learning, the arts, technology, and so forth. One reason is no doubt the devastating effects of the plague. Known as the Black Death, this pandemic was perhaps the worst in all recorded history. Some seventy-five million people died worldwide, up to fifty million of them in Europe. It began in the fourteenth century but was not finally eradicated until the seventeenth.³ This phenomenon had the double effect of leading people to doubt the authority of the church and to search for new, more serious ways to live before God. In addition, civic humanism looked to ancient societies in order to learn how social organization might better generate the good. There was considerable incentive to rethink political life, particularly because there was such confusion at the time.

The second great movement, the Protestant Reformation, was at the heart of a renewal in apologetics. By the fifteenth century both decadence and some reforms were in evidence. Corruption was widespread in the church of the late Middle Ages. Bishops collected large revenues from their dioceses but rarely made pastoral visits to them. Many priests were uneducated, barely able to say the Mass, let alone understand it. When they did understand it, the Latin religious services often remained unintelligible to the faithful. Indeed, there was a great distance between clergy and laity.

Into this dark situation a number of individuals and movements came to reform the church. New religious orders were instituted, such as the Dominicans, who specialized in preaching, or the Brethren of the Common Life, who featured the “modern devotion,” cultivating the simple imitation of Christ. Remarkable figures such as John Wycliffe (ca. 1329–1384) in England and Jan Hus (ca. 1372–1415) stressed a return to the Bible, and a faith based on the love of Christ rather than conformity to rituals.

But none of these developments would have the enduring power of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. This defining moment not only for the church but also for the emergence of modern Europe was certainly connected to the Renaissance. Humanism itself inspired religious renewal. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) was the greatest humanist of the era. Among other accomplishments, he produced critical editions of various early Christian texts, including the Latin version of the New Testament (1516). In so doing he dismantled the monumental achievement of Jerome, whose Latin Vulgate and surrounding commentaries had been the standard for more than a thousand years. Though Erasmus would never formally embrace the Reformation, he contributed to it in many ways. For example, in Matthew 3:2, John the Baptist exhorts his Judean listeners with the word metanoeite, which the Vulgate had translated in terms of doing penance. Erasmus translated it resipiscite, which is closer to “repent.” Likewise, he pointed out the paucity of references to Mary in the Bible. For the 1519 edition of his text, Erasmus revised the Latin translation of Gabriel’s greeting to “gracious Mary,” rather than “Mary full of grace,” a change that made her less available as the repository for merit or good works held up in popular piety. Luther, Calvin, and most of the other Reformers were deeply influenced by Erasmus and his type of humanism.⁴

The rise of the city was also important. The late medieval city was known as the “foyer of modernity.”⁵ The German Reformation is not conceivable without the economic improvements, empowerment of the laity, and secularity of the city, which was decreasingly under the direct control of the church. In the towns the individual began to have unprecedented responsibility. Social ties were less hierarchical and more horizontal. This had both negative and positive results. There was considerable disorientation because the traditional rules were more difficult to apply. There was anxiety and confusion. At the same time people were beginning to sense their importance and their accountability to God and to society in unprecedented ways.

Finally, the printing press played a crucial role in disseminating the ideas of the Reformation. By the sixteenth century the number of universities in Europe had risen from twenty to seventy. Not only was there greater education, but literacy was on the rise as well. The invention of the printing press was nothing less than a revolution because it enabled educated people and readers to discover the new ideas about religion. Martin Luther called print technology a gift from God. By the time he died (1546), over 3,400 editions of the Bible had appeared in High German and 430 in Low German. As is well known, Luther’s work contributed to the standardization of the German language and culture.

The Reformers thought not that they were innovating but rather that they were being faithful to the true foundation. Protestant sympathizer Jeanne d’Albret, in a famous quip to Cardinal Armagnac, affirmed, “I am not planting a new religion but restoring an old one.” Notably, the Reformers were returning to the authority of Scripture, even when its teaching appeared to contradict church tradition. The Reformation also stressed the accountability of the individual to God, along with the liberating grace of the gospel to everyone who believes. Three central convictions set off the Reformation from even the finest of the previous efforts at reform.

First, God is at the center of all of life. Previously it was thought that if one were faithful to church life and were generally decent, then paradise would be assured. Now putting God first—not only his requirements, but his love—was fundamental. Where do we learn about this God? Primarily in the Scriptures. Thus the authority of the Bible took on a radically new importance.

Second, one can have God at the center only if one is right with him. The Reformers stressed the gravity of sin but also the power of the gospel to save. Salvation is the free gift of Christ’s righteousness, rather than a process of improvement. Again, the knowledge of that way to God is through the Scriptures, which declares us justified before God when we believe.

Third, the Reformers understood Christ in a different way from their late-medieval forebears. Previously Christ was thought of as a terrifying judge, austere and unapproachable. One of the reasons Mary was elevated to such prominence is that she was more like a mother, more approachable. The Reformers understood Christ as coming to earth full of grace, “clothed in the gospel.” He was not only God but our elder brother.

These Reformation principles resonated with many people who had been confused about the most basic elements of the Christian religion. But the Reformation could not have occurred without the extraordinary work of many gifted leaders. In addition to Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin, a host of other figures, men and women, rose to greet the new ideas and spread them.⁶ In most countries where the Reformation took a foothold there was opposition, some of it fierce. In France, despite the initial attraction to the Huguenots (the name given to Protestants there) by many in the population, and despite numerous attempts at peace and concord, the Reformation was rejected, and by the eighteenth century fierce persecutions forced tens of thousands to flee. Instead of promoting the cause of biblical religion, the French Enlightenment with its rationalistic skepticism would become a most influential force throughout Europe.

In England the Reformation took root but would struggle to define how far the cleansing from Rome could go. Scotland became Reformed under the leadership of the fiery John Knox. In the Netherlands, despite great opposition from the so-called Holy Roman Empire, the Protestant Reformation in its Calvinist expression gained much ground.

It must not be imagined that throughout all of these changes the Roman Catholic Church was quiescent. Partly in reply to Protestants, and partly because of its own desire for reform, the Church of Rome made strong efforts at its own overhaul. We shall label this movement—often known as the Counter-Reformation—the Catholic Reformation, especially since one cannot reduce it merely to reactions to Protestantism. To be sure, many attempts were made to condemn various Reformers and their writings. But also, various movements came into prominence seeking to redefine the Catholic Church and its spirituality. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) founded the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits. His followers were known for their respect for education and missions. The Council of Trent met from 1545 to 1563. Though it was opposed to doctrines such as the Protestant view of justification by faith alone and the supremacy of the Scriptures over conscience, yet it also contained elements of reformation, for example in worship and church discipline.

Again, a significant amount of apologetics during this time concerned the polemics between Protestants and Catholics. On the Protestant side, it was necessary to defend the Reformed religion against its detractors, especially those who thought it was a departure from the true church. One thinks of Luther’s famous statement at the imperial Diet of Worms in 1521: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.”⁷ Or think of John Calvin’s “Address to King Francis I,” the preface to the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he defends the evangelical believers before the king against the charge of heresy.

Similarly, the Roman Catholic polemicists defended the papacy and the role of tradition against the Protestant approach. At the same time, the literature is broader than attacks against Protestantism. It includes philosophical treatises and devotional works. A crucial figure was Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). He did write polemical works against the Protestants,⁸ but he is best remembered for his large output on metaphysical and theological subjects, where he argues for moderate realism.⁹ Possibly the most powerful representative of Catholic apologetics was Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), the Italian Jesuit whose Disputations concerning the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Age was as much a systematization of Catholic theology as it was an orderly account of the polemics of the past sixty years.¹⁰ But he too contributed a good deal to positive, devotional literature. Indeed, the text we have chosen to present here is not a treatise against Protestantism, but a meditation on piety.

Accordingly, although a good deal of sixteenth-century apologetics involved polemics between the two major communions, Roman Catholic and Protestant (the Orthodox world was considerably separate), some traditional apologetics was done as well. In France, on the Protestant side, Philippe de Mornay (1549–1623) explained his method of reaching out to pagans and Jews in Truth of the Christian Religion (1581). The Roman Catholic Pierre Charron (1541–1603) defended the existence of God from the self-refuting nature of atheism, the bankruptcy of non-Christian religions, and the inability of Protestants to reason successfully without the church, in The Three Truths (1595).

In Italy and Spain, which were not much affected by the Reformation, one could find various works against the Averroists, who argued that Islam was compatible with Aristotle and, by implication, was compatible with the Christian religion. Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) wrote a remarkable, irenic apologetics summa, On the Truth of the Christian Faith (1543). Somewhat similar to the first book of Savonarola’s Triumph of the Cross (1497), presented in volume 1, there are broad discussions of God and the human soul, of the main Christian mysteries—the Trinity, the Incarnation, and others—and then two dialogues. The first is between a Christian and a Jew, discussing the Old Testament prophecies, and the second is between a Christian and a Muslim, discussing the Qur’an. Finally, the treatise argues for the superiority of the Christian religion over all others.

Apologetics in the medieval period was quite varied, as we have seen. The Roman Catholic Church reached the apex of its theological output with a number of other remarkable scholars, including Anselm, Abelard, and, supremely, Thomas Aquinas. It is fair to say that most often, theology and apologetics overlapped so much that they were almost equivalent. Disputations were frequent but mostly between various understandings of Christian problems: the place of reason, the authority of the Fathers, mystical theology, doctrinal orthodoxy, and so forth. The only objections to the faith from the outside that were carefully studied were typically from Jews or Muslims (“Saracens”).

At the dawn of the modern era, all this was changing. To be sure, in the sixteenth century the major disputes were internecine, since almost all scholars believed in the Christian faith. Even the skeptical Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) felt that we could live with paradoxes because, in the end, we may rest in the authority of the church. Yet there were winds of change, so that by the seventeenth century we find, alongside the development of post-Reformation orthodoxy, the rise of deism, indifference, Socinianism, and, of course, the force of the Enlightenment.

1. Although controversial, Johan Huizinga's volume The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1954) indicates the number of ways in which spiritual and cultural trends were on the decline in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe. He finds there that faith becomes superstition, beauty becomes ostentation, and courtly love becomes formalist. Style replaces substance. In theology confidence in God is diminished.

2. The word Renaissance was coined in the nineteenth century by French scholars. See J. B. Bullen, The Myth of the Renaissance...