Introduction
A common argument for the Christian worldview is what I am calling here lower apologetics as opposed to upper apologetics. The lower apologetical approach demonstrates a minimalist Christian worldview, while the upper apologetical approach demonstrates Christianity from a position of robust conservativism. There are strengths to arguments that are common to the lower method that may be integrated into upper apologetical arguments, but the apologist would be served well to work from an upper apologetics position.
An example of the two in action may be seen by a couple of interviews which Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, conducted with upper apologist John MacArthur[1] and lower apologist William Lane Craig.[2] MacArthur appealed to the Bible’s fulfilled prophecies and the scientific validity of biblical statements, which led to Shapiro asking about the difference between Judaism and Christianity to which MacArthur explained Isaiah 53 and its significance. Craig’s approach was different, building the case for God’s existence through the moral argument and the quantum mechanical argument, finally moving to proof for the resurrection. When Shapiro expressed doubts of the veracity of the Gospels, Craig responded by assuring him that the Bible does not need to be inerrant and shifted the discussion to three main facts of the resurrection.
Another representative from lower apologetics would be Michael Licona, who has written a book in defense of the Gospel that presupposes contradictions in the biblical text. He writes: “Since Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true. And it remains true even if it turns out there are errors and contradictions in the Gospels… Contradictions offer a challenge to the historical reliability of the Gospels and to some versions of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. However, they do not necessarily call into question the truth of the Christian faith.”[3] In Licona’s lower apologetics model, he accepts the Bible as unreliable for the verbal-plenary sense, while still affirming the historicity of the resurrection and therefore, in Licona’s idea, affirming Christianity. An immediate problem arises, though, as the significance of the resurrection is explained through the very text which Licona accuses of contradiction. One is not saved by accepting as historical the claim that Jesus was resurrected; one is saved by believing in Jesus for eternal life.
Another representative from upper apologetics would be Ken Ham, who has written a book which he opens:
My first point is:
1. There is no neutral position.
This is a problem in the church today. There’s been a failure within much of the church to teach generations to understand that there is no neutrality—no neutral position.
Let’s look at what God’s Word clearly teaches us.[4]
On the following pages, Ham quotes Matthew 12:30; Ephesians 5:8; Matthew 7:13–14; Matthew 7:24–26; Romans 8:7; Romans 1:17–19 to demonstrate in absolutes the motif that one is either for God or against Him. Ham says that his first point is that there is no neutral position, but he presupposes the authority of God’s Word before making this claim, hence his appeal to the Bible for support.
The rift between upper and lower apologetics essentially boils down to the nature of Scripture: is the Bible the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God that it claims to be? The answer to this question is a resounding yes and so the apologist should build his method in a way that affirms God’s Word.
Epistemological Frameworks
The epistemological framework for lower apologetics is tinted with suspicion of the Bible while upper apologetics is marked with a confidence in the Bible. Apologetics serves multiple purposes, so perhaps some nuances should surface in the contexts of epistemological presentations. The showcase purpose of apologetics is the evangelism of the unsaved. Unbelievers have their reasons for rejecting the gospel and Christians should be equipped to handle these objections to lead their loved ones to Christ. Another purpose for apologetics is the discipleship of the saved. The healthy Christian life is marked by growth, which, among other things, involves a growth in the understanding of apologetics.
The evangelist should meet the unbeliever where he is. If the unbeliever is struggling with God’s existence, then the evangelist should help him understand why God exists. If the unbeliever is struggling with the exclusivity of Christ, then the evangelist should help him understand why Christ is the only way to salvation. If the unbeliever is struggling with the historicity of the resurrection, then the evangelist should help him see that Christ is risen. Most would agree that these facts are examples of elements without which the Gospel cannot make sense. Both upper and lower apologists would stand for these issues, and both would be wise to notice when an unbeliever is leading them down a rabbit trail of nonessentials and redirect the conversation to the core issue.
The distinction between salvation and discipleship is plain to see. The quest to identify the bare minimum of the saving message has led to some interesting disputes over just how heretical a man can be when he is saved,[5] which is an important discussion for identifying false gospels that misconstrue Christ. The discussion is also crucial for setting boundaries on lower apologetics, but for the upper apologetics of discipleship, the conversation should go in a different direction to affirm a robust Christian worldview rather than the minimum of the saving message.
Serious theological differences typically boil down to hermeneutical differences. How we read the text will ultimately determine what we learn from the text. But is choosing a hermeneutical method the first step? More foundational than hermeneutics is the concept of metahermeneutics, which goes a step further to identify and develop the underlying assumptions that a hermeneutical system is built upon. The source and nature of language and meaning could carry certain biblical implications that would imply that man is responsible for his own reasoning.
The source of human language is God Himself. Contrary to the evolutionary notion that language developed as humans evolved, the historical reality is that God used language in creation even before He created a man with whom to communicate. The conventions of human language are rather straightforward, “for God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33a). The fact that God is the architect of human language and the fact that He used human language to write the Bible suggest that the reader should follow the conventions of human language to read the human language of the Bible. God is certainly smart enough to have designed language in a manner that conveys information through numerology, gematria, or other mystical means, but instead, He chose plain human languages for human audiences and so the human reader should submit himself to the meaning that is portrayed through those human languages.
An argument in favor of responsible epistemology may be built on the doctrine of perspicuity, which speaks of the clarity of the Bible. To say that the Bible is perspicuous is to say that the Bible may be read and understood on its own terms and does not rely on additional interpretation from outside the Bible. The doctrine of perspicuity is a normative result of proper views of authority and sufficiency. If God has given a sufficient text to be man’s authority, then it would follow that man could read and understand the text.
The doctrine of perspicuity came to the forefront of the Reformation. Roman Catholic theologians posited that the Bible could not be understood apart from the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers argued to the contrary that Catholicism itself obscures the Bible.[6] Building on the concept of sola scriptura, if the Bible is the sole authority for man, then it would follow that man must be able to read the Bible for himself.
A Catholic response may be that the doctrine of perspicuity makes the individual the ultimate authority. The difference may be viewed as another matter of metahermeneutics: is meaning created by the reader or is it fixed by the author? This is a question that has puzzled philosophers for ages, but the debate may be simplified. Some hold to author-centered hermeneutics, which means that meaning comes from the author of a text, others hold to reader-centered hermeneutics, which means that meaning comes from the reader, and still others combine elements from both.[7] The author-centered approach is preferred. Whenever a speaker or author puts out a communication, he decides the meaning of the communication. A reader can come to different meanings from what the communicator intended, but these are precisely the meanings that are to be avoided. The Roman Catholic system has the reader, specifically the clergy, creating meaning in addition to what is revealed and these meanings are elevated to authority. Contrary to the Roman Catholic metahermeneutic, a biblical metahermeneutic has that God revealed the Scriptures, so God fixed the meaning of the text, so God is the final authority on all matters and man is responsible to discern the meaning of the text using the conventions of human language, which God has hardwired into man’s design.
The presuppositional apologetic method is generally part of the upper school, not the lower school, but it its most popular forms today, presuppositionalism is built on a faulty epistemology of Calvinism. A few strengths of presuppositionalist apologetics are its rejection of the possibility of neutrality. Neutrality may allow the lower school to accept a skeptic’s presupposed views of errors in the Bible and so the presuppositionalist rejection of neutrality itself could be beneficial to upper apologetics as a whole. Unfortunately, presuppositionalists can load Calvinism into the anti-neutrality, such that ideas such as the following ensue:
The point is not that unbelievers are simply ignorant of the truth. Rather, God has revealed himself to each person with unmistakable clarity, both in creation (Ps. 19; Rom. 1:18– 21) and in man’s own nature (Gen. 1:26ff.). In one sense, the unbeliever knows God (Rom. 1:21). At some level of his consciousness or unconsciousness, that knowledge remains. But in spite of that knowledge, the unbeliever intentionally distorts the truth, exchanging it for a lie (Rom. 1:18– 32; 1 Cor. 1:18– 2:16 [nоte esp. 2:14]; 2 Cor. 4:4). Thus, the non-Christian is deceived and “led astray” (Titus 3:3). He knows God (Rom. 1:21) and does not know him at the same time (1 Cor. 1:21; 2:14).[8]
The above quote comes from the Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity. The underlying assumption is that an unelected man cannot properly think about God and believe in Christ for eternal life (much less adhere to Calvinism’s additional criteria of perseverance). An extreme Calvinistic presuppositional apologetic essentially positions man as unreliable for his own thoughts.
Presuppositionalism may be fine-tuned with an epistemology of responsibility. A competing idea with the Calvinist TULIP is Daniel Weierbach’s Free Grace LOTUS. The five points of LOTUS are Liable Depravity, Occupational Election, Total Atonement, Unlimited Grace, and Security of the Saints.[9] In the LOTUS model, the sole criterion for eternal life is belief in Christ and salvation is available to all. As such, man is held responsible for his personal acceptance or rejection of the Gospel (hence Liable Depravity and Unlimited Grace), hence an epistemology of responsibility contra the presuppositionalist unliable epistemology. Concerning the doctrine of perspicuity, TULIP epistemology is revelatory (God elects an individual upon whom to push His irresistible grace), while LOTUS epistemology is responsible (God has revealed the Scriptures in a way that may be understood through the conventions of human speech which is part of his design for believer and unbeliever alike).
Syllogisms
The basics of the difference between upper and lower apologetics may be expressed in the following syllogisms:
The second and third points of lower apologetics are invalid. They may be softened through redefinitions of inerrancy or expansion of core doctrines beyond the resurrection, but these two areas of compromise are what lead to the conclusion that the Bible is not to be defended.
The above syllogism for upper apologetics is somewhat simplified to include the aforementioned Calvinist presuppositionalism and the fine-tuned responsible epistemology. Where these two diverge can be explained by the following two syllogisms:
Presuppositionalism has validity in certain claims about the nonexistence of neutrality, but a presuppositionalism that is overloaded with Calvinism will become problematic. By clarifying necessary points in soteriology, a responsible epistemology may emerge that give a proper basis for upper apologetics.
[1] Ben Shapiro, “John MacArthur | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 29,” YouTube Video, 1:09:12. December 2, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak-Rv08N_1Q.
[2] Ben Shapiro, “William Lane Craig | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 50.” YouTube Video, 1:03:58. May 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL-zJzE5clA.
[3] Michael R. Licona, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2024), 6–7.
[4] Ken Ham, Divided Nation: Cultures in Chaos and a Conflicted Church (Green Forest: New Leaf Publishing Group, 2021), 13.
[5] For example, Zane Hodges attempted to reduce the core of the Message of Life to a bare minimum of content that is necessary to believe for salvation and the resulting content excluded the cross. As Hodges points out in the final paragraphs of his paper, “apart from the cross, for most modern Americans, the offer of salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, just doesn’t compute” (p. 12). His point was that the evangelist should direct people to believe in Christ. Hodges’ pursuit has merit as an attempt to identify the direction to lead evangelistic conversations in theory, but his contention was not without controversy. Several responses and defenses ensued, Stegall’s response being the most exhaustive. See Zane C. Hodges, “How to Lead People to Christ: Part 1 The Content of Our Message” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society 13:2 (Autumn 2000), 3–12; Thomas Stegall, The Gospel of the Christ: A Biblical Response to the Crossless Gospel Regarding the Content of Saving Faith (Milwaukee, WI: Grace Gospel Press, 2009).
[6] An interesting bit of Reformation history as it relates to perspicuity (and bibliology more broadly) occurred in the life and ministry of Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575). For a closer study of Bullinger’s contribution to the discussion, see William Peter Stephens, The Theology of Heinrich Bullinger (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 31–92.
[7] Three of the big names from the 20th century on this topic are E.D. Hirsch for author-centered hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer for subject-centered hermeneutics, and Paul Ricoeur for reader-centered hermeneutics. E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode [Truth and Method] (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1960); Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
[8] John M. Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief, edited by Joseph E. Torres (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2015), ProQuest Ebook §34.
[9] Daniel J. Weierbach, LOTUS: A Free Grace Response to TULIP (Prattville, AL: Kindle Direct Publishing, 2024).
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