2 From The Point Of Tension To The Gospel
WHY THERE IS A PLACE FOR CONVERSATION
If the man before you were logical to his non-Christian presuppositions, you would have no point of communication with him. It would be impossible to have communication if he were consistent. But in reality no one can live logically according to his own non-Christian presuppositions, and consequently, because he is faced with the real world and himself, in practice you will find a place where you can talk. He would not be where he is, suspended between the real world and the logical conclusions of his presuppositions, if he were consistent. The only reason he can be at the point of tension, nearer to the real world than his presuppositions would logically indicate, is because, to some extent, he is not logical; and the nearer he is to the real world, the more illogical he is to his presuppositions. As an illustration: it is illogical for John Cage to pick mushrooms as he does, in a universe which, he says, is intrinsically chance, but, illogically, he does pick them in that way; and thus you could start talking to him concerning the inadequacy of his system, with its chance music, in relationship to his mushrooms.
In practice then, we do have a point for conversation, but this point is not properly to be spoken of as “neutral.” There are no neutral facts, for facts are God’s facts. However, there is common ground between the Christian and non-Christian because regardless of a man’s system, he has to live in God’s world. If he were consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions, he would be separated from the real universe and the real man, and conversation and communication would not be possible.
In this way it does not seem to me that presuppositional apologetics should be seen as ending conversation with the people around us. On the other hand, to try to work below the line of despair without a clear and defined concept of presuppositional apologetics is simply to destroy the possibility of helping twentieth-century people. There is no use talking today until the presuppositions are taken into account, and especially the crucial presuppositions concerning the nature of truth and the method of attaining truth.
GIVING AND TAKING BLOWS
When we have discovered, as well as we can, a person’s point of tension, the next step is to push him towards the logical conclusion of his presuppositions:
We ought not to try first to move a man away from the logical conclusion of his position but towards it, in the direction of the arrow. We should try to move him in the natural direction his presuppositions take him. We are pushing him towards the place where he ought to be, had he not stopped short.
As I seek to do this, I need to remind myself constantly that this is not a game I am playing. If I begin to enjoy it as a kind of intellectual exercise, then I am cruel and can expect no real spiritual results. As I push the man off his false balance, he must be able to feel that I care for him. Otherwise I will only end up destroying him, and the cruelty and ugliness of it all will destroy me as well. Merely to be abstract and cold is to show that I do not really believe this person to be created in God’s image and therefore one of my kind. Pushing him towards the logic of his presuppositions is going to cause him pain; therefore, I must not push any further than I need to.
If we find the man ready to receive Christ as Savior, then by all means we should not talk about presuppositions but tell him the glorious good news. The whole purpose of our speaking to twentieth-century people in the way I have outlined is not to make them admit that we are right in some personally superior way, nor to push their noses in the dirt, but to make them see their need so that they will listen to the gospel. As soon as the person before us is ready to listen to the gospel, we do not push him any further—it is horrible to be propelled in the direction of meaninglessness, against the testimony of the external world and the testimony of oneself.
As we get ready to tell the person God’s answer to his or her need, we must make sure that the individual understands that we are talking about real truth, and not about something vaguely religious which seems to work psychologically. We must make sure that he understands that we are talking about real guilt before God, and we are not offering him merely relief for his guilt-feelings. We must make sure that he understands that we are talking to him about history, and that the death of Jesus was not just an ideal or a symbol but a fact of space and time. If we are talking to a person who would not understand the term “space-time history,” we can ask: “Do you believe that Jesus died in the sense that if you had been there that day, you could have rubbed your finger on the cross and got a splinter in it?” Until he understands the importance of these three things, he is not ready to become a Christian.
Push him towards the logic of his position in the area of his own real interests. If he is interested in science, we will push him to the logical conclusion of his position in science. If it is art, then gently and yet firmly we push him from the point of tension to the end of his presuppositions. At all points in the conversation, we must allow him to ask any question he wants. We cannot say, on the one hand, that we believe in the unity of truth and then, on the other hand, suddenly withdraw from the discussion and tell him to believe on blind authority. He has a right to ask questions. It is perfectly true that not all Christians proceed in this way with all modern people, and yet people are brought to Christ by them. For every person who is saved we should be very thankful. But to withdraw by saying or implying “Keep quiet and just believe” may later lead to spiritual weakness, even if the person does become a Christian, for it will leave crucial questions unanswered. Therefore, in the midst of our attempts to press our case, we must be ready to receive blows as well. The more he is a true twentieth-century man the more important it is, if you wish to see him become a Christian, that you should accept the blows of the questions in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the name of truth. On the other hand, keep pressing him back, for he must keep answering questions too. As we take time to study both the modern world in which we live and, more particularly, our Bible, we shall come to know more and more answers. We must have faced the question “Is Christianity true?” for ourselves. We must be men of the Scriptures, so that we can know what the content of the biblical system is. Every day of our lives we should be studying the Scriptures to make sure that what we are presenting really is the Christian position, and that we are presenting it as well as possible in our day.
TAKING THE ROOF OFF
Let us think of it in a slightly different way. Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension:
At the point of tension the person is not in a place of consistency in his system, and the roof is built as a protection against the blows of the real world, both internal and external. It is like the great shelters built upon some mountain passes to protect vehicles from the avalanches of rock and stone which periodically tumble down the mountain. The avalanche, in the case of the non-Christian, is the real but abnormal, fallen world which surrounds him. The Christian, lovingly, must remove the shelter and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is to beat upon him. When the roof is off, each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is.
The truth that we let in first is not a dogmatic statement of the truth of the Scriptures, but the truth of the external world and the truth of what man himself is. This is what shows him his need. The Scriptures then show him the real nature of his lostness and the answer to it. This, I am convinced, is the true order for our apologetics in the second half of the twentieth century for people living under the line of despair.
It is unpleasant to be submerged by an avalanche, but we must allow the person to undergo this experience so that he may realize his system has no answer to the crucial questions of life. He must come to know that his roof is a false protection from the storm of what is, and then we can talk to him of the storm of the judgment of God.
Removing the roof is not some kind of optional exercise. It is strictly biblical in its emphasis. In the thinking of the twentieth-century man, the concept of judgment and of hell is nonsense, and therefore to begin to talk here is to mumble in a language which makes no contact with him. Hell or any such concept is unthinkable to modern man because he has been brainwashed into accepting the monolithic belief of naturalism which surrounds him. We of the West may not be brainwashed by our State, but we are brainwashed by our culture. Even the modern radicals are radicals in a very limited circle.
Before men passed below the line of despair they knew for the most part that they were guilty, but it rarely entered their minds that they were dead as well. By contrast, modern man hardly ever considers himself to be guilty, but he often acknowledges that he is dead. The Bible says that both these things are true. Man in revolt against the holy God who is there is guilty and is already under God’s wrath. Because he is guilty, he is separated from his true and only reference point and therefore he is dead as well. The Bible does not say man will become lost, but that he is lost. The chasm in biblical teaching does not come at death but at the point of conversion, when the individual passes from death to life. This is the point of personal antithesis; before that, man is dead indeed.
Hence we begin to deal with “modern man” by preaching at the place where he can understand. Often he understands the horrible point of meaninglessness. Often he recognizes the tension between the real world and the logic of his presuppositions. Often he appreciates the horror of being dead and yet still alive. The Word of God is overwhelmingly clear in its teaching that there are two aspects of lostness: present and future. When I accept Christ as Savior, I pass from death to life, and therefore before that time I am clearly dead. Therefore, when modern man feels dead, he is experiencing what the Word of God tells him he is. In himself he will not be able to define his deadness, for he does not know what his deadness is—and even less does he know the solution to it. However, he is aware of one thing, and that is that he is dead. It is our task to tell him that the present death he knows is moral death and not just metaphysical lostness, and then to tell him God’s solution. But we begin with the present lostness with which he wrestles. This is not adding to the gospel; it is applying in practice the depths of the truth of the Word of God, that man in revolt is purposeless and dead.
This is what we mean by taking the roof off. But we cannot ever think this to be easy. The hardest thing of all is that when we have exposed modern man to his tension, he still may not be willing for the true solution. Consequently, we may seem to leave him in a worse state than he was in before. But this is the same as the evangelism of the past. Whenever the evangelist preached the reality of hell, men who did not believe were more miserable after hearing his preaching than if they had never heard him. We are in the same position. We confront men with reality; we remove their protection and their escapes; we allow the avalanches to fall. If they do not become Christians, then indeed they are in a worse state than before we spoke to them.