John Frame. Apologetics to the Glory of God. Phillipsburg, NJ. Presbyterian & Reformed, 1994
Apologetics to the Glory of God is a short introduction to the apologetic approach of John Frame. Frame holds the J.D. Trimble chair of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida and is probably best-known for his writings on presuppositional apologetics in the vein of Cornelius Van Til, of whom Frame was a student.
Apologetics (in the formal sense) is not a subject I have read widely in, so my judgments are those of a rank amateur. Even so, I found the book to be easy to understand and certainly very profitable for someone like me with almost no prior reading in the area. Frame gets right to the point, which in my view is the book’s greatest strength. The subject matter here is complex at times, but he has a real gift for breaking the arguments down into “bite-size” pieces without dumbing the subject down. His larger work on the subject, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, is referred to often for those who want to go deeper into his thought at various points.
After a short overview of basic definitions and concepts, the book starts at the broadest possible horizon, with metaphysics and epistemology. Frame comes from a very strong Reformed background, and the entire book from this point forward reflects this perspective. I certainly don’t see this as a weakness, but it did at times leave me scratching my head. For instance, on pp. 45 he chides (gently) Christian traditions outside of Calvinism for not having a logical working out of how “free will” and God’s sovereignty interact, and then on page 46 he is perfectly willing to allow the Trinity to go unexplained and simply be proclaimed. How the doctrine of the Trinity can be simply asserted but the relationship between human responsibility and God’s sovereignty must be given some sort of logical “theory of everything” is never spelled out. Surely not on the basis of the Nicene Creed, of all things! (I say that VERY tongue in cheek). In my case would much rather wrestle with (or accept) the fact that how God rules His universe is beyond my understanding, than dogmatically state how this relationship works, which is what Frame seems intent to do. The fact that he wants to do as strongly as he does is surprising, but this may be par for the course in writings from a Calvinist perspective. To be fair, I would imagine this is addressed in much further detail in the larger work.
From here, Frame goes on to devote a chapter to the differences between the apologetic methods, and gives a very good explanation of what it means for an argument to be “presuppositional”. This isn’t exactly riveting reading due to the technical nature of the subject, but it was here where I learned the most, and while it might seem to some to be a rather irrelevant topic, Frame does a very good job of showing why this is not the case. Very good stuff. His discussion of the circularity of arguments is very enlightening. The book then moves to general proofs for the existence of God, and then to more specifically Christian arguments, before looking in some depth at the “problem of evil”. I confess to not expecting much to the “problem of evil” discussion, but I actually found it be very informative. Frame then goes on to outline different approaches of taking an “offensive” apologetic approach to different worldviews. This chapter is only 10 pages long, which to my mind was much too short, as he really had some good things to say here, and I would have been interested to read more. Perhaps he addresses this subject at length somewhere else. If so, I would be very interested to read it.
The book (minus two appendices) then ends on a practical note with a mock conversation between an agnostic and a believer on an airplane, showing in practice what the book has outlined in theory. Again, good stuff, and I applaud Frame for not forgetting the kind of “so what?” question.
The appendixes, on the other hand, seem to me to be almost totally irrelevant, but I hold out the small chance that there is someone out there who cares enough whether the “Ligonier” apologetic (whatever that means) meets the standard of being able to stand in the tradition of Cornelius Van Til to read the 24 pages that this debate gets here. I certainly don’t.
So, to summarize: Frame’s Apologetics to the Glory of God is a good book. It’s short, gets to the point quickly and concisely, and (other than the appendices) it doesn’t linger over things that only the specialist would care about. If you are interested in apologetics at all, you will enjoy the book. If you have an interest in the presuppositional approach to apologetics or have wondered what people mean we they say something is “Van Tillian”, then you will love the book. And, if you have no interest at all in the subject, I would encourage you to check the book out anyway. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised.
