Bilingual Christianity?

I recently heard Dinesh D’Souza speak in St. Louis, and he spurred me to consider our methods of defending the Christian faith. His book What’s So Great About Christianity is one of the best apologetics for Christianity in a long time and has been compared to Lewis’s Mere Christianity. It does update many of Lewis’s arguments and is magnificently written. Like Lewis, D’Souza is well read in the fields of philosophy, Western history, literature (though non can match Lewis here), and Scripture. He is an excellent scholar and polemicist, and hits the heart of the matter so precisely and succinctly on so many issues the book is almost a complete education in defending the faith.

One thing I heard him say last night (and in his debate with Christohper Hitchens) is that he does not appeal to Scripture but argues from the same canons as the atheists—reason and science. In fact, he told the audience that Christians must learn to be bilingual. We must learn not only to speak our native Christian tongue to each other but also to those who don’t accept the authority of the Bible. Scripture verses don’t carry much weight with secularists and individualists so we must speak their authorities—science and reason—back to them. By reason I think he means something like rational arguments based in disciplines such as science, ethics, and justice and by science he means empirical study of nature and its findings.

While we ought to appeal the authorities of "natural revelation" (science and reason), I think that D’Souza is “shooting himself in the foot” by limiting himself to these. If Scripture is the true story of God’s world then the truth of that story will resonate with people when they hear it (even though they may attempt to deny it). In fact, the Holy Spirit may convince them that Christianity is best explanation of life as we experience it and is the only solution to the problem of guilt. We don’t want to speak “Christianese” to uncomprehending post moderns, but the gospel story is, I think, the best and most universal apologetic.

Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson said: “On all the points covered in common by philosophy and by revelation, rationality stood on the side of revelation much more than on that of philosophy: a single God, creator of heaven and earth, ruler of the world and its providence, a God who made man in his own image, and revealed to him along with his last end the way to attain it. Where in the splendid achievements of Greek Philosophy could one find a view of the world as clear and as perfectly satisfactory to the mind as the one revealed to man by Holy Scripture?”

I think D’Souza would do better to say that we appeal to reason and science and use them within the framework of the biblical worldview. This worldview is revealed from heaven and received by reason. From there, I think we do well to show that the book of Scripture and the book of nature cohere and complement one another rationally and mysteriously. Thankfully, D'Souza is better in actual practice than his stated policy would seem to allow. But, I think, we do need to be unapologetically proud of our special revelation even when rationalists mock it as unverifiable superstition.