Apologetics and Prolegomena

Theological Method and the Defense of the Faith — A Position Paper

Bruce Mitchell

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A Brief Statement

I hold that theology is, at its root, the knowledge of God — and that such knowledge is possible only because God has made Himself known. He has revealed Himself in the works of creation and in the human conscience, and supremely in the Scriptures and in His Son. On the ground of that self-disclosure, the triune God can be truly, though never exhaustively, known by His creatures: known by a faith that receives His Word, and understood by a reason that serves rather than judges.

The proper end of theology is not merely to know about God but to know Him, unto worship and obedience. And because the faith is assailed in every age, the Christian is called to defend it — to give a reasoned answer for the hope that is in him — while remembering that the deepest barrier to belief is moral rather than intellectual, the suppression of truth already known, and that only the Spirit of God can open blind eyes. I therefore value the evidences and the arguments as servants of the gospel, while resting the whole enterprise upon revelation received by faith and sealed by the Spirit. My approach to the defense of the faith I hold as a conviction, with respect for the brethren of other schools — not a few of them in my own tradition — from whom I have gladly learned.

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A Detailed Exposition

The Nature of Theology

The word “theology” joins two Greek words — theos, “God,” and logos, “word” or “reason” — and means, simply, the study and knowledge of God and of all things in relation to Him. As an ordered body of such knowledge, it has rightly been called a science, though its subject is the highest of all.¹ Its sources are not equal. Holy Scripture stands supreme and final, the norming norm that norms all else (see my paper on Bibliology); general revelation, the witness of creation and conscience, is real but subordinate; and reason, the history of the church’s reflection, and Christian experience all have their place as ministers, never as masters, of the Word.² Theology is usually divided for study into the exegetical, the systematic, the historical, and the practical — but these are facets of one task. And that task has an end beyond itself: theology is not speculation for the curious but the knowledge of God for the worshiper. It is meant to warm the heart and bend the knee, to issue in godliness; a theology that puffs up rather than builds up has missed its purpose.³

The Knowability of God

Can the finite know the Infinite — can fallen, creaturely minds truly know the eternal God? The Christian answer holds two truths together. On the one hand, God is incomprehensible: He cannot be fully comprehended by any creature, for “My thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9), and “the secret things belong to the LORD” (Deuteronomy 29:29). We see now “in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). On the other hand, He is genuinely knowable: He has revealed Himself, and what He has shown us is true. We apprehend Him truly without comprehending Him exhaustively — we know Him really, as a child knows his father, though not as He knows Himself.⁴ The old theologians marked the difference by speaking of archetypal theology — the perfect, infinite self-knowledge God has of Himself — and ectypal theology, the true but creaturely and derived knowledge He grants to us, accommodated to our capacity. Our knowledge is therefore analogical: it really corresponds to God as He is, because He has fitted it to us, even though it is not the knowledge He has of Himself. The Creator-creature distinction is never erased; but across it, by His gracious condescension, real knowledge passes.⁵

Revelation: The Ground of All Theology

It follows that all theology rests upon revelation. An unknown God could only be guessed at; the God of the Bible is known because He has spoken. His revelation comes in two modes. General revelation is given to all — in the creation that “declares the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), in the providence that does good and gives rain (Acts 14:17), and in the conscience that bears witness within (Romans 2:14–15). It is enough to render every person “without excuse” (Romans 1:20), but it is not enough to save; it tells that God is, not the way to be reconciled to Him (see my papers on Creation and Bibliology).⁶ For that we are shut up to special revelation — God’s saving self-disclosure in His mighty acts, in the prophetic and apostolic word now inscripturated, and supremely in His Son: “Long ago … God spoke … by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2); “No one has ever seen God; the only God … has made Him known” (John 1:18). This word is self-authenticating, carrying its own evidence as the word of God, and is sealed to the believing heart by the inward witness of the Spirit.⁷

Reason: Servant, Not Sovereign

Where, then, does reason stand? Reason is a good gift of God, part of what it means to bear His image, and the theologian is to use it rigorously — to read carefully, to think clearly, to argue validly. Faith is no enemy of the mind. But reason has a station, and the great question is whether it will keep it. The Reformers drew the needed line: reason is ministerial, not magisterial — a servant that helps us understand, order, and defend what God has revealed, not a sovereign that sits in judgment over revelation, ratifying what it likes and rejecting what it cannot fathom.⁸ Two errors lie on either hand. Rationalism enthrones reason above revelation, making the human mind the measure of what God may say — the spirit of the Enlightenment, and the death of true theology. Fideism retreats to the opposite corner, treating faith as a blind leap that owes reason nothing and may even defy it. I reject both. Reason cannot generate the saving knowledge of God; but received within faith, it is faith’s able and necessary servant.

Faith and Reason

So faith and reason are not rivals but partners, with faith in the lead. Faith is not a leap in the dark; it is trust resting on the trustworthy God who has spoken — “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), grounded in His character and His Word. And it comes first in the order of knowing. With Augustine and Anselm I say, credo ut intelligam — “I believe in order that I may understand” — for faith is not the conclusion of a chain of reasoning we complete on our own, but the doorway through which understanding then deepens: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.⁹ It is sometimes objected that this is circular — that we believe the Bible because it is God’s Word and call it God’s Word because we believe it. But every ultimate authority must finally appeal to itself; the rationalist, too, defends reason by reasoning. To reason from one’s deepest commitment is not a vicious circle but the nature of the case; the question is not whether one has an ultimate starting point, but whether it is the true one.¹⁰

The Defense of the Faith

From this foundation, the church takes up the defense of the faith — apologetics, from the Greek apologia, a reasoned defense such as a man might give in court. We are commanded to it: “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15); we are to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) and to destroy “arguments … raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Paul reasoned in the synagogues and on Mars Hill (Acts 17), and we follow him.¹¹ Christians have defended the faith by various methods. The classical approach argues first for the existence of God by reason, then for Christianity by evidences; the evidential leans on the historical facts, above all the resurrection; the presuppositional begins from God and His Word as the necessary precondition of all knowledge, showing that the unbeliever has no neutral ground to stand on; and Reformed epistemology argues that belief in God is rationally proper without prior proof. I lean toward a revelation-grounded method — holding, with the presuppositionalist, that there is no neutral ground and that Scripture is the final authority, while gladly using, with the classical and evidential schools, the real witness of general revelation and the genuine force of the evidences as God’s appointed confirmations. I hold this as conviction, not as a test of fellowship, and honor the able defenders of every school.¹²

The Noetic Effects of Sin and the Witness of the Spirit

One truth, however, must govern the whole enterprise, lest we expect of argument what only God can do. The Fall has darkened the mind as well as the will. The natural man “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God … and he is not able to understand them” (1 Corinthians 2:14, psychikos), and the unbeliever does not merely lack the truth but actively “suppresses the truth” he has (Romans 1:18). His problem, at bottom, is not a shortage of evidence but a hostility of heart; he will not have God (see my papers on Hamartiology and Soteriology).¹³ This recasts the whole task. Apologetics can clear away objections, expose the bankruptcy of unbelief, and commend the reasonableness of the faith — and these are worth doing. But no argument, however airtight, can raise the dead. It is the Spirit who persuades, who removes the blindness and grants the faith to see (2 Corinthians 4:4–6); the deepest ground of our own assurance is His inward witness, not the cleverness of our proofs. This frees the apologist from an impossible burden and presses him to prayer; and it shapes his manner, for we are to give our answer “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15), persuading men, not bludgeoning them.¹⁴

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Practical Implications

Ministry Emphasis: Teaching the Faith and Giving an Answer

First, theology belongs to the whole church, not to the academy alone. Every believer is a theologian of some kind; the only question is whether he will be a good one. I want to teach ordinary people to think God’s thoughts after Him — not to make them scholars, but to lead them into the knowledge of God that warms the heart and orders the life. Sound doctrine is not the enemy of devotion but its fuel.

Second, this gives us confidence in a skeptical age. We can know God truly; the faith is not a blind leap but a reasoned trust, with the witness of creation, the testimony of conscience, the facts of the resurrection, and the coherence of the whole standing behind it. We need not be cowed by the unbeliever’s confidence, nor apologize for believing. Christianity is true, and it can bear examination — a confidence that, rightly held, has nothing of arrogance in it.

Third, knowing where the argument ends sets the evangelist free. I am not responsible for reasoning anyone into the kingdom; I am responsible for giving a faithful answer, living a credible life, and praying, trusting the Spirit to do what I cannot. This matters especially with the hurting, whose unbelief is often a wound before it is a question. With such men I have learned to meet the person and not merely the argument — to answer gently, to be patient, and to remember that behind the objection there is usually a story.

Finally, the apologist must be the kind of man whose life commends what his lips defend, and who holds his own method with humility. I hold my convictions about how to defend the faith, and I can give my reasons; but I have learned more from those who differ than my younger self would have guessed, and I would contend for the faith without contending against my brothers. The goal, after all, is not to win the argument but to win the person — and beyond that, to know and to glorify God, which is where theology began and where it ends.

We are not called to argue men into the kingdom, but to give a faithful answer — and to trust the Spirit, who alone opens blind eyes.

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Biblical, Exegetical, Theological, and Historical Notes

1. “Theology” derives from theos (θεός, “God”) and logos (λόγος, “word, reason, discourse”): the reasoned knowledge of God. Prolegomena (Greek, “things said beforehand”) names the introductory matters of method, sources, and possibility that precede the body of theology proper. Theology is traditionally treated as a science — an ordered body of knowledge with its own object (God and all things in relation to Him) and its own method (drawn from God’s self-revelation).
2. The sources of theology are not coordinated. Holy Scripture is supreme and final — the norma normans non normata, the norming norm that is not itself normed (see my paper on Bibliology and the principle of sola Scriptura). General revelation is real but subordinate and insufficient to save (note 6). Reason, churchly tradition, and Christian experience are ministerial aids, to be honored in their place but never set over the Word of God.
3. Theology’s end is doxological and practical, not speculative: to know God unto worship and godliness. “This is eternal life, that they know You” (John 17:3); knowledge that does not humble and sanctify has missed its aim (1 Corinthians 8:1, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”). The older divines spoke of theologia as ultimately practica — ordered to living unto God, not merely to knowing about Him.
4. God is both incomprehensible and knowable. Incomprehensible: no creature can fully grasp Him (Job 11:7; Isaiah 40:28; Romans 11:33–34), and “the secret things belong to the LORD” (Deuteronomy 29:29). Knowable: He has revealed Himself truly, so that we apprehend Him really though not exhaustively — “now I know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). To deny His knowability is agnosticism; to claim exhaustive knowledge of Him is presumption.
5. Reformed prolegomena distinguished theologia archetypa — the infinite, perfect self-knowledge God has of Himself — from theologia ectypa, the finite, derived knowledge He grants to creatures, accommodated (“as a nurse lisps to an infant,” in Calvin’s figure) to our capacity. Our knowledge is thus analogical: it truly corresponds to God because He has fitted it to us, without being identical to His own self-knowledge. The Creator-creature distinction is preserved even in the act of revelation.
6. General revelation is God’s universal self-disclosure in creation (Psalm 19:1–6; Romans 1:19–20), providence (Acts 14:17), and conscience (Romans 2:14–15). It suffices to reveal God’s existence, power, and moral demand, leaving all “without excuse” (Romans 1:20), but it does not disclose the gospel and cannot save. See my papers on Creation and Bibliology.
7. Special revelation is God’s saving self-disclosure, given in His redemptive acts, in the prophetic-apostolic word now inscripturated, and climactically in the incarnate Son (Hebrews 1:1–2; John 1:18). Scripture is self-authenticating — it bears its own marks as the word of God (see my paper on Bibliology) — and is sealed to the believer by the testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum, the internal witness of the Holy Spirit (John 16:13–14; 1 Corinthians 2:10–12; cf. Calvin, Institutes I.7).
8. The Reformation distinguished the ministerial use of reason (reason as a servant, employed to understand, organize, and defend revealed truth) from the magisterial use (reason as a sovereign judge sitting over revelation, accepting or rejecting it by its own light). Reason is a gift of God (Isaiah 1:18; 1 Peter 3:15) to be used vigorously in its ministerial office; rationalism errs by making it magisterial, and fideism errs by despising it altogether.
9. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6), and faith holds the priority in the order of knowing. Augustine’s credo ut intelligam (“I believe in order that I may understand”) and Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”) express the conviction that saving knowledge begins not with autonomous proof but with trust in God’s self-revelation, which understanding then follows and deepens. Faith is grounded trust (Hebrews 11:1), not credulity.
10. The charge of circularity — that we accept Scripture’s authority on Scripture’s own testimony — misunderstands the nature of ultimate authorities. Every system reasons from its highest criterion and must finally appeal to it (the rationalist defends reason by reasoning; the empiricist defends sense-experience by appeal to experience). Such appeal to one’s ultimate standard is unavoidable and not viciously circular; the real question is which ultimate authority is true. The Christian’s is the self-attesting God who cannot lie (Hebrews 6:13).
11. Apologetics derives from apologia (ἀπολογία), a reasoned defense, as before a tribunal (Acts 22:1; Philippians 1:7, 16). The mandate is explicit: 1 Peter 3:15; Jude 3; 2 Corinthians 10:4–5; Titus 1:9. Scripture also models it — Paul “reasoning … from the Scriptures” in the synagogues and before the philosophers at Athens (Acts 17:2, 16–34).
12. The principal apologetic methods are: classical (theistic proofs first, then evidences for Christianity — e.g., Geisler, Sproul); evidential (direct appeal to historical evidence, especially the resurrection — e.g., Habermas); presuppositional (God and His Word as the necessary precondition of all intelligibility, denying neutral ground — e.g., Van Til, Bahnsen); and Reformed epistemology (belief in God as properly basic, warranted without prior proof — Plantinga). My own leaning is a revelation-grounded approach that affirms, with presuppositionalism, the final authority of Scripture and the absence of neutral ground, while employing the real evidence of general revelation and history as God’s confirmations. The schools overlap more in practice than in theory, and each has served the church.
13. The noetic effects of sin (from nous, νοῦς, “mind”) are the darkening of the understanding by the Fall. The unregenerate “natural” man (psychikos, ψυχικός) “is not able to understand” spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2:14), and unbelief is not mere ignorance but active suppression of known truth “in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18, 21). The barrier to faith is therefore moral and spiritual at root, not merely evidential. See my papers on Hamartiology and Soteriology.
14. Because the barrier is spiritual, persuasion is finally the work of the Spirit, who alone lifts the blindness and grants sight (2 Corinthians 4:4–6; John 6:44; Acts 16:14). Apologetics is a means God may use — to remove obstacles and commend the truth — but it does not regenerate; this frees the apologist from an impossible burden and drives him to prayer. It also governs his manner: the defense is to be made “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15; cf. 2 Timothy 2:24–25). See my paper on Pneumatology.

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Select Bibliography

Bahnsen, Greg L. Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis. Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R.

Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 1, Prolegomena. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Berkhof, Louis. Introduction to Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Book I. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press.

Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R.

Geisler, Norman L. Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker.

Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schaeffer, Francis A. The God Who Is There. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Sproul, R. C., John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley. Classical Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Van Til, Cornelius. The Defense of the Faith. Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R.