Proud Obstacles & a Reasonable Hope
The Apologetic Value of Intelligent Design
by Jay W. Richards
It is a mistake to view the theory of intelligent design (ID) as merely or even primarily a disguised apologetic for Christianity or theism. It is primarily a theory for how we may properly conclude that something—whether it be a human artifact or biological system—is designed. Design theorists claim that design is a fruitful, even necessary, concept for understanding many objects that fall under the purview of the natural sciences. They also offer an implicit critique of theories, particularly materialistic ones, that exclude design as a legitimate explanatory option.
Still, intelligent design, while not an apologetic strategy per se, is a valuable resource for Christian apologetics. Positively, not only can intelligent design become—by extension—an apologetic argument, but also it proposes a view of natural science compatible with the Christian doctrine of creation. Negatively, it not only provides a more empirically adequate framework for natural science than scientific materialism, but also presents a much-needed critique of this contemporary adversary to Christian belief.
A Brief History of Apologetics
Christian apologetics finds its taproot, appropriately enough, in Scripture. For example, Peter exhorts the Christians scattered among pagans in Asia Minor: “Always be prepared to give an answer (apologia) to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). Many church fathers, with the exception of Tertullian, took this to mean that Christians should appropriate whatever resources were at their disposal to make the case for the Christian faith. They should, whenever appropriate, “plunder the Egyptians.” Frequently, those plundered resources included then-current philosophical ideas, such as Neoplatonism and Stoicism.
In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas—and, 300 years later, the Protestant scholastics—adopted a baptized Aristotelianism. This provided them with tools for advancing positive arguments for the existence of God. Thus Thomas began his Summa Theologica by summarizing the “five ways”: five arguments for God’s existence (which he developed more fully in his explicitly apologetic work Summa contra Gentiles). In the five ways, Thomas defended God’s existence in terms of the four Aristotelian causes (formal, material, efficient, and final), with the fifth way drawing on Neoplatonic themes.
Thomas believed that the existence of the one God could be rationally established without recourse to specifically biblical revelation. Accordingly, in the Summa Theologica he considered the God demonstrated by “natural theology” prior to treating the triune God of “revealed theology.” This order reflects a common conviction that it is not only possible but also proper to offer some theological arguments from general or “non-parochial” premises. After all, one can’t expect the pagan to accept Scripture as divine testimony if he has no reason to think there is a God in the first place. Thomas, like most apologists, sought to build a bridge from what the unbeliever already knows or believes to belief in the one true God.
This strategy is not alien to Scripture, which claims that we can obtain some knowledge of God through what is traditionally called the “book of nature,” apart from the “book of Scripture.” This general knowledge suffices to make all of us accountable for our actions, even those who do not enjoy direct knowledge of biblical revelation. Hence Paul tells the Romans,
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:18–20).
Some theologians, like John Calvin, add that individuals have an intuitive capacity, a sensus divinitatis, which produces belief in God.
Jay W. Richards is vice president and senior fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is the author most recently of The Untamed God (InterVarsity, 2003) and co-author with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery (Regnery, 2004).
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