Elihu re-emphasizes the gratuitous nature of what God has provided and indeed accomplished for sinners in the great transaction of redeeming his soul from hell and granting him heaven (verses 29,30). Paul affirms his operation of redemptive intervention in writing, “He has translated us out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13, 14). This lifts us beyond the contemplation of what is needed that Elihu sets forth to Job and puts us in the realm of proclamation of what God has done:  “You may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

Complaints about pain as undeserved reveals a heart unresponsive to merciful rebuke. (33:19-22). God speaks through man’s pain that rebuke is necessary and if unheeded will bring one finally to perdition.  Physical pain is designed to show spiritual danger. When muscles ache and even bones radiate pain, when food nauseates, and physical symmetry gives way to gauntness, one should well consider that present pain is not even dimensionally related in either quality or quantity to the wrath of eternal divine anger. Man’s sin brings him near to the pit, as it were dangling over the flames of hell, in a weakened and morally susceptible condition, nothing to hinder the execution of a sentence of perdition. Pain is a merciful warning against self-righteousness, susceptibility to just infliction of punishment for sin against the infinitely righteous and just God. How shall we escape?
In 33:23-30, Elihu introduces an idea that Job himself had suggested (16:19-21) that another must arise to plead a sinner’s cause and restore him to righteousness. This ransom/mediator will be unique. He may be represented through a messenger, a faithful minister of the gospel, but he alone can accomplish the thing itself that is needed. This ransom/mediator must know the case of man and be able to declare fully and clearly what is right—“To remind a man what is right for him” (23). The ransom must be able to represent the case of God also and find before God that which will satisfy the prevailing necessity of justice in the case of a sinner. That which is found is not the worthiness of the sinner but solely the intervention of mercy to interrupt the certainty of death by the payment of a required sum in order to effect the release of the condemned. This ransom/mediator must be able to satisfy God in saying, “Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom” (24).
The requirements of God’s goodness both in justice and mercy are served by this ransom/mediator. “But when the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy” (Titus 3:4, 5). This transaction of mercy and justice through the ransom restores the almost-destroyed sinner to youthful vigor – “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly” (Titus 3:5). Through the meritorious work of this ransom/mediator this once distraught person’s sin is forgiven and he is made an heir of eternal life according to the righteousness that God requires. (Job 33:26, 27). That which Elihu envisioned in this revelatory moment is described by the apostle Paul in its fulfillment, “through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace” (Titus 3:6, 7). The sinner so justified finds that eternal destruction is no longer his destiny [“He has redeemed my soul from going down to the pit” (Job 33:28)] and has given the hope of eternal life [“and my life shall look upon the light”]. Paul gives Elihu’s vision of the necessary the certainty of the historically accomplished: “we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7).
Elihu re-emphasizes the gratuitous nature of what God has provided and indeed accomplished for sinners in the great transaction of redeeming his soul from hell and granting him heaven (verses 29,30). Paul affirms his operation of redemptive intervention in writing, “He has translated us out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13, 14). This lifts us beyond the contemplation of what is needed that Elihu sets forth to Job and puts us in the realm of proclamation of what God has done.
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Does he believe sexual immorality is shameful (Eph. 5:12) and corrosive (1 Cor. 6:18) and ought not to be discussed, or does he believe that being a ‘[insert sin here] Christian’ is just another form of Christian experience? Does he believe that it is blasphemy to associate Christ’s holy name with enduring sin and to make that sin central to one’s identity, experience, personhood, or ‘authentic self,’ or does he think it is needless alarmism and decidedly unwinsome to object strenuously to such obviously worldly notions?

It is one of the ironies of life that the writings of dead men often contain a better understanding of contemporary affairs, albeit unwittingly, than do many contemporary observers. They have the advantage of being immune to the distorted thought patterns, banal conventional wisdom, and often imbalanced priorities and mistaken values that frequently cause contemporary pundits to see only a part of any given matter, and to see even that askew. To understand the present one must read from the past. One must get away from our debates even to understand them, just as one must sometimes leave his workplace – say, by taking a walk around the building – to understand what is going on in that workplace. One must leave the atmosphere of urgency, raw emotion, conflicting perspectives, unhelpful advice, differing personalities, and other thought-corrupting elements in order to see them rightly and to think with one’s reasonable faculties rather than by spontaneous habit or emotion.
So it is that one of the best critiques of that contemporary social movement that is called, with doubtful accuracy, ‘social justice,’ appears in the lectures of a Dutch historian from the mid-19th century.[1] So it is that one of the best criticisms of what is now called postmodernism appeared in Chapter III (“The Suicide of Thought”) of the English journalist G.K. Chesterton’s 1908 partly autobiographical book Orthodoxy. So it is that many a Presbyterian professor of yesteryear has left us thoughts which bear an abiding vitality even now. To our purposes here is an excerpt from Chesterton’s 1905 book of social criticism, Heretics, but before quoting it I must note that he is a not wholly reliable thinker who failed to understand the Reformed tradition and who entered the Roman communion in later life. In that work he wrote:
Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion.
We live in an age of wide unbelief, with the result that we live in an age of obliviousness to the evil nature of many words and deeds. To be clear, Chesterton was not speaking of the objective reality and severity of blasphemy, but rather about how it is perceived by those that have committed or witnessed it. The evil of blasphemy in no way depends upon the conscience or faith (or rather, lack thereof) of its human subjects in order to be blasphemous. It is a terrible offense against God, whose eternal majesty and omniscience never change, even where the sinner is ignorant of the real nature of what he has said. In order for one to realize that someone has committed blasphemy it is necessary for him to have a measure of faith; and where there is a lack of awareness of blasphemy, there is occasion to fear that true faith is lacking as well.
It is with sadness then that I say that there is blasphemy present in the evangelical world, and that it does not receive the censure it deserves or which we would expect if it were recognized in its true nature. The other day I passed a car with a bumper sticker that read, in total: BINGE JESUS. Undoubtedly this was an attempt to commend him to the public, a praiseworthy goal. And yet it seems to be lost on the vehicle owner that putting our Lord in the same category as junk food and cheap thrills is quite irreverent, and that there is something terribly amiss in suggesting that people should relate to him in the same way as many people relate to Netflix. I doubt the car owner would concur that his sticker could be paraphrased as ‘approach Jesus like you approach your weekend drinking habit,’ and yet given the actual meaning of ‘binging’ in our culture it is more likely to be interpreted in that way (if subconsciously) than met with the thought that Jesus is God Incarnate and worthy of total submission.
Binging anything is an intentional loss of self-restraint, the deliberate consumption of something in excess for pleasure. It is a contemporary form of revelry and a species of that seldom condemned sin of gluttony to which Scripture ascribes such woeful consequences (Prov. 23:21). That is emphatically the opposite of what is involved in following Christ, who expects steadfastness at all times (Mk. 13:13) and who presents following him as an act of self-denial fraught with hardship rather than an easy thrill whose appeal soon fades (Rev. 2:10; Heb. 3:14; 10:39).
To associate binging with Christ is then a sort of casual blasphemy which, however well intended, actually portrays Christ in a very misleading way. Elsewhere we see ministers, including some in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA), use certain four-letter words to express themselves. The case can be made that all cursing is blasphemy, because the one who does it arrogates to himself something which is the prerogative of God alone, and directs it toward circumstances which God has sovereignly ordained for the good of the sufferer (Rom. 8:28), or toward people who are made in his likeness (Jas. 3:9). It is a bitter truth to remember that our sufferings are ordained by God, and it is a truth which must be used with immense tact and prudence; but still, to curse our hard circumstances is to curse God’s providence, which is a grievous evil indeed. And yet some of the men who represent God and serve him actually do such things themselves! They who should be calling men out of such sins of the tongue are giving an example of them to the wayward. “These things ought not to be” (Jas. 3:10).
This which we are discussing is a large part of the ongoing fitness for office controversy in the PCA. There are many who have criticized certain forms of self-description for denying progress in sanctification or for other errors, which are serious faults. But there has been too little denunciation of such terms on the ground that they are simply blasphemous. Well might a man stop his ears and tear his clothes to hear some of the phrases which people have used to describe themselves even in prominent forums and in our General Assembly. Words which have a well understood meaning in contemporary English as referring to people whose lives revolve around transgressing (or wanting to transgress) Leviticus 18:22 are applied to our new life in Christ, and those who object are accused of petty, inconsiderate Pharisaism for wanting to ‘police language’ and ‘argue over terms.’ God says to not even name such things (Eph. 5:3), and yet many among us assert that they have an indisputable right to refer to themselves with such terms, and do so brazenly without shame or fear (comp. Jude 12). And many others have not the spiritual understanding to see that this is brazen blasphemy, and do not join in efforts to forbid it.
“Blasphemy depends upon belief” — and if one does not see the blasphemy he ought to examine his heart to see what are his actual beliefs. What are his beliefs about holiness and sin, judgment and redemption, the nature of the flesh and the nature of our new lives in Christ? Does he believe that “to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21) and that following him involves a life of suffering and sacrifice (Matt. 10:16-24), and of denying oneself (Matt. 16:24-26) and following him in a way that involves endless war upon one’s remaining sin nature (Gal. 5:17; Jas. 3:2)? Or does he believe that it is acceptable to name oneself by his indwelling sin, sin which is abominable in God’s sight and for which he subjects the nations that approve it to his wrathful judgment? Does he believe sexual immorality is shameful (Eph. 5:12) and corrosive (1 Cor. 6:18) and ought not to be discussed, or does he believe that being a ‘[insert sin here] Christian’ is just another form of Christian experience? Does he believe that it is blasphemy to associate Christ’s holy name with enduring sin and to make that sin central to one’s identity, experience, personhood, or ‘authentic self,’ or does he think it is needless alarmism and decidedly unwinsome to object strenuously to such obviously worldly notions? “Blasphemy depends upon belief” – and where there is no objection to blasphemy, well might we suspect the beliefs of the silent and suggest they test themselves to see whether they are Christ’s (2 Cor. 13:5). For it is written of him: “Zeal for your house has consumed me” (Ps. 69:9). The church is his house (1 Cor. 3:16-17) and we his people are to imitate him (11:1; Eph. 5:1-2). Where then is our zeal to silence blasphemy in our own house?
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name.
[1]     Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s Unbelief and Revolution
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A biblical approach to apologetics does not entail proving God exists in a manner that confers legitimacy upon agnosticism, atheism, sincere seekers etc., let alone does it approve of fastening a dreamy possibility of the resurrection to a vague concept of God or multiple first Causes or Designers that might not still exist. (Nor does our apologetic entail a naïveté that is consistent with furnishing a series of uninterpreted particulars that demand an evidentialist verdict of resurrection.) No, a biblical approach to apologetics does not try to prove what rebels already know, but rather by reasoning transcendentally our aim is to expose what rebels defiantly deny. By the grace of God, the presuppositional apologist will expose the folly of unbelief by powerfully demonstrating in reductio ad absurdum fashion that even the mere possibility of rejecting God’s existence presupposes God’s existence! 

At the heart of Christian apologetic methodology is the consideration of ultimate authority. How the authority of Scripture should shape the Christian’s defense of the faith is a matter of bringing every thought captive to obey Christ, (even as the Christian gives an answer for the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear.) How consistently the believer sanctifies the Lord God in his heart will influence his apologetic methodology.
Classical Apologetics (CA) seeks to establish Theism from nature and unaided reason. If a theistic universe with design, causality and / or morality can be established, then there is a basis for considering evidence for the true and living God who has intervened in history in the Christ event, and in particular through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the classical apologist, a two-step approach is advisable. First, establish theism in general; then, try to prove the resurrection through historical evidence. After all, until one becomes persuaded of the possibility of a Designer, an Unmoved Mover, a Moral Law Giver, or a conception of a “Supremely Perfect” being, he won’t likely be as open to evidence for the resurrection. In other words, before one begins marshaling evidence for God having raised Jesus from the dead, it is advantageous to first establish there even is a god who could possibly have raised Jesus from the dead.
Classical Apologetics denies a biblical contextual reality:
Apologetics ought to be done in the context of the unbeliever’s condition and relevant divine revelation. Because the unbeliever’s condition cannot be reliably inferred by the unbeliever’s false claims about himself, the apologist should seek to be informed by the authority of God’s word alone. Apologetic methodology surely must not betray Scripture and if possible, should be inferred from Scripture.
With respect to biblical contextual reality, General Revelation reveals much about God, yet little about man’s spiritual covenantal condition. For instance, apart from a confrontational encounter with Scripture, unregenerate man knows God is all powerful, omniscient, and omnipresent (as well as other perfections). Yet we know those bits of truth about man’s condition from Scripture alone. Scripture reveals to us that all men know not merely a notion of God but the one true and living God, which is why it can be said that all are without excuse. Indeed, man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, but it is the truth he suppress (and not some false conception of God). In moral and epistemic rebellion, natural man willfully turns the truth he knows into a lie. Without exception, that is man’s response to what he knows by nature as he lives in God’s ordered universe, experiencing God’s goodness and daily provision. Accordingly, any consideration of the viability of a Natural Theology apologetic should be placed in the context of man’s willful suppression of the truth he knows.
There is knowledge of God that is properly basic. It is apprehended directly (as opposed to discursively), yet not in a vacuum but always through the mediation of created things in the context of providence. Without reasoning from more fundamental or basic beliefs, the unbeliever apprehends God in conscience through the things that are made. Man’s knowledge of God is mediated through the external world, but it is apprehended immediately by God’s image bearers apart from argumentation or even modest reflection. Therefore, the apostle Paul may say that all men have knowledge of the truth. Not all men can follow the elaborate arguments of another’s Natural Theology, let alone formulate their own theistic proofs, but all men directly apprehend God’s General Revelation of himself. A god who must be proved is not the God of Scripture.
Moral considerations regarding Natural Theology as it relates to Classical Apologetics (CA).
To try to prove God exists in order to get someone to believe God exists is a fool’s errand. It is to go along with the charade of the unbeliever who has said in his heart there is no God. Engaging the folly of unbelief in this way is to become like the fool (as opposed to properly answering the fool). In short, by not applying this one foundational biblical truth that all men know God and are, therefore, without excuse, the employment of CA implies several distinct yet related untruths.
Before reading on, it’s important to internalize that it is only the unbelieving fool who denies God’s existence. The fool’s profession is a deception. The alleged seeker, inquisitive agnostic, and committed atheist all know God. Accordingly, the Bible instructs us not try to prove what is known but rather expose what is denied! That is an entailment of doing apologetics in a biblical contextual reality.
Seven betrayals of CA:
1. Implicit in the employment of CA is that God has not plainly revealed himself in creation and conscience. After all, why use CA to prove God’s existence unless some do not know through General Revelation that God exists? Accordingly, CA implicitly denies God’s revelation and man’s knowledge of God.
The following betrayals flow from the first:
2. CA implies that unbelief is an intellectual matter, not an ethical one. The unbeliever needs better arguments in order to become intellectually persuaded of what is already known yet suppressed. CA emphasis is on proof and persuasion, and not the biblical mandate to gently expose one’s willful, sinful rebellion that can manifest itself in a denial of God’s existence. CA focuses on a false need for intellectual enlightenment and not a true need for moral repentance.
3. CA implies that all men are not culpable for denying that God has plainly made himself known. After all, the alleged need of the unbeliever is to be enlightened to something he doesn’t already know, which undermines the need to avoid wrath due to rebellion against God who is known a priori.
4. Since CA implies man is not culpable, CA implies God’s injustice, for God would be unjust to punish those who aren’t culpable due to their innate inability to construct theological proofs on their own.
5. By trying to overcome the unbeliever’s alleged agnosticism or atheism with sophisticated proof(s) that presuppose man can actually seek God, CA denies that no one seeks after God. Accordingly, CA implies that an alleged seeker is not in ethical rebellion while he masquerades as intellectually pursuing an honest answer to the question of God’s existence.
6. CA implies that God is not a necessary precondition for the very possibility of the masquerade of seeking God (and denying God). In other words, CA grants the requisite tools of investigation (common notions) are implicitly neutral ground and not strictly common ground that can only be justified if it is first true that God exists.
7. If common ground is neutral ground, then CA implies that there are brute facts that can be interpreted without worldview bias. In other words, CA grants that the facts of nature can exegete themselves without any reference to God as sovereign interpreter.
In sum, CA relates to an endeavor that aims to prove a false god who has not effectively revealed himself to at least some invincibly ignorant creatures. Again, a god who must be proved is not the God of Scripture.
Aside from denying the biblical contextual reality in which apologetics should be conducted, theistic proofs as they’ve been traditionally formulated have been, I believe, an embarrassment to the church. For instance, how does the cosmological argument disprove a first cause of simultaneous multiplicity, or the teleological argument rule out multiple designers? In other words, how do such arguments avoid a fallacy of quantification, or avoid a natural theology of the gods? How do we deduce from natural experience of natural causes a single supernatural first cause? Why must a logical first cause or the supposed designer of the universe still exist?
Yet even if these shortcomings (and the ones I’ve not mentioned for brevity sake) were adequately overcome, CA would still entail (a) implicit denial of natural man’s sinful suppression of his knowledge of God along with (b) impugnment of God’s righteous judgement against man’s moral rebellion.
CA follows Eve’s modus operandi:
Unbelievers require a “neutral” investigation into the claims of Christianity. Unbelievers employ autonomous reasoning (i.e., reasoning from a mindset that does not acknowledge God’s epistemic Lordship over the possibility of human reason itself), without which unbelievers cannot judge whether the Bible should be deemed reliable for its claims let alone authoritative over all of life. For the unbeliever, apart from judging the Bible from a throne of autonomy, the Bible and all it claims cannot be assessed as true. The problem with such a philosophical and religious posture, which admittedly touches upon a concept that is difficult for both unbelievers and many believers to grasp, is that if the Bible must first be validated by the unbeliever as authoritative, then it cannot be intrinsically authoritative. Yet if the Bible is authoritative by virtue of its divine origin, then no such human validation is permissible (or even possible when one is in submission to God’s word!).*
While the unbeliever remains a judge of God’s word – the unbeliever remains his own self-proclaimed authority; God’s word is positively rejected as long as the unbeliever seeks to determine its origin. With hat in hand, God remains in the dock awaiting the unbeliever’s favor.
What is built into the unbeliever’s make-up is something from which the unbeliever cannot extricate himself. That is, there is an ethically driven intellectual bias, a deep-seated antithesis that rejects the authority of God’s voice in Scripture (and in nature). If God’s word is authoritative, then it may not be judged. It must be obeyed for what it truly is, God’s word. But like Eve who placed God’s word on the same level of Satan’s and then rose above both to judge what is true, so is the posture of the unbeliever. He sits in the place of God, presiding over the authority of Scripture. CA not only caters to the unbeliever’s quest for autonomy, the classical apologist shares in the mission! He has become like the fool, which is the very thing the Proverb warns against.
The unbeliever presupposes at the outset of his pursuit of God that the requisite tools of rational investigation (e.g. logic, inference, memory etc.) and the context in which they function (e.g. reality and providence) are not God dependent. In other words, the unbeliever’s bias is that any mind-world correspondence is perfectly intelligible apart from any reference point other than the finite human mind itself. Little if no consideration is given to the question of why the subject and object of knowledge should correspond, or how there can be a fruitful connection between the knower and the mind-independent external world that can be known. By the nature of the case, the unbeliever imagines that if God exists, he must be discovered through autonomous reason that is capable of functioning apart from God. In doing so, the unbeliever not only rejects a God who must make reason possible – he is not even seeking such a God at all! The unbeliever is seeking a god who does not make knowledge possible and has not plainly revealed himself in creation, providence and grace. The unbeliever is seeking an idol of his own making and CA aids in the pursuit.
Hope is on the way:
There is an apologetic that is true to biblical contextual reality, but it looks quite different from CA. It’s my experience that an appreciation for the sheer profundity of a distinctly presuppositional approach to apologetics directly corresponds to a diminishing view of CA. Until the Christian apologist recognizes the biblical infidelity of an apologetic methodology that wrongly diagnoses man as needing cleverly devised proofs to satisfy “neutral” yet “honest” intellectual-pursuit of God’s existence, it is not likely he will see the biblical faithfulness of an apologetic approach that works within the biblical confines God’s revelation. Far from partisan apologetics, this is a matter of Christian obedience. The extent of the fall as it relates to what mankind lost when our first parents plunged humanity into a state of total depravity must be seen through non-Thomistic, Calvinistic lenses if we hope to apprehend a biblically informed apologetic.
But before getting into a distinctly presuppositional approach to apologetics, first a few words about Evidentialism, which is the short-relief closer for the ace of CA. (It is October, after all! ⚾️) Translation, Evidentialism completes CA.
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