When the lights come on

While studying at Westminster Theological Seminary, Ted Turnau* tells of how he was driven by apologetics and "wanted to build a fool-proof philosophical argument for God's existence." One day he went to visits his apologetics professor, David Clowney, who wasn't in his office. So he knocked on the next door...

"It was Vern Poythress, one of the New Testament profs there. He opened the door and asked what I wanted. I told him I needed to talk, and proceeded to tell him the whole story of my time at Westminster, why I’d come, what I was looking for. I said, “I just want some solid, logical proof that God exists. Then I could believe in him.” Vern thought for a moment, and then said, “Let’s say that the phone rings. It’s your Dad. You talk for a bit, and then hang up. I ask you who it was, and you say, ‘It was my Dad.’ And I say back to you, ‘Prove it. Give me an airtight, logical proof that you were just talking to your Dad.’ You wouldn’t be able to. And yet you know that you were talking to your father. How? Because you know your father’s voice. Well, that’s exactly the experience of Christians when they read the Bible. They know their Father’s voice.” And I said, “Oh,” and a light bulb came on over my head (just like the cartoons)."**

There is much confirming evidence and many philosophical arguments for God's existence -- and for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is a "hot topic" this time of year. But we must also understand that we approach Him by faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It is by that faith that we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. It is by that faith we believe that God is

According to the starting point for apologetics is "hearing God's voice, and seeing the world through those lenses." And those are scriptural lenses. Amen!

* Turnau has recently published Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective (P & R Publishing, 2012, ISBN 1596383895).
** This story is taken by permission from an interview with by Jared Moore, and published on his blog site This is God's world