Greg Bahnsen wrote…
As Van Til observes: “The natural man then assumes that he has the final criterion of truth within himself. Every form of authority that comes to him must justify itself by standards inherent in man and operative apart from the authority that speaks.”[1] Elsewhere he had noted that “If we must determine the foundations of the authority, we no longer accept authority on authority.”[2] This is just to say that God cannot be permitted by the unbeliever to be and to speak as God – to be the ultimate and self-authenticating authority. Such a position and privilege will be assigned by the unbeliever to something else, something which is part of the creation (such as man’s reasoning, experience) and thus is implicitly treated as an idol. “They worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
The bottom line then, is that to criticize the Christian’s irrational “faith” is itself nothing more than to express a different religious faith – a faith which in one way or another adopts the ultimate authority and self-sufficiency of the human mind and reasoning. That is irrational “faith” indeed, given the sad experience and history of mankind – as well as the unresolved, rational tensions within autonomous science and philosophy.
I agree with Bahnsen. The starting place of apologetics is to establish the standard of authority, but nonbelievers have a very inconsistent understanding of authority. So, if a skeptic will not concede that there is such a thing as ultimate authority then there is no reason to go any further in apologetics — because there would be no real basis upon which the conversation could possibly continue.
If the skeptic does finally admit that there must be a consistent definition of authority then you can use that definition (whatever it is) to expose the skeptics own religion — which could be anything from Humanism to some form of New Age-ism.
[1] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1955), pp. 145.
[2] Ibid, p. 49.
(go here to read more of Bahnsen’s thoughts on this subject)
Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his generation of Christians and church leaders with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason graduated Central Private School (Central, LA) in 1990. He attended Liberty University for two years and graduated with a BGS from William Carey Univeristy (Hattiesburg, MS) in 1994. Jason earned his MDIV at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1998.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He planted Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.