This study on the existence of God will be a first in a long series which will not be done sequentially as it would take away from other important subjects. What is apologetics? American Heritage states: a·pol·o·get·ics n. (used with a sing. verb). 1. The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines.
The word comes from the Greek word "apologia". It means..... verbal defense, speech in defense, a reasoned statement or argument. The command that we are given in light of this word is to defend the faith which we find in....
1 Peter 3:15 but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense (apologia) to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;
Apologetics is, I think, something that has been lost in the church in general. I also think that there has never been a time that we need it more then now. The reason is that apologetics is used to identify false doctrines and thereby identify cults and false religions. It is used to strengthen the believer and to draw the atheist and agnostic.
The apologist uses reason and logic to formulate his arguments for God. This may seem like a strange statement to many of you. You may have been told that being a Christian is just about faith. Indeed faith does come first, but as the early church fathers stated, fides quaerens intellectum ("faith seeking understanding") and credo ut intelligam ("I believe in order that I may understand").
You see faith comes first, but understanding follows. This is where we as ministers have failed, we have been happy with just faith, and we have taught the flock to be happy with just faith. Most of us have not taken that next important step, that is to understand our faith to give a reason for it. That is what apologetics is about.
Many people despise and/or ignore apologetics because it seems too intellectual, abstract and rational. They contend that life and love and morality and sanctity are much more important than reason. Well they are right, they just don't realize that they themselves are reasoning! *s*
Reason and logic are a friend of faith, it has to be. Why? Because we contend that God is truth, we contend that the bible is truth. Reason and logic are tools to prove and find truth, therefore they (reason and logic) are our friend not our enemy. They will always point to God not away from Him.
Justin Martyr wrote in the second century in his autobiographical First Apology:
1. A man seeks the truth by the unaided effort of reason, and is disappointed. (that is a man tries to find God by intellect alone)
2. It is offered him by faith, and he accepts. (then he accepts by faith, without intellect)
3. And, having accepted, he finds that it satisfies his reason. (now number one (reason) is satisfied too)
Now I want to restate that faith is supreme over reason. There are things that we do not understand yet we know that God says that it is. We take God at His word because He is believable, He is trustworthy, He is Truth. We know this because of what He has shown in our own lives and what He has revealed in His word. Faith leads to reason and reason based on truth leads to faith.
Why apologetics? I could not say it any better then Ronald K. TACELLI who gives the following three reasons for apologetics.
"1. Western civilization is for the first time in its history in danger of dying. The reason is spiritual. It is losing its life, its soul; that soul was the Christian faith. The infection killing it is not multiculturalism (Of, relating to, or including several cultures.) —other faiths —but the monoculturalism (A single, homogeneous culture without diversity or dissension.) of secularism (Religious skepticism or indifference.) —no faith, no soul. Our century has been marked by genocide, sexual chaos and money-worship. Unless all the prophets are liars, we are doomed unless we repent and "turn back the clock" (not technologically but spiritually). The church of Christ will never die, but our civilization will. If the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, this world certainly won't. We do apologetics not to save the church but to save the world."
"2. We are not only in a civil (Of or relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state), cultural crisis, but also a philosophical (The investigation of causes and laws underlying reality), intellectual one. Our crisis is "a crisis of truth" (to use Ralph Martin's title). Increasingly, the very idea of objective truth is being ignored, abandoned or attacked —not only in practice but even in theory, directly and explicitly, especially by the educational and media establishments, who mold our minds."
"3. Finally, the deepest level of our crisis is not cultural or intellectual but spiritual. At stake are the eternal souls of men and women for whom Christ died. Some think the end is near. We are skeptical of such predictions, but we know one thing with certainty: each individual is nearing the end, death and eternal judgment, every day. Our civilization may last for another century, but you will not. You will soon stand naked in the light of God. You had better learn to love and seek that light while there is still time, so that it will be your joy and not your fear forever. It is unfashionable today to put such things in print —a fact that says volumes about the spiritual sanity of our ostrich-like age."
I would like to say also that there will be those that will say that apologetics is just a bunch of right wing fundamentalism. They are calling themselves liberal or left wing Christians. They apply a political term to a spiritual condition, this is done partly to avoid the real term for those that dissent from the basic tenants of Christianity, that term is Heretic (one who dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine) and Heresy (an opinion or doctrine contrary to church dogma).
I introduced this teaching with faith and reason to show you that the two always agree. It doesn't matter whether or not we understand everything, but that we understand that which God gave to us as individuals. We are all on different levels of learning and understanding, but we are all on equal levels of value. I don't want any of you to think that you are of lesser value if you do not understand or you have a hard time comprehending.
I have seen many many times how God can show divine truth to anyone, regardless of their intellectual level. We are not to rest or take pride in our intellect, not at all! The first Christian apologist (Paul) said it so well...... "I will boast in my weakness that the power of Christ may dwell in me."
Okay let's get into our first part of this study. The first thing that we need to address is the existence of God. There are a number of arguments that we will use to demonstrate His existence, anyone by itself is not enough, but together they are quite persuasive, and even in this we cannot prove all divine truth. If we just open the mind for the possibility of His existence we succeed. We will obviously not get through all of them this time so don't worry that you will have to be here till tomorrow. *s* We will take this slow so that we all understand each argument. I expect to learn as much from you as you expect to learn from me so I hope that you engage in this till it is clear.
So that you understand the following, let me explain a few things. These arguments are presented by R. Tacelli. The problem is some of what he says may be difficult to understand. So I broke it down into paragraphs and added my commentary to each paragraph to help us better understand what he is saying. As such, the paragraphs will be labeled with the name of the author so that you know who is talking.
1. The Argument from Change
TACELLI: The material world we know is a world of change. This young woman came to be 5'2", but she was not always that height. The great oak tree before us grew from the tiniest acorn. Now when something comes to be in a certain state, such as mature size, that state cannot bring itself into being. For until it comes to be, it does not exist, and if it does not yet exist, it cannot cause anything.
BISHOP SHAW: In other words a full grown oak tree cannot cause the acorn that it started out as.... to grow. This is so because the full grown state of that acorn (tree) does not yet exist. So we can conclude from this that the full grown tree is unable to bring itself into being.
TACELLI: As for the thing that changes, although it can be what it will become, it is not yet what it will become. It actually exists right now in this state (an acorn); it will actually exist in that state (large oak tree). But it is not actually in that state now. It only has the potentiality for that state.
BISHOP SHAW: The acorn in its current state cannot be a tree. It is an acorn right now. Someday it will be a tree but it is an acorn now. The acorn posses the potential of growing into the oak tree, but cannot make itself grow, nor can it will itself to be a tree. So we conclude from this that the acorn cannot change itself into a tree and previously we noted that the tree is also unable to bring itself into being.
TACELLI: Now a question: To explain the change, can we consider the changing thing alone, or must other things also be involved? Obviously, other things must be involved. Nothing can give itself what it does not have, and the changing thing cannot have now, already, what it will come to have then. The result of change cannot actually exist before the change. The changing thing begins with only the potential to change, but it needs to be acted on by other things outside if that potential is to be made actual. Otherwise it cannot change.
BISHOP SHAW: So if the acorn cannot make itself a tree and a tree cannot bring itself into being then it is obvious that something other then the acorn and the tree are needed for the acorn to change into a tree. The acorn needs something to act upon it for the acorn to be able to change into a tree.
TACELLI: Nothing changes itself. Apparently self-moving things, like animal bodies, are moved by desire or will —something other than mere molecules. And when the animal or human dies, the molecules remain, but the body no longer moves because the desire or will is no longer present to move it.
BISHOP SHAW: What gives our bodies motion, can they move without our will? That is can they accomplish tasks without the will to do the task? Now does this will have molecules, or is it spirit? We know that the will or spirit does not possess molecules because when an animal dies, the molecules are still in place, they are still there, but the will to move that body is gone.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
TACELLI: Now a further question: Are the other things outside the changing thing also changing? Are its movers also moving? If so, all of them stand in need right now of being acted on by other things, or else they cannot change. No matter how many things there are in the series, each one needs something outside itself to actualize its potentiality for change.
BISHOP SHAW: That is, is the thing that is causing the acorn to realize it's potential to change, itself also reliant upon something else for it to change? If so, then all of these things that are causing the acorn to change are in need of outside forces to act upon them as well to change. And the thing that is changing the thing changing the acorn also needs something to act upon it. So we can enlarge our view here. For example:
The acorn needs many things to act upon it for change, but let's just take one element, water. Now water is absolutly necessary to cause the acorn to change. Now there are a number of ways that an acorn can receive water so let's again just choose one example, rain. Does rain cause itself or has it always been in this state? No! The rain is a result of evaporation. Can evaporation cause itself or has it always existed in this state? No! It is a result of heat that is acting upon the oceans and causing evaporation. Can heat cause itself or has it always been in this state? No! It is the result of energy from the sun. The acorn relies upon water for change, rain relies upon the sun for change, etc.
No matter how big the series of changing things changing other things, each one needs something outside of itself to actualize the things potential to change. That is we do not observe things changing without the influence of outside forces acting upon it to facilitate the change.
TACELLI: The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many there are. The whole universe is in the process of change. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things meant by "God."
Briefly, if there is nothing outside the material universe, then there is nothing that can cause the universe to change. But it does change. Therefore there must be something in addition to the material universe. But the universe is the sum total of all matter, space and time. These three things depend on each other. Therefore this being outside the universe is outside matter, space and time. It is not a changing thing; it is the unchanging Source of change.
BISHOP SHAW: If we look at the biggest set of a changing thing, we would be looking at what we call the universe. From what we seen before, a thing that is changing must be acted upon by something else to realize actual change. So if we look at the universe and see that it is in a state of change then we must conclude that something is changing it. Since what we mean by universe is all of time, space and matter, then what ever is causing the universe to change is outside of or transcends time, space and matter. That cause of change is what we mean by God.
Malachi 3:6 "For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.
Now the bible tells us that God is unchanging and so God is the beginning and ending of all changing things.
Revelation 1:8 The Lord God says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the One who is and was and is coming. I am the Almighty."
Revelation 21:6 The One on the throne said to me, "It is finished. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give free water from the spring of the water of life to anyone who is thirsty.
Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Some where up the series we have to come to something that is causing all things to change yet is unchangeable. That something would have to possess all power at all times eternally. That something is our God.
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