Dr Paul Allen

  “Who needs God? Man can make it on his own.” So claimed Reason, the philosophy that captured the imagination of seventeenth-century France. Its champions, Voltaire and Descartes, among others, tried to fashion a worldview ruled completely by reason. French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal, though raised in the heyday of Enlightenment thought, found reason inadequate: “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.” He concluded, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know at all”—a statement that soon became the chief critique of rationalism and the starting point for a defense of the Christian faith that still influences people today. Scientific prodigy Pascal’s mother died when he was 3, and his father moved the family from Clermont-Ferrand, France, to Paris, where he homeschooled Blaise and his sister. By age 10, Pascal was doing original experiments in mathematics and physical science. To help his fat...

More than seventy killings took place in London in the first quarter of 2018. A surgeon in a London hospital reports that the number of children and young people being brought in with knife injuries is at an all-time high.2 This great city, blessed in the past by some of the greatest gospel preachers in church history, is waking up almost daily to headlines telling of another life snatched away. Politicians debate increasing police funding. Newspapers argue about law enforcement. Alice Springs in Central Australia young kids are smashing the town apart. In Philadelphia, cars are burned while people do drug injections openly in the streets. The USA has had numerous cities under siege by various groups. The root of the problem was described in a book aptly titled Death in the City, written nearly fifty years ago by the apologist Francis Schaeffer. In a culture that has deliberately turned away from God, what basis is there for morality? Schaeffer warned that Western societies in the 1960...

In almost any Higher Education Theological course of study, students are required to learn something of the original biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek. They are taught to look at the historical background of the text, and they learn basic principles of interpretation. These are all important and valuable skills for being good stewards of the Word of God.  However, the main reason why errors in biblical interpretation occur is not that the reader lacks knowledge of Hebrew or of the situation in which the biblical book was written. The number one cause for misunderstanding the Scriptures is making illegitimate inferences from the text.  It is my firm belief that these faulty inferences would be less likely if biblical interpreters were more skilled in basic principles of logic. Let me give an example of the kind of faulty inferences I have in mind. I doubt I have ever had a discussion on the question of God's sovereign election without someone quoting John 3:16 and saying, "B...

  Many people, both believers, and nonbelievers doubt that God’s existence can be demonstrated or even argued about. But no one can reasonably doubt that attention to these arguments has its place in any book on apologetics. For very many have believed that such arguments are possible and that some of them actually work. They have also believed that an effective rational argument for God’s existence is an important first step in opening the mind to the possibility of faith. You may not feel that they are particularly valuable to you. You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s presence—something for which to be profoundly grateful. But that does not mean you have no obligation to ponder these arguments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they really need. You may even be asked to provide that help. The Argument from Efficient Causality We notice that some things cause other things to be...

Many people today believe that all religions are true. According to a recent Barna study , 58% of teens and 62% of adults agree with the statement, “Many religions can lead to eternal life; there is no ‘one true religion.’” It would be nice if everybody could be right about their religious convictions. After all, these are beliefs we often hold dear to our hearts. Nobody likes telling others that they are wrong about their deepest convictions. Yet simple reason and common sense tell us all religions cannot possibly true. By its very nature, the truth is exclusive. It is not logically possible for all religions to be right when their core claims differ so radically. Either they are all wrong, or one is right. Consider the following chart I often use in my talk “ True for you, but not true for me ”: Beliefs about God Beliefs about Salvation Beliefs about Other Religions Buddhism No God Enlightenment False Hinduism Many Gods Reincarnation All True [1] Islam ...

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction." For Augustine, truth is inseparable from God , and, indeed, this is the view of the entire canon of Scripture . Biblically speaking, we distinguish between two kinds of revelation: natural revelation , truth given to us in the created order (Ps. 19), and supernatural revelation , truth found in the Word of God. Whether we study the physical world and learn how the elements react when combined with one another or study a passage of Scripture, the knowledge we gain finds its source in the Creator Himself. This is an important principle to remember because we do not often consider ourselves to be studying God’s revelation when we analyze anything other than sacred Scripture . But if God is the maker of all things, then all truth is His truth, and every time a person grasps a truth he betrays his being created in the image of God. Augustine likened the role of divine illuminati...

Reason and Reasoning Believers who aim to defend their faith make a serious mistake when they imagine…that something like “reason” should displace Christ as the ultimate authority (Lord) in their thinking and argumentation. They also fall into very sloppy and confused thinking due to misunderstanding over the word “reason.” Christians are often befuddled about “reason,” not knowing whether it is something to embrace or to eschew. This is usually because they do not pinpoint the precise way in which the word is being used. It may very well be the most ambiguous and obscure word in the field of philosophy. On the one hand, reason can be thought of as a  tool —man’s intellectual or mental capacity. Taken in this sense, reason is a gift of God to man, indeed part of the divine image. When God bids His people “Come let us reason together” (Isa.  1:18 ), we see that we, like God, are capable of rational thought and communication. God has given us our mental abilities to se...

Christians from every theological tradition have for centuries confessed their faith by  reciting the Apostles' Creed . Elsewhere I have taught on the actual content of this creed, but if there is one aspect of this confession that we often fail to reflect on, it is the creed's opening words:  I believe . Here I want to consider faith in relation to what are often seen as its opposites—reason and sense perception. Epistemology is the division of philosophy that seeks to answer one question: How do we know what we know, or how do we know what is true? Reason, sense perception, or some combination of the two have been among the most common answers to this basic question. Our minds function according to certain categories of rationality. We try to think in a logically coherent manner. Our judgments and deductions are not always correct and legitimate, but our minds always look for logical, intelligible patterns. Some people say that we find true knowledge exclusively wi...

Thomas Aquinas (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Aquinas ’s  Summa contra gentiles , written to combat Greco- Arabic philosophy , is the greatest apologetic work of the  Middle Ages and so merits our attention. Thomas develops a framework for the relationship of faith and reason that includes the Augustinian signs of credibility. He begins by making a distinction within truths about God.  On the one hand, there are truths that completely surpass the capability of human reason, for example, the  doctrine of the Trinity . On the other hand, many truths lie within the grasp of human reason, such as the existence of God. In the first three volumes of the Summa contra gentiles, Thomas attempts to prove these truths of reason, including the existence and  nature of God , the orders of creation, the nature and end of man, and so forth. But when he comes to the fourth volume, in which he handles subjects like the Trinity, the incarnation, the sacraments, and the last ...