Reasonable Faith?

In his book Reasonable Faith, Christian author William Lane Craig argues that reason is to play a "ministerial" role in the Christian faith. The problem with this is that it's the biggest proof anyone has ever been given, indeed, that anyone should ever need that Craig is a spin-doctor for the Christian Right. The problem is that reason should be only be to discover facts and testing our understanding of those facts. Reason can be used as a means to an end or as an end in itself. If we let the facts speak for themselves and we seek only to test our understanding of any facts (i.e. how to explain those facts), we are using reason as an end in itself. It's usually when people begin with a conclusion and then look to verify that conclusion, then are they using reason as a means to an end.

The problem here is that one's approach to how to use reason determines if one is an honest inquirer or if one is a spin-doctor. If someone seeks to use reason as an end in itself, that person is an honest inquirer; if someone seeks to use reason as a means to an end, that person is a spin-doctor. The only honest way to use reason is to use it as an end in itself. This is to use it, in theological terms, in a "magisterial" sense. To use reason in a "ministerial" sense, is to use reason as a means to an end, to verify a conclusion you're already committed to. To use reason in a "ministerial" sense is to use it dishonestly. Thus, those who use reason in a "ministerial" approach are abusing reason. They are engaging in what I call "the rape of reason".

Many Evangelical Christians simply display their hypocrisy in condemning "critical New Testament scholars" for ruling out the miraculous before they have given any evidence a honest look and rival hypotheses a fair shake. But if many Christians follow Craig's lead and use reason in a "ministerial" sense, they are guilty of the same damn thing! They have a precommitment to the resurrection, to biblical inerrancy, to Christian theism, and rule out any naturalistic hypotheses before they engage any historical evidence in their studies.

This was brought home to me one night as I was reading Norman Geisler's book Inerrancy. I read a chapter called "Biblical Inerrancy and Higher Criticism". The author condemned the critical-historical approach to the Bible and, instead, advocated a grammatico-historical approach to the Bible. The latter approach begins with the axiom that the Bible is inerrant. What convinced me that apologetics was a sham and nothing but hopeless hackwork was this very chapter. I realized that Christian apologists have no interest in honestly assessing history. If many New Testament critics were dishonest in their approach to any historical investigation of the New Testament, Evangelicals would simply try to reform the critical-historical method so as to not rule out miracles and skewer the results in advanced.

What Evangelicals like Geisler, Archer, and other hacks who contributed to this volume were doing was trying to replace any "naturalistic" presuppositions with those that were biblically-based. This struck me as hypocrisy. How can any Evangelical chew out advocates of the critical-historical method because such a method allegedly rules out the miraculous beforehand and then substitute it for their own method which rules out the naturalistic beforehand and presupposes biblical inerrancy and perhaps the resurrection beforehand?

This is what convinced me that night that Christian apologetics was truly a sham. It's pseudo-intellectual hackwork aimed at raping reason and keeping people in the fold. The problem is that exposes hypocrisy in the long run and shows that it's moreover Evangelists who are the real spin-doctors and hacks and probably not so much of the critics. There are no doubt that some critics truly are guilty of the charges leveled at them by Evangelicals. The problem is that quite a number of Evangelicals aren't really in a position to compain about it.

I appreciate any questions, comments, and criticisms. Insults needn't apply!

Matthew