Lecture Test 1 - Survey of Apologetics

Question 1

How did Freud challenge belief in God?

Answer 1

“God is a projection of the mind.”

Question 2

How did Durkheim challenge belief in God?

Answer 2

“God is a creation of society to control people.”

Question 3

How did Marx challenge belief in God?

Answer 3

“God is an opiate of the people.”

Question 4

How did Altizer challenge belief in God?

Answer 4

“God is dead. He is no longer needed.”

Question 5

naturalism

Answer 5

No supernatural explanation required.

Question 6

pantheism

Answer 6

God == the universe

Question 7

Nihilism

Answer 7

Nothing exists, is knowable, or is valuable.

Question 8

Panpsychism

Answer 8

All of nature consists of psychic centers like the human mind.

Question 9

Pantheistic monism

Answer 9

All is God, all is one.

Question 10

Panentheism

Answer 10

All is God?

Question 11

scientism

Answer 11

Anything that can be known can be proven by science.

Question 12

The basic challenges to Christianity that appeared in New Testament times and basically how they were answered.
Jewish challenges:
1. How Jesus could be the Messiah if Israel rejected Him
2. How a person hanged on the cross and accursed could be the Messiah and Son of God.
Gentiles challenges:
3. The apparent foolishness of the gospel
4. Why Christians were not rebels though their leader was executed as one and riots occurred everywhere His followers went.

Answer 12

1. This was not new. The prophets were rejected too.
2. Emphasis on rising from the dead. Didn’t avoid the question.
3. It is, from a human point of view.
4. Luke explains charges aren’t true.

Question 13

Contrast the views on how apologetics must be done before, along with, or after theology.

Answer 13

Warfield: do it before, establish a foundation.
Theissen: do both at the same time
Van Til, Bavink, Kuyper: theology builds the system, then apologetics must defend it.

Question 14

History of apologetics. Know especially the general strategy of the apologists of the second century.

Answer 14

[From the class notes: Generally, the strategy of the apologists was to: answer the Jews by showing that Christianity was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy; and to answer the gentile philosophy by showing that Christianity was compatible with the best ethics and philosophy. Their strategy with both these groups was, according to Reid (p. 45), “…to avoid, if possible, head-on conflict and, to emphasize in a mild and irenic way that Christianity was the proper extension of the truest and best of the alternative systems.” They were extremely careful to answer the charges of immorality.]

Question 15

History of apologetics. Know the view of Justin Martyr.

Answer 15

[From the notes: He attempted to show that the wisdom of the philosophers was from the Logos speaking to them, and their content is presented more clearly in God’s revelation in the Bible.]

Question 16

History of apologetics. Know the view of Tertullian.

Answer 16

[From the notes: He regarded philosophy as the mere search for truth, but Christianity as the fulfillment of the search for truth. He had perhaps the most negative view of philosophy of any church father, and saw it as a tool to equip heretics. He asked, “What does Jerusalem [i.e. the faith] have to do with Athens?” [i.e. philosophy].]