‘The Bible Says So’ Apologetic

The most depressing aspect about the Andy Stanley fiasco is that with regard to his critique of the ‘The Bible Says So’ apologetic and approach to evangelism in the current cultural milieu, Stanley is essentially correct. But in palpably betraying streaks of heresy, Stanley has likewise discredited his critique of the ‘The Bible Says So’ apologetic. This critique must be upheld.

For Paleo-Evangelicals, such as Albert Mohler, such a critique is a lost cause. Such have made their bread and butter, so to speak, by upholding this presuppositional approach to the Great Commission, this despite continual decline in memberships in the SBC for the last fifteen years or so, a lagging indicator of theological corruption and spiritual enervation, which may come just as easily from deviating to the right as it can from deviating to the left. (“So be careful to do as the LORD your God has commanded you; you are not to turn aside to the right or to the left” – Deuteronomy 5:32.¹)

Because modifying one’s approach would require much new learning and such a radical reordering of one’s theology, it is difficult for most old dogs to learn new tricks. (Mohler is actually one year younger than me.) Hereby, such theological tortoises spurn and neglect Apostle Paul’s modus operandi in evangelizing and apologetics.

Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), to win those under the law. To those without the law I became like one without the law (though I am not outside the law of God but am under the law of Christ), to win those without the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.

– 1 Corinthians 9:19–22

One observes this principle of modus operandi most clearly in the two distinct, yet parallel, accounts of the supremacy of Christ. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, there are about seven or so prooftexts taken from Hebrew Scriptures (Hebrews 1). In the Epistle to the Colossians, Paul takes a more philosophical approach (Colossians 1:15–23). But it also becomes evident, at least to those who are historical literates, that Paul differentiated his evangelistic/apologetic appeal to the Romans from that of the Greeks in accordance with each culture’s radically different cultural framework.

The socially conservative and highly moralistic Republican Romans, and a diminishing minority of native Romans since the collapse of that Republic in 27 BCE, subscribed to the intrinsic validity and merit to law, much like the Hebrews, but most unlike the Greeks. For the Greeks, (in which the original 1,500+ city states lacked a common ethical code), the validity of any law was solely premised upon the hierarchical authority and power of the Sovereign and Lawgiver, however sovereignty was defined. In other words, mainstream Greek culture largely subscribed to legal positivism, whereas the Romans subscribed to natural law theory. Indeed, the Natural Law tradition in Western Civilization actually emanates from Cicero (De Legibus, mid-40s BCE), and through the great Roman jurists of the late second and early third century jurists, onto Augustine, etc. It is not mere coincidence that most legal terms nowadays are Latin in origin.

The evidential proof is confirmed by the profoundly different approach by Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans which makes a long ethical and juridical argument in his defense of the Gospel. No such approach is evident in any of the epistles to the Greeks wherein upon which divine positivism is relied. Nor would such argumentation have had much resonance and effect within Greek populations. Natural Law theory had not really taken off since its formalization in the fifth (i.e., Sophocles, Antigone) and fourth centuries BCE (Plato, Aristotle, Greek Stoicism).

Moreover, the Greek lexicon lacks an equivalent term to the Latin auctoritas, which denotes moral authority which garners allegiance from others, independent and apart from hierarchical/delegate authority, imperium, which is the equivalent to the Greek, exousia, ἐξουσία, or from power, potestas, which is the equivalent to the Greek, dunamis, δύναμις. There hardly exists need for a word for a concept which is scarcely understood and accepted within that cultural milieu.

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There has been an ideological and cultural shift within America since the late 19^th century, which has accelerated with blinding rapidity in the last several decades as it catches up and surpasses the Europeans and even in my own country, Canada. (Typical of the American spirit, they must be first even in decadence and depravity.)

Except within the rapidly diminishing ideological boundaries of Jesusland (and other islands dotted throughout the world), America is no longer cultural Jerusalem, by which appeals to scriptural prooftexts might suffice, but rather cultural Athens. The failure of paleo-Evangelicals to recognize, accept, and accommodate these signs in the sky has made Evangelical Christianity irrelevant.

I am no longer an Evangelical, but a Beyond Evangelical. Perhaps, I have always been a Beyond Evangelical. I have never subscribed to the “Bible says so” apologetic since my conversion in 1970, but rather that the assertions and counsels of the God of Scriptures are down from objective, ontological realities and the ontological, even optimal, good which can be attained within the context of ontological realities (in the context of the telos and ethos of each covenantal agreement).  

We know, moreover, that the judgment of the God is down from truth upon those practicing such things.

– Romans 2:2

So that You may be proved right when You speak and victorious when You [are judged].

– Romans 3:4

I have operated upon the principle that there exists an underlying validity and wisdom to the counsels of God, which are epistemologically distinct and independent from His being, even if flowing ontologically down from His being.

This should inspire curiousity, as it has for me, in discerning that underlying wisdom, rather remaining ignorant and obtuse by resting upon “the Bible tells me so, I believe it” defense. Indeed, I, much like the secularists, think it rationally implausible for a person with a 3-digit IQ to remain an Evangelical as it has now become. For I have never in my life felt that I needed to or should deposit my brain at the coat check before entering the Assembly, albeit recognizing that many counsels of God are counterintuitive, and their rationale remain and will remain elusive to my limited and fallible mind.

For instance, unlike Denny Burk (Male and Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, & Marriage, 2023) and other Evangelicals like him, my apologetic for the biblical ethical sanctions against homosexuality does not rest upon Scriptures alone, but also upon reason, including psychosocial reason, and an abundance of historical and sociological artifacts which confirm the wisdom underlying the biblical sanctions. (“Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” – 2 Corinthians 13:1.)

It’s a typical American response that anything that happened before the United States is irrelevant to the history of the United States. You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. Let me show you how wrong you are.²

But then again, one would need to be somewhat knowledgeable of societies and cultures beyond one’s own country. Modernist arrogance and American Exceptionalism has made American Evangelicals, like their secularist counterparts, ignorant and stupid on such matters.

1. See also Deuteronomy 28:14; Joshua 1:7.

2. Niall Ferguson, “Historian Niall Ferguson on the roots of today's political polarization,” Long Now Foundation, December 18, 2018, video, 0:52 to 1:07.