Last week I pointed out that a lot of the uniqueness and the widespread nature of the bible has been influenced, brought about, or supported by the Holy Spirit—but we’re not gonna have a lot of success pointing out this fact to skeptics.
Depending, of course, on what they’re skeptical about. Could be the existence of God; or His nature—they’re not sure about the Holy Spirit, and don’t realize He’s God. Could be that they do believe in God, but they’re not sold on the idea of His interaction with people—in the case of cessationists,* that He does it any more; in the case of people who’ve had bad experiences with Christians, that He has anything to do with us.
In all these cases, you’re dealing with people who doubt the supernatural. They either don’t believe it exists, or they don’t believe it looks like we say it does.
Best solution to that problem is to show them the supernatural: Go heal a sick person. Prophesy over them. Or, if you’re not all that capable in the supernatural, take them to a Christian who is. Lots of folks claim seeing is believing, so fine: Give them something to see.
In my experience, which tends to be with prophecy, what the Holy Spirit has to say will sound largely meaningless to us, but almost invariably it floors them. They either become more accepting immediately, or they accuse us of a manipulative parlor trick and angrily storm away. Seeing isn’t really believing if you simply refuse to open your eyes. Hence God doesn’t take their statements, “If God would only stop being so invisible, and I could actually see Him…” seriously. He tried that in Exodus; He appeared in a massive pillar of cloud and fire and led the Hebrews around the desert for decades. Didn’t stop them from having no faith in Him, and threatening to abandon Him and go back to Egypt at every little difficulty.
Okay, so where does apologetics come into this scenario?
Logical arguments for the supernatural.
Nope, I’m not kidding. Christians who don’t live in the supernatural regularly attempt to argue in favor of the supernatural. It’s a bit like vegetarians arguing in favor of eating meat. Why don’t they just eat meat? I don’t know; and I’m the guy who made up the hypothetical example.
In the case of cessationists, what you have are people who want to have their cake and eat it: They believe miracles don’t happen today, but did happen in bible times. They want to be able to use the miraculous as their defense, yet not as their lifestyle; that’s too much for them. So they turn to logic… and don’t realize the glaring contradiction that is obvious to both supernaturalists and skeptics alike: “If God can do miracles, why don’t we still see miracles?” The simple answer is that we do; the convoluted answer will be in your apologetics textbook, if it’s not avoiding that question outright.
Well, they have their own issues. Let’s get to the skeptics.
At its most basic definition, supernatural means “more than natural.” It’s been associated with angels, elves, ghosts, psychics, and aliens so often that people assume that it only has to do with the paranormal. Not so. If you were walking through a forest, and you noticed that right in the middle of a clearing there was a water faucet, you would reasonably conclude that this faucet did not just grow there: Someone installed it, probably for the convenience of campers and hikers. Faucets aren’t natural. They are more than natural. They are—though few use this word this way—supernatural. They don’t just happen in the normal course of events. They imply someone was tampering with nature. Sometimes in a way we can figure out; sometimes not.
Just because sometimes we can’t figure out how people tampered with nature, it doesn’t automatically make the answer a paranormal one. For example, certain people can’t figure out how the Egyptians constructed the pyramids. They don’t think it possible for humans to move those stones so precisely into place using simple machines and ancient know-how. So they conclude someone else did it. Maybe space aliens. Now, your average Christian’s response to this thinking is, “That’s ridiculous; there are no space aliens.” But you see, that’s how skeptics think of us when we say, “God must’ve done it.” They lump God in with the paranormal, and believe none of it.
The anti-supernaturalist believes that anything “supernatural” must have been done, one way or another, by a fellow human. They believe the universe is a closed system. There is no God outside it who steps into it and interferes with it. Everything has a natural cause and effect. If God does interact with the universe, they assume that He (as the creator of nature and cause-and-effect) has such respect for His creation that He follows its rules, and any so-called “miracles” are indistinguishable from natural occurrences; ax-heads won’t float, rabbis won’t walk on water, and the dead won’t come back to life. Not without a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation, anyway.
Supernaturalists, on the other hand, have an open system: God does step into it and interfere with it. C.S. Lewis, in “Religion and Science” (included in his essay collection God in the Dock), compared it to a drawer where you put two coins and would expect to find two coins—provided no one else gets in the drawer, and when God gets into the drawer, so to speak, that’s where you see miracles.
The appeal that Christians make to the open system is that it takes an open mind to accept an open system; and isn’t open-mindedness so much better than closed-mindedness? Since it’s logically impossible to prove something doesn’t exist, isn’t it logically easier to accept that God and miracles could exist? Since there are so many testimonies about the supernatural throughout history and across cultures, doesn’t it make more sense to accept that something about them is true, rather than nothing about them is true?
Where it all falls apart.
Of course, our open system isn’t quite that open. As I pointed out above, bring up the idea of space aliens to a Christian and quite often you will be met with skepticism. Even though God and His angels aren’t from earth, you know; even though, up to about 100 years ago, everybody believed in space aliens, because we couldn’t conceive of a lifeless universe—since earth is so filled with life, we assumed space would be likewise; we hadn’t been in space yet and discovered how dead it is. Half the reason we search for other planets is because many of us assume something alive must be out there; our world can’t be just a life-filled fluke.
Take the closed-system anti-supernaturalist who reads about Moses parting and crossing the Red Sea in the bible, and concludes, “That couldn’t have happened because God doesn’t do that sort of thing.” Or “There has to be a natural cause for that event,” and invents a few theories—that between the wind and low tide a land bridge appeared, or that the Hebrews crossed a shallow sea and the Egyptians crossed a different, deeper one. Or that it didn’t happen at all; it’s pure myth. Whatever supports the closed-universe worldview. The anti-supernaturalist simply can’t take Exodus at face value.
We may rebuke that lack of faith, but we turn around and do the very same thing with other religions. The Trojan War, for example, as depicted in the Iliad: We believe and accept the Trojan War took place; there’s evidence for it through archaeology, so it’s in our history books. What we won’t accept is Homer’s depiction of it. We don’t believe Aphrodite helped Alexander snatch Helen; we don’t believe Achilles was a demigod; we don’t believe Apollo and Athena and Zeus got personally involved in the fighting. Our version of things is more like the Wolfgang Petersen movie Troy, in which the gods don’t even appear. That’s what supports our worldview. We can’t take the Iliad at face value either.
When we hear of miracles being performed by non-Christians, we’re no longer accepting supernaturalists; we turn into skeptics who say, “There’s gotta be a rational explanation for these magic tricks. Must be hypnotism. Mass delusion. Drugs. Demons.” It brings to mind the Pharisees’ response to Jesus performing exorcisms: In their minds, He was a sinner, so they couldn’t accept that He was performing proper exorcisms. (Mk 3.22) Their open system was not quite so open. Neither is ours.
The honest and historical thing to do, in all cases, is to report the story as reported. The Hebrews escaped Egypt, and gave credit to Yahweh. The Greeks defeated the Trojans, and gave credit to their gods. We should admit that everything else is speculation. We Christians might guess at how, apart from divine intervention, the Argives won, but since Homer didn’t tell us anything else, we don’t know, and should say so. An anti-supernaturalist likewise should say he can guess how the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, but he wasn’t there; Moses was, and according to the Song of Moses, (Ex 15.1-18) Yahweh did it. When we hear of a pagan faith-healer, our report should not be, “Demons did it,” but “He did it; he said it was through his gods; of course I don’t believe his gods are real gods.” Reporting the reports is proper history. Reading between the lines, dismissing the report, and reporting our guesswork, is not.
So to some degree we’re all anti-supernaturalist when we encounter a form of the supernatural that doesn’t fit inside our personal ideas of the universe. If I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m won’t accept your ghost stories. If you don’t believe in heaven, you’re not going to listen to me teach on it. Demanding that an anti-supernaturalist open his mind about God is like him demanding that you open your mind about Zeus: You’re just not gonna, and you think he’s a fool for suggesting it. And he is.
Back to evidence.
So scratch the logical arguments and go back, as I recommended earlier, to showing ’em something. Even Paul, the most logical arguer in the bible, didn’t resort to arguments but to demonstrations: “When I was with you,” he told the Corinthians, “I certainly gave you proof that I am an apostle. For I patiently did many signs and wonders and miracles among you.” (1Co 12.12)
Now of course, signs are not going to convince the closed-minded. In fact, signs are only going to condemn them: They can no longer legitimately claim that they have no proof of God’s existence and work. You gave them proof; their rejection of it is entirely on them. (Jn 15.24) That’s why they so often storm away from miracles angry—they know they have no more excuses, and they resent having those precious excuses taken away from them. They want me to stick to an intellectual argument, where they feel safe; they’ve learned the arguments that defend their position, and are pretty sure they can defend it if we keep things fair. Well, I don’t play fair—and God plays to win.
Reminder: The purpose of apologetics is to understand the history and logic behind Christianity. It is not ammunition for debating skeptics. Share your testimony (and signs!) with skeptics. Share your apologetics with fellow Christians.