The Case for Biblical Christianity: Essays on Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, Ecumenism, Fundamentalism, and Separatism (Edward Carnell Library)

This volume is a collection of essays bound together after the untimely death of its author: Edward Carnell.Within its pages (186 pages) are essays on:- Theology- Philosophy- Ethics- Ecumenism- Fundamentalism- The Person of God- Niebuhr vs. Billy Graham- The Virgin Birth- The Case for Orthodox Theology- An extensive Bibliography of Carnell's books and articlesRonald Nash edited this compilation and wrote in the preface: "This collection of essays has, I believe, many things to recommend it. It gives the Christian community ready access to many of the splendid articles that Carnell wrote during his career."Dr. David Hubbard said that E. J. Carnell had a "fertile mind and ready pen which blazed fresh theological trails as he sought to defend and proclaim the Christian faith as a world and life view."Christianity Today noted that Edward John Carnell was one of the "few scholars with two earned doctorates, he was abreast both of the history of thought and recent modern theology. His books have long been a bulwark of Evangelical Christian faith."A good quote from page 58 states: "When formulating a philosophy of life, I contend that the least accessible fact, and thus the most baffling to isolate and classify, is the complex moral and spiritual environment of the philosopher himself."Carnell's died a young man at age 48 of a "possible suicide." Some evidence surrounding his untimely death mitigates the ruling of suicide. It should be noted that Carnell was a brilliant and thoughtful scholar. He earned a Ph.D. from Boston University, and a Th.D. from Harvard having written dissertations on the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard and the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr.In his first book, "An Introduction to Christian Apologetics", Carnell's apologetic was influenced by Gordon Clark, Cornelius Van Til, and also the philosophical sway of Edgar S. Brightman. In "An Introduction to Christian Apologetics", he sought to show that Christianity was the most analytically logical, factual, and has the best rational explanatory power. Christianity has the best demonstrable paradigm; Christian theism is the worldview which best explains and fits the facts of human experience.Some scholars insist that Carnell's apologetic system was a synergism of Clark and Van Til, combining a deductive approach with a presuppositional lens. Nonetheless his views changed over his twenty year writing career and since he died young, he did not offer a clear opinion on which of his theological, philosophical, and apologetic positions should lead or dominant his thought. In his writings he went from a type of Cumulative approach to a subjectivist appreciation of Kierkegaard.One test for truth he named "systematic consistency." This is much different than Clark's view and doesn't approach Van Til's defense of the faith. Some scholars suggest that Francis Schaeffer was influenced by Carnell. Others called Carnell's system: "combinationalist" or "verificational." Geisler called Carnell "Hypothetical or Presuppositional."Notice the difference of Carnell's notion that Christianity offers the best systematic explanatory power of human experience in contrast to Cornelius Van Til's certainty: "I think the argument is sound. I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else."Van Til employed a transcendental approach and explained "the method of implication into the truth of God.... That is, we must seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary to any object of knowledge in order that it may be intelligible to us." Van Til warned if one denies the triune God, the world must be "encircled by irrationality." If atheism is true, mankind is "swimming in a void." A void of irrationality because the finite minds of human beings are claimed by atheism to be the foundation for rational thought. Therefore, atheism is self-contradictory on its own ground. Unbelief, even its fallacious assertions and false notions, presuppose the truth of the triune God. To make sense out of our world, even an atheist, must presuppose Christian theism. It alone supplies the required pre-essentials for the laws of logic. These laws are necessary for communication and for the intelligibility of human experience.Greg L. Bahnsen also went much further epistemically than Carnell proposed. Bahnsen wrote that the unbeliever "has no intelligible place to stand, no consistent epistemology, no justification for meaningful discourse, predication, or argumentation." Bahnsen goes on to lay bare anti-theism: he writes that "the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God's revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions for knowledge and meaningful experience." Only Christian theism can supply the pre-essentials needed for debate, evidence, and knowledge. Bahnsen asserts that "the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we could not be able to prove anything." Bahnsen explains, quoting Van Til, that "the intelligibility of anything, for man, presupposes the existence of God--the God whose nature and character are delineated in God's revelation." Colin Brown noted that in Van Til's view: "The existence of the God of Christian theism is presupposed by all rational thought and behavior."Carnell was a brilliant Christian scholar who defended Christianity against unbelief and theistic liberalism. This book is a necessary addition for the active and wide-reading apologist.By Michael A Robinson author of numerous books on apologetics and philosophy; Including: The Necessary Existence of God: The Proof of Christianity Through Presuppositional Apologetics