In July of this year I wrote that in 1978:
At Gabe [Monheim]’s suggestion, I bought Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance for ten dollars at (a now long-gone) Christian Publications bookstore on 8th Avenue between 42nd and 43rd, smack-dab in then-den of iniquity called Times Square. . . . I also picked up Norman Geisler’s Christian Apologetics , Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict, and creationist critiques of evolution. This was my introduction to the intellectual side of Christian faith.
Despite the “connectivity” we enjoy these days, I didn’t know until the other day that Norman Geisler, the great classical Christian apologist—his CV is here—had passed away only a week before my July post.
A reflection of both his intellect and humor may be found in the title of one of his many books: Should Old Aquinas Be Forgotten? Why Many Evangelicals Say No: The Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas Considered. This conservative Protestant critic of Roman Catholic theology not only grew up among Catholics, but earned his doctorate in philosophy from Loyola University, a Jesuit institution. He coined “Triple-A Theism” to encapsulate his philosophical alignment with Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas.
On April 4, 1980, after reading Christian Apologetics cover to cover, I wrote to Geisler, then a Professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary:
Dear Dr. Geisler,
Since your Christian Apologetics was decisive in establishing the intellectual side of my spiritual commitment, I write to you now believing you will once again be able to help me overcome certain difficulties in defending and developing a theistic philosophy. The difficulties, which I will state shortly, were occasioned by my reading of George Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God (Kensington, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1979). I believe Smith’s case as a whole is well-stated . . . but can be answered only by challenging the positivistic rationalism which informs nearly all his arguments. While I am trying to do this now for my concerned Christian friends and my own philosophic development, I believe I will need the assistance of seasoned thinkers such as yourself in doing so.
The difficulties center on the notion of God. . . . First, if God is unlimited, but we know only of the limited and definite, then if we ascribe meaningful attributes to Him, we diminish Him, for He is unlimited and infinite. If we ascribe “unlimited” traits to Him—omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.—make Him unknowable, and our talk of Him is literally nonsense.
In short, we can have no notion of an infinite being, supreme in every way; what we have a genuine notion of cannot be God. The second difficulty . . . concerns one famous way out of the foregoing dilemma . . . : what we cannot know literally, we cannot know analogically. If the supreme being evades characterization by knowable terms, we cannot have a knowable “analogical” notion of Him. Legitimate analogy presupposes a prior successful effort at definition and cannot constitute the heart of that effort. I do not believe you addressed this aspect of the problem of analogy in your Philosophy of Religion. Can you give me a non-theistic example of analogical predication (not analogical articulation of what we already have a notion of)?
Any response to this letter will be most appreciated. While awaiting it, I will peruse pertinent sections of your writings again to see if by carelessness I have missed the essentials of your forthcoming reply. [I did. See below] Also, if you are familiar with the Smith book, and know of any critical reviews of it (maybe even – dare I hope? – one by yourself), would you please let me know? Thank you so much.
Yours in the Lord,
Ten days later Norman Geisler penned this response:
Dear Tony,
I am familiar with Smith’s book. My answer to his argument is analogy and the answer to the objection to analogy is that all we need is univocal definitions of terms, not univocal predication of them to avoid an infinite regress of meaningless. (See Phil of Religion, p. 287*)
To put it another way, Smith begs the question by assuming all “knowledge” must be “literal” (i.e., univocal) to be meaningful. If this is true – and if “knowledge” of God must be analogical – then, of course, there is no true knowledge of God. His argument amounts to this.
1) There must be a literal (univocal) basis for all knowledge of God
2) But an infinite God cannot be known literally
3) Therefore, such a God is unknowable.
We reject the first premise and answer the objection to it by pointing out that only literal (univocal) definition of terms is necessary, not univocal application of them.
In His grace,
* “. . . being is univocally conceived but it is analogically predicated of God and finite beings. The concept is understood to mean the same thing, viz., being is ‘that which is or exist.’ God exists and man exists; this they have in common. But God exists infinitely and independently, whereas man exists only finitely and dependently; this they have in difference.” Philosophy of Religion. First edition, 287. [This note is not in his letter.—AGF]
In a post from last January, in which I noted the new edition of McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict, I wrote:
Complementing this approach to apologetics for me are the works of Norman Geisler (PhD, Loyola, 1970; b. 1932) . . . . Geisler starts with defending theism, grounding his premises in principles that one cannot coherently deny. He then defends the historical reliability of the Bible. On its basis he argues for the deity of Jesus. Whatever Jesus teaches is true, and He taught the divine inspiration of the Old Testament and promised an inspired New Testament.
Geisler’s apologetical method is commonly labeled. “evidentialist.” It’s also categorized as “classical” as distinct from the “presuppositional” approaches of Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) and Gordon H. Clark. (1902-1985).
Today I won’t retail my problems with Geisler’s classic evidentialism. In my view, the Christian worldview uniquely makes sense of the “self-evident” truths his twelve-step system depends upon. (For an outline, see his Wiki entry.) For Geisler, the Christian worldview seems to be what one gets when one combines the implications of those truths. That’s for another day.
I met Dr. Geisler at the 1982 meeting of the American Academy of Religion held at the New York Hilton. Mrs. Hogan, Philip Johnson’s office manager, had let me take the day off—a Tuesday!—to attend. After lunch at a Broadway diner with ex-Catholic theologian Charles Davis and Bernard Lonergan scholar Matthew Lamb, I raced to the Hilton meeting room where Geisler was about to lead a “roundtable discussion” on creationism. (His Creator in the Courtroom had just come out.) I took my seat about about three chairs away from his on his right. Geisler “had to leave promptly at 3 to catch a plane, but I managed to get his home phone number in order to pursue at leisure some questions with him” (Diary entry for December 21, 1981). This was an offer on which I unfortunately did not follow through.
(Later that afternoon I chatted with Catholic Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown. At the end of a meeting devoted to Bernard Lonergan, I suggested to its organizers that for 1983 they should invite Michael Novak, a former student of Lonergan who distinguished himself by not being a socialist. Whatever consideration they gave my suggestion, Novak was in fact the main speaker at the AAR’s Lonergan session in Houston in 1983.)
There’s a documentary, Norm Geisler: Not Qualified, I haven’t yet seen.
Geisler’s apologetics method has a fine representative in Ravi Zacharias. Watch a video of Ravi’s tribute to his friend and teacher.
How did an illiterate, foul-mouthed teenager come to author of scores of philosophy and theology books? Don’t miss Geisler’s answer in this 2013 interview.
