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Man is fallen in his mind. John Owen knew this. But Owen also recognized that there is a tendency within man to think more highly of himself than he ought to. While the Christian fundamentally recognizes that man is fallen in his reasoning, there is sometimes a disconnect in practice. Occasionally, Christians, who truly do mean well, introduce concepts into the Christian faith that are not found in Scripture. Owen, quoting first from the The Church’s Burden, warns that:

“Pagans . . . still seek to overthrow the evangelical rule of the gospel, and to this end the devil will sponsor new doctrines, and encourage professing Christians to discover them in the pagan philosophers of old, so that the dogmas of the gentiles are married to the pure principles of the faith, and at length the entire evangelical truth is exploded by these sophistic devices.” And, with this, agrees Erasmus, “All of the signs seem to indicate a new and most prosperous phase of the Church. One thing alone grips my soul, which is this, that pagan literature, under the guise of ancient wisdom, may again raise its head in the Church.”

And thus it has been since the beginning of the Reformation. A philosophical method of teaching spiritual matters is alien to the gospel! Christians were quite strangers to philosophy in the days of the Apostles. Let the surviving writings of the earliest Christians be consulted and they will be seen to have handled their theology in a quite different manner to our recent theologians. In this the ancient way is far better.¹John Owen, Biblical Theology: The History of Theology from Adam to Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Soli Deo Gloria Publishing, 1994), 679.

The reader will note that Owen was not an enemy of theology or philosophy, often employing philosophy in his own writings. But Owen clearly understood the great danger of taking extra-biblical concepts, like those found in pagan philosophy, and attempting to join them to sacred Scripture. While many are aware that the Roman Catholic church had most heinously done this throughout the Medieval ages, it is a danger still pertinent to Christians today. While many examples of this danger may be given, perhaps the most contested battleground of the day is in the arena of apologetics.

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Apologetics and Owen’s Understanding of the Inward Light

Apologetics is that branch of theology that deals explicitly with the defense of the Christian faith. Though there have been various apologetic approaches over the centuries, with figures as varied as Anselm of Canterbury and Cornelius Van Til making their own contributions to the field, there are two main categories under which the various approaches to apologetics fall today: Classical Apologetics and Presuppositional Apologetics.

Classical Apologetics typically aims to first prove the existence of God through philosophical and natural arguments, explaining the need for the existence of God as the prerequisite for meaningful discourse and logic, before moving on to the Scriptures. Presuppositional Apologetics holds that the existence of God and the authority of the Scriptures must be presupposed as the basis for all meaningful discourse and logic, and so typically begins with the Scriptures, though it is no stranger to employing some philosophical and natural arguments as well.

Before deciding between the two, a question must be answered: What is the end-goal of apologetics? The answer is, of course, the salvation of sinners and the edification of the saints. Apologetics is really designed to serve evangelistic purposes and increase faith in the saints. If at the heart of the apologist there is no desire to see sinners saved, or the saints edified, then the apparent “apologist” is really a glorified debater who enjoys arguing. There is certainly a place for debating, but even those debates ought to be centered around the desire to see sinners drawn to salvation in Christ and the faith of the saints strengthened.

If the salvation of sinners is at the heart of the apologist’s desire, then one must consider what Scripture has to say about the means by which a sinner is saved. Thankfully, the Apostle Paul is quite clear on this matter when, in Romans 10:13 –15, he writes:

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

We rightly conclude that sinners are saved through the preaching and proclamation of the Word of God, and no sinner has ever been saved apart from the Word of God. That is why it is essential for ministers of the Word of God to go forth and preach the gospel, and for all saints to proclaim the gospel. Apart from hearing God’s Word, no sinner can be saved. 

Philosophical arguments ought not to become the basis for our evangelism. While something like the cosmological argument is essentially true (there must be an unmoved mover who moves the universe into existence), the argument is powerless to convert a sinner to Christ. Philosophical arguments have their place but typically serve to merely prove that some sort of ‘god’ must exist. This is not to suggest that philosophical arguments can never be used by Christians, or that philosophy must be avoided. It is to say that the philosophers’ words, writings, and arguments cannot save sinners. What the sinner needs is the true and unveiled Triune God, who is revealed through the gospel. As Owen himself wrote:

How marvelously is the inner voice of conscience quieted, and the spiritual sharpness which is part of evangelical truth blunted, as all should easily observe and confess, when minds are bolstered up with insuperable philosophical prejudices. In the place of spiritual wisdom is substituted I know not what varieties of barren and arid opinion, and so countless wicked, faithless, carnal, worldly men are held back from any saving knowledge of God in Christ. This we see happening all about us daily. The spiritual nature of the gospel is most wickedly eclipsed while multitudes of petty “scholars” fret themselves how they might best teach the faith within a rigidly structured, accurate, methodical-philosophical form!

What is more, a great multitude of errors have swarmed into the Church through the reception of philosophy . . . the clear fact is that the common, Aristotelian philosophy supplied sufficient material for an infinity of quarrels and useless disputes. The facts shout out to heaven that our little, witty, chattering sophists, in their endless wranglings over the “articles of faith,” are simply raking over the embers of Aristotle’s philosophy, and in so doing they “Irritate the throne of almighty God with legal quarrels and cheap tricks. They dissect the faith with a scalpel of ambiguity, and with words having no more substance than their own breath they tie and unite the chains of their complicated syllogisms!” as Prudentius once sang of the ancient philosophers.² Ibid., 680.

The problem is not the use of truth, but when pagan philosophy is elevated to equal footing with holy Scripture. Either the Scriptures are sufficient for salvation, or something else must be elevated to a place of power above them.<span class="footnote_refe