Sproul: I can remember being invited to speak, giving the case for the existence of God on
a college campus to the atheist club there.
And I went through a defense of theism and so on, but I went back to the Romans passage
and I said, "Now, I'm happy to try to discuss with you all the intellectual questions there
and get involved in trying to prove and demonstrate the existence of God.
But I want to put my cards on the table upfront and tell you in light of what the Apostle
teaches here, I'm persuaded that I'm carrying coals to Newcastle, because you already know
very well that there is a God.
And your problem is not that you don't know that God exists; your problem is you hate
the God that you know exists.
So, your problem's in the final analysis not an intellectual one; it's a moral one.
So, you got know that's where I'm coming from."
Well, they were ready to tar and feather me, you know?
WEBB: What was their reaction?
SPROUL: Oh, they were, they were apoplectic.
They were absolutely furious about it.
But again, what I was referring to was that Paul's teaching in Romans 1, where he makes
it clear that God has revealed Himself through the creation to every human being, and that
that revelation is not obscure, but that it is, in the Greek "phaneros," in the Latin
"manifestum," its manifest, it's clear.
And there are some theologians who say "Yes, there is a clear revelation of Himself from
God that He gives in and through nature, or through the created order, but because of
the sinfulness of human beings and our fallen nature and the effects of sin upon our minds,
that revelation doesn't get through.
We block it.
We suppress it.
We flee from it.
So, it never really gets through."
But that's not what Paul says, because the judgment that he expresses there is this—knowing
God, they refuse to honor Him as God, nor were they grateful.
This is the basis for the universal indictment of the whole human race under the wrath of
God.
Not because…the one excuse that is taken away is ignorance.
No one on the judgment day can plead ignorance of God, because He has revealed Himself, and
that revelation gets through.
Again, the problem is that fallen man refuses to acknowledge what he knows to be true.
Now, how that influences our defense of theism.
Well, being Reformed in my theology, I believe that all of the rational defense that I can
give, if I can give a perfect argument, a compelling argument, an irrefutable argument
for the existence of God, which frankly I believe I can, and not that it started with
me.
But if I could do that, unless the Holy Spirit accompanies that argument and changes the
heart of that person who hears the argument, that person will never submit or acquiesce
to the argument.
And so some people say, "Why even bother?
Why don't we just proclaim it and let it go at that?"
And I said, "Well you know, as Calvin said, first of all to stop the mouths of the obstreperous."
When we give a defense, an intellectual defense of the truth claims of Christianity, that
puts restraints on the unbeliever and the militant atheists in their arguments.
Second of all, it is preparation for evangelism.
We are not called to jump into the darkness in a blind leap of faith and hope that Jesus
will catch us.
The faith that we propose, and the gospel that we preach, is one that is not learned
by the actions of reason alone or by what we call rationalism, but the content of the
gospel is reasonable.
It is rational.
And really, the person can't submit by faith to something with their heart that the mind
tells them is absurd.
I don't ever ask people to jump into the absurd…or jump into the darkness.
We ask them to jump out of the darkness and into the light.
And so, there is a place there for the defense of the faith, as prolegomena to the preaching
of the gospel.
And also, you hear all the time about young people who were raised in the church, made
a profession of faith, they go to college and they have an unbridled assault against
their faith by the skeptical professors in the classroom.
And one of the tasks of apologetics, or the intellectual defense of the faith, is to undergird
the Christian.
I can remember when I was exposed to all that kind of stuff as a college student, as a seminary
student, I couldn't always answer the questions that people raised, but I knew people who
could.
And so I was grateful to God that we had scholars in the orthodox Christian faith, who gave
a compelling intellectual defense for the truth claims of the Christian faith, because
if we're in doubt and our faith is mixed with doubt, we're less confident, we're less bold,
we're less aggressive in the proclamation of the gospel.
So there, these are just a few of the reasons why we continue to be engaged in this enterprise.