Since today is Holy Saturday, the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I thought it would be good to write some reflections on this day which has traditionally been commemorated as the "Harrowing of Hell".   It seems from the Bible that after Christ gave up his Spirit, he descended to the dead, stormed the gates of Hades and liberated the captives of Death. Traditionally it is held that this begun with Adam and all the Old Testament patriarchs. This is the outworking of the victory of Christ whereby he brings the life-saving words of the Gospel down to the very lowest depths of Satan's domain and Death's power and "preached to the spirits in prison", proclaiming deliverance from Satan's and Death powers and leading them to freedom from their literal death grip.   The implications of this of course is that there is simply absolutely nowhere where Christ's life and victory is not present, nowhere where Christ's saving power cannot be applied. As Romans 8:38-39 put is, "neither death, nor life" can separate us from the love of God. So death itself is no barrier to the love of God in Jesus Christ.   Hades, Death and Judgement   There has been some conceptual confusion with regards to Hades which rarely has been clarified. In the Hebrew, the word "Sheol" and in the Greek, "Hades", has been used to refer to "the place of the dead". It is technically not "Hell", if by "Hell" we mean the place of everlasting damnation.   We have to remember that the sentence to "Hell" or the everlasting fires only occurs at the Last Judgement, at the consumation of all things. This is a little difficult to understand because we cannot help but think of "Hades", "Heaven and Hell" as space-time events or locations, and attempt to square them with our own temporal world and our historical space-time. Here is an analogy which might help.   When we do our mathematical proofs, we reason step by step, from this equation to the next equation to the next. This is essentially a sequence of deductions. But this is not a temporal sequence of deductions. No "time" has elapsed from one deduction to another, although time has elapsed in our in time understanding of the flow of deductions, but the deduction itself is "timeless". It is essentially an atemporal sequence of deductions which doesn't take any "time", the sequence of deduction is eternally what it is.   Thus, we must think of the relationship between "Hades", "Judgement", "Heaven and Hell" this way too. There is the space-time world, our world, of flowing events in historic time. But "Hades", "Judgement", "Heaven and Hell" are entities which are not part of our historical space-time. They are more like different states which people "enter" into once they depart from our space-time temporal world into these realms out of our time.   In the Old Testament, "Hades" or "Sheol" is simply the "place" of the dead. Of course it isn't a literal physical location, it is more like the state of a person. As the Lutheran theologian Peter Burfeind puts it, ...Sheol is revealed in the Old Testament with more nuance than the wooden translation “hell” would indicate. Far from being the place of final, fiery, and eternal punishment traditionally assigned to hell, Sheol must be seen as a place flexible enough to embrace meanings such as pit, grave,  punishment, sorrow, guilt, and even depression. In other words, it is the place where sin, death, and the power of the devil reign supreme.  Jacob repeatedly mentions Sheol as the destination for his “gray hair” (Gn 37:35; 42:38; 44:29–31). Solomon speaks without qualification when he writes, “Whatever your hand hands to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in [Sheol] where you are going” (Eccl 9:10). Job even identified Sheol as a place of repose from his sufferings (Job 14:13). Of course, the psalmist and prophets anticipate the curse of Sheol also for the wicked, even if in several contexts it is not so much punishments in Sheol which are anticipated, but death itself which will bring to naught the self-aggrandizing plans of the wicked (Ps 9:17; 55:15; Is 5:14; 14:9; and others). Yet, in the end the effects of the fall and its curse are upon all people.  The difference between the righteous and the wicked is not so much of place, as it is of hope. The righteous, while going to Sheol, hope for a restoration to life. The psalmist demonstrates this truth poignantly when he writes of this restoration as a “morning”:  "This is the way of those who are foolish,  And of their posterity who approve their sayings.  Like sheep they are laid in [Sheol];  Death shall feed on them;  The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;  And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave, far from their dwelling.  But God will redeem my soul from the power of [Sheol], For he shall receive me. (Ps 49:13–15) Thus, Hades or Sheol is the state of man whereby Sin and Satan's power has overcome and have dominion over him. In other words, it is the state of man who has died and fallen into sin and death's power. So when it is said that "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the Judgement", this is not a statement of linear temporality, as if in the next "split second" or "instant", a person from death "immediately" goes to the Judgement according to our linear time. We're dealing with entities and events here which occur outside of our own historic space-time. Thus, it simply speaks of an ordering of events, not the amount of "time" it takes to go from one event to another. Thus, we die first, thereby entering into the state of Hades or Sheol, and from that state we go to the Last Judgement. As we can see in Revelations 20:11-13, Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.   Thus, at the Last Judgement, the dead will leave Death and Hades and enter into God's judgement. This event occurs at the final consummation, at the end of time itself.   Preaching to the Dead   Thus, given the fact that all of us live in actual linear time, therefore all the persons who have died, from our temporal perspective, are still in the region of "Hades" or the Dead, and from our perspective, the return of Christ in glory, the General Resurrection, the Last Judgement and Final Consummation has not occurred. It cannot be emphasized enough that for the dead themselves, they are essentially in a region outside of our own space-time, they would not experience time or the flow of events as we do, thus, it is not as if they are feeling every moment or second in Hades after they die in the same way as we are experience time in this world.   Therefore we must likewise understand the concept of the "preaching to the dead" by Christ. It is not a "one-time" event, occurring two thousand years ago when Christ died. It is an event which occurs outside of our own space-time. The preaching of the Gospel to the dead reverberates for all time until the Death and Hades itself are "thrown in the lake of fire" (Rev 20:14) at the Last Judgement. Thus, the dead who depart from our temporal world into Hades will hear that single thunder of Christ's preaching and command of liberation which continues to resound until the end of time, and hearing those words of life and receiving it, they shall be resurrected unto everlasting life. As the contemporary Russian Orthodox theologian, Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, explores all this in his recent book, Christ the Conqueror of Hell (2009), Christ’s saving of the dead and the exodus from Hades were not one-time events that occurred in the past without significance for the present. These are events that transcend time, whose fruits were reaped not only by those who were imprisoned in hell before Christ’s descent but also by future generations. This is why in 1 Peter 4:6 it speaks of "why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God." Some church fathers even postulated that after the apostle's death they are sent into Hades to continue preaching the Gospel there to the dead!   Hope for the Dead   The importance and significance of Christ's descend into hell has vast implications, as a Barthian theologian puts it, ...it means that even hell itself is no longer a place of separation from God. Christ has penetrated into the depths of hell, flooding its darkness with the light of love. Hell has become a site of divine activity, a venue of divine love. ‘If I make my bed in Hades, you are there’ (Psalm 139:8). Thus, as Christ broke the power of Hades and Death and overcome it with his divine presence, so likewise we on earth should take heart and never despair for those who have died, especially for those who have died without faith. For their deaths most certainly do not put them beyond and outside the power of Christ, who came precisely to overcome the power of death! Their death are not beyond hope, it is not some kind of finishing line which puts them outside the power of Christ. No, the Harrowing of Hell precisely demonstrates that the dead are not outside the salvic power of Christ, that his preaching there has overcomes death itself. As St Paul declares confidently in Romans 8:38-39, For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ's love for mankind cannot be separated by death. It is not as if the person who has died without faith is forever beyond Christ's love and however separated from Christ's love. Death cannot separate us from Christ's love, only persistent and perpetual unbelief.   Conclusion: Prayers for the Dead   Therefore even as we reflect on the significance of the Harrowing of Hell, let us take heart in this glorious victory of Christ over the dead, and let us hope in Christ's love for all mankind, and the power of his preached Gospel to the dead, and in that faith, let us offer up prayers for those who have died, that truly the preaching of Christ's Gospel shall raise them from the dead and liberate them from Hades, into the glorious presence of God our Father, whose love has appeared in his Son Jesus Christ, who has conquered Hades itself. And therefore, in that light, I put forward the following prayer that we might join together with the dead to be "partakers of thy heavenly kingdom", taken from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom: Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

I want to discuss here a little of the phenomenology of praying towards heaven and what it means. But a preliminary qualifier, I think it is appropriate to bow one's head when confessing sins and praying for forgiveness, after the example of the tax collector who would not even look up to heaven when he confessed his sin, as opposed to the Pharisee. But I think for other petitions and worship, the default posture is to face heaven. In fact the early Christians were thought to be sky worshippers because they kept facing heaven whenever they prayed. First, biblically we not only have Jesus’s own example of facing heaven when he prayed, but fundamentally it is God's own title: our Father in heaven, and Jesus himself has ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God in heaven. Now it maybe argued that this isn't literally at the sky but a sort of aspatial location (paradoxically!), but again, Jesus’s own example of facing heaven suggests that it is not that simple. In facing heaven we are confronted with a vast expense, and with modern cosmology, when we look up to the sky we are really looking towards an almost boundless space beyond the earth. We acknowledge an infinite God not only beyond the earth beyond the near infinity of space, but also a God over the earth, as the vast heavens cover and govern the whole earth. I suggest that the phenomenology of a literal heavenly Father who is infinite and governs the whole earth when one gazes at the sky and beyond is very different from the experience of praying eyes closed and looking inwards towards oneself. Again, bowing one's head in penitence and shame when confessing sins is fine, but I think the default posture of forgiven saints is standing upwards and looking upwards towards heaven in triumph. I remember when the Egyptian Anglican Archbishop visited Singapore and was about to give the benediction, he was surprised that we knelt for it and asked us to stand to receive it. I suppose this is Coptic influence but I suggest, the right posture. As such, I think there is much to commend not only Jesus’s own example, but that also that of natural theology where in Chinese folk religion, one does literally refer to Sky Father or heaven as God. So I've started changing my prayer practice by praying towards the window and looking towards the sky, but old habits die hard. But it is phenomenologically different, it's less introspective and looking inward to one's feeling and more "confrontational" as it were, looking into the sky, and the space beyond, and then into the Infinite Being beyond who commands all. I think this posture is different, confront and face your Judge and God in the "eye", and in open and honest heart before the Almighty, uncloak all your affectations and pray with full assurance and good conscience with Christ standing between in Heaven interceding for you. Basically my argument in meme format:

So far I've been arguing for variants of moral nihilism and against the Anglo-American superstitious reverence of morality as well as how moralism is basically their religion, in this post I want to qualify my critique of the "morality institution" and argue that it does actually have a proper delimited purpose and utility. But in which case we need to be careful that we are speaking of "morality" in the older sense of mores and customs, social conventions, and not in the later Post-Reformation exalted sense of the standard of right or wrong or the divine law. As the above Oxford English Definition shows, the older meaning of "morals" is actually just "mores", customs, social conventions and codes of behaviour of particular cultures or societies. Now, for Christians the true "standard of right and wrong" is clearly the will of God ("Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." Matthew 7:21), the question becomes how do mores/customs/conventions figure on our ability to obey the will of God? It is clear that theologians and philosophers of the 17th-19th century were very much concerned with "morals", but they understood "mores" very differently in terms of its social utility and use in aiding us to do what's right/wrong, it is not itself the standard of right and wrong. I think this extended discussion from William Paley (yes, THE Paley of watchmaker argument for God fame), who argues for the need Virtue is “the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.” According to which definition, “the good of mankind” is the subject; the “will of God,” the rule; and “everlasting happiness,” the motive, of human virtue. [...] I shall proceed to state a few observations, which relate to the general regulation of human conduct; unconnected indeed with each other, but very worthy of attention; and which fall as properly under the title of this chapter as of any future one. I. Mankind act more from habit than reflection. It is on few only and great occasions that men deliberate at all; on fewer still, that they institute any thing like a regular inquiry into the moral rectitude or depravity of what they are about to do; or wait for the result of it. We are for the most part determined at once; and by an impulse, which is the effect and energy of pre-established habits. And this constitution seems well adapted to the exigencies of human life, and to the imbecility of our moral principle. In the current occasions and rapid opportunities of life, there is often-times little leisure for reflection; and were there more, a man, who has to reason about his duty, when the temptation to transgress it is upon him, is almost sure to reason himself into an error. If we are in so great a degree passive under our habits; Where, it is asked, is the exercise of virtue, the guilt of vice, or any use of moral and religious knowledge? I answer, In the forming and contracting of these habits. And hence results a rule of life of considerable importance, viz. that many things are to be done and abstained from, solely for the sake of habit. We will explain ourselves by an example or two. A beggar, with the appearance of extreme distress, asks our charity. If we come to argue the matter, whether the distress be real, whether it be not brought upon himself, whether it be of public advantage to admit such application, whether it be not to encourage idleness and vagrancy, whether it may not invite impostors to our doors, whether the money can be well spared, or might not be better applied; when these considerations are put together, it may appear very doubtful, whether we ought or ought not to give any thing. But when we reflect, that the misery before our eyes excites our pity, whether we will or not; that it is of the utmost consequence to us to cultivate this tenderness of mind; that it is a quality, cherished by indulgence, and soon stifled by opposition; when this, I say, is considered, a wise man will do that for his own sake, which he would have hesitated to do for the petitioner’s; he will give way to his compassion, rather than offer violence to a habit of so much general use. A man of confirmed good habits, will act in the same manner without any consideration at all. This may serve for one instance; another is the following. A man has been brought up from his infancy with a dread of lying. An occasion presents itself where, at the expense of a little veracity, he may divert his company, set off his own wit with advantage, attract the notice and engage the partiality of all about him. This is not a small temptation. And when he looks at the other side of the question, he sees no mischief that can ensue from this liberty, no slander of any man’s reputation, no prejudice likely to arise to any man’s interest. Where there nothing further to be considered, it would be difficult to show why a man under such circumstances might not indulge his humour. But when he reflects that his scruples about lying have hitherto preserved him free from this vice; that occasions like the present will return, where the inducement may be equally strong, but the indulgence much less innocent; that his scruples will wear away by a few transgressions, and leave him subject to one of the meanest and most pernicious of all bad habits—a habit of lying, whenever it will serve his turn: when all this, I say, is considered, a wise man will forego the present, or a much greater pleasure, rather than lay the foundation of a character so vicious and contemptible. From what has been said, may be explained also the nature of habitual virtue. By the definition of virtue, placed at the beginning of this chapter, it appears, that the good of mankind is the subject, the will of God the rule, and everlasting happiness the motive and end, of all virtue. Yet, in fact, a man shall perform many an act of virtue, without having either the good of mankind, the will of God, or everlasting happiness in his thought. How is this to be understood? In the same manner as that a man may be a very good servant, without being conscious, at every turn, of a particular regard to his master’s will, or of an express attention to his master’s interest: indeed, your best old servants are of this sort: but then he must have served for a length of time under the actual direction of these motives, to bring it to this: in which service, his merit and virtue consist. There are habits, not only of drinking, swearing, and lying, and of some other things, which are commonly acknowledged to be habits, and called so; but of every modification of action, speech, and thought. Man is a bundle of habits. -The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy: Book 1, Chapter 7: Virtue Thus we have here an excellent argument for the formation and adherence to habits, mores and customs. Generally attempting to discern and reflect on the reasons for action in every case takes up too much mental bandwidth, and opens one to the temptation of rationalising away the right course of action in particular difficult cases. Thus, ingrained customary and habitual adherence to established mores will, overall, improve the propensity of society to do the right thing. But notice that these are rather prudential and pragmatic arguments for moral formation and adhering to mores, they are not exalted theological or philosophical arguments. It still remains to teachers and civil authorities to ensure that the correct mores and customs are formed. Thus, mores and customs are not themselves the ultimate standard, they are social codes/rules formed to achieve the true standard: the will of God, but their use is instrumentalist, pragmatic, for social and personal utility. If mores and customs were to mean no more than this very practical sense, then it is a thing very much to be welcome. But this will also mean that mores/customs/morals will always be open to revision and reformation to be more perfectly conformed to the will of God, and they are not themselves the ultimate standard. To end on a historical note, doubtless English philosophers and theologians were concerned about "morals and mores" after the religious upheavals of the 16th-17th century where theological questions and practices were constantly being litigated, overhauled, and revised. After the dust settled with the Glorious Revolution, it is likely that they sought to stabilise religious life by instilling stable "mores and customs" for civic and religious life in England. The unfortunate thing is that England was stable for so long that the religious origins of those "mores and customs" was forgotten, and "morality" became a strange autonomous institution in itself, the standard of right and wrong which floats in the air. I think given our tumultuous times, it is time to interrogate and revisit our current "mores and customs" and ask what are its exact characteristics, origins and influences, and reform them accordingly.

While in popular literature and philosophical circles the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry may seem like an earth-shattering discovery, subverting our confidence in the absolute truth and nature of mathematics and reality, its actual study may seem like a trick or word play. Consider Spherical Geometry, an example of non-Euclidean Geometry which I think should be the easiest to understand and the most empirically familiar. To understand how Non-Euclidean geometry works you have to understand how geometricians understand a "line" and a "point". We normally think that a "line" is just a "straight line", but if you restrict the referent of "line" to just the great circles on a sphere, and "point" to any points on the surface of the sphere (thus there are no "points" inside the sphere), you get a very different and interesting geometry. (Roughly, a great circle is a line on the surface of the sphere generated by cutting a plane passing through the center of the sphere.) Thus, given that on the sphere the only "lines", or line segments, are these great circles on the sphere, or parts thereof, and the only "points" are points on the surface of the sphere, it is easy to see why core axioms of Euclidean Geometry fail to obtain here. Consider for example the parallel postulate (using Playfair's Version): Given any "line" CD, and any "point" S not on the line CD, there exists one and only one "line" QR passing through the "point" S that does not meet the CD. But in Spherical Geometry, as we have restricted the referent of "line" and "point", there are no parallel lines because every "line" (great circle), passing through a point P not on another "line" (great circle) l, must meet the latter line/great circle somewhere, either at the equator or at the poles. At this point you'll complain, well, that's cheating, you have just redefined the meaning of "line" and restricted it to the surface of this sphere, but that's not what people usually mean by "line" in "the real world", they mean a "straight line". But what is the "real world"? We're literally talking about a sphere which is as close an approximation to the literal world/earth (technically more like an ellipsoid). It seems like doing geometry on the actual spherical/elliptical planet is as "real world" an activity as one can get. Even if we want to discuss the usual Euclidean geometry of a "straight line" and the parallel postulate, the problem is that our "common sense" understanding of this isn't very "real" either. Think again about Playfair's parallel postulate, there is one and only one line on a point not on another line that will never meet the latter line. But has anyone ever seen an infinitely long line that has never met another line? "In the real world"? Or even in our universe? (Which according to some physicists is merely finite in extent, etc) This brings us to an important insight: what we imagine to be a "common sense" "real world" axiom is actually itself an idealisation, dare I even say, a construct, an idealised infinitely long 'straight' line which no one has ever seen anywhere in the "real world". If we are allowed to idealise infinitely long straight lines, which no one has ever seen "in the real world", why can't we also idealise other lines on spheres and other exotic geometries? After all, if the "real world" is a cosmos constituted by a vast elliptical or spherical space (maybe due to General Relativity or whatever), then locally it looks like the parallel postulate holds, given a "line" or "great circle" on this cosmic sphere, that great circle wouldn't meet another great circle for millions and millions and millions of miles. So, "for all practical purposes", it looks parallel, but eventually it may still meet somewhere halfway across the galaxy. The point of this little excursion into Non-Euclidean Geometry is a two-fold: it is not as earth shattering a discovery as we might be lead to believe, it may even feel a little disappointing because it feels like "cheating" by redefining the ordinary meaning of words, but it is also an important insight into how much unconscious expectations goes into our definition and referent of words. Yes, "everyone knows" that when we use the word "line", we "really" mean a straight line, in that sense Spherical Geometry is "cheating", but then we need to ask ourselves, why do we privilege "the straight line" as the universal standard definition of line? Who is to say that this definition is always applicable everywhere? Non-Euclidean geometry, by interrogating the "ordinary" meaning of words, at the same time deepens our understanding of these ordinary words, expands our minds to other possibilities, while also introducing a new rigor in being more precise about what we mean or refer to by our words.

We believe, that we ought diligently and circumspectly to discern from the Word of God which is the true Church, since all sects which are in the world assume to themselves the name of the Church.   -Belgic Confession 1561   Hauerwas’ work epitomises the core failure of theological postmodernism: the failure to use the word ‘church’ with sufficient care. Contemporary theology ought to reflect far more critically on the use of this word. For this word is intellectually dangerous. Rather like a beautiful woman (apologies for the gendered analogy), it has the power to make intelligent men forget their critical duties; to enchant them. It is crucial that we interrogate every use of this word; that we ask whether it refers to an actual institution or an ideal. Instead, ambiguity on this question is universally tolerated, as if ‘church’ is meant to be used with pious vagueness, as if this is part of its grammar. -Theo Hobson, Against Hauerwas   Introduction: Some Definition of Terms   One of the most common attempts by high church advocates to distinguish their doctrine of the Church against Protestantism is to insist upon the "visibility" and "unchangeability" of their Church. However in this post I would argue that high church ecclesiology, when sufficiently interrogated in the light of admissions of historical "developments", is hardly "visible" for it often turns out to be an "invisible" ideal transcending the particular empirically discernible writings and actions of ecclesiastical figures or institutions. The result however causes the concept of "the Church" to become a highly artificial academic construct of individual theologians or historians, creating several problems for them in their attempt to distinguish their position from Protestantism.   First some definitions. I will use the word "high church" to refer primarily to denominations and sub-denominations, like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, which attributes great theological significance to the "visible Church". I will use the term "Magisterial Protestantism" to refer to the original Protestantism at the start of the Reformation, the Protestantism of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Cranmer, etc, generally Protestantism before the 17th century. This definition I believe is important because even the concept of the "invisible Church" itself has several shades of meaning and while I would argue that the high church concept converges to that of the Protestant, yet it is not quite the same concept.   The Magisterial Protestant Doctrine of the Visible and Invisible Church   A draft confession written by Archbishop Cranmer, but later abandoned, contains the most succinct explanation of the doctrine of the invisible Church in contrast to the visible Church. In the Scripture, the word “Church” has two main meanings, apart from others; one of which means the congregation of all the saints and true believers, who really believe in Christ the Head and are sanctified by his Spirit. This is the living and truly holy mystical body of Christ, but known only to God, who alone understands the hearts of men. The second meaning is that of the congregation of all who are baptised in Christ, who have not openly denied him nor been lawfully and by his Word excommunicated. This meaning of “Church” corresponds to its status in this life in that in it the good are mixed with the evil. The invisible Church is first and foremost the "communion of saints" of the Apostles' Creed. It is the fellowship of the true believers who really believe in Christ the Head and his Word from the heart and exercise true Spirit wrought charity towards one another. The reason why this fellowship is invisible is because of the fact that it is a fellowship of the true believers from the heart and only God alone can discern the heart. What we on this side of heaven can see are only the outward words and actions but we cannot pry into the heart or, in the words of Queen Elizabeth I, make windows into man's souls. It is important to keep this reason in mind in order to distinguish it from other concepts of the invisible Church.   The invisible Church is distinguished from the visible Church in that the visible Church consists of outward actions and words, actions such as baptism, profession of faith, empirically discernible works of charity, etc. One must note very carefully that the Protestant doctrine of the visible Church is not identified with any institution or system of canon law or whatever. The visible Church is simply the outward fellowship of the baptised and professing Christians who have not done anything (outwardly at least) inconsistent with the Word of God. The visible Church has often been described as an "outward sign" of the invisible Church in that it is a good indicator, but by no means an infallible one, of the true communion of the saints.   The Protestant doctrine of the visible Church is, ironically, not very visible. You cannot point to a single institution or office or corporation and say, there is the visible Church, nor does it provide a simple formula which can mechanically pick them out. The visible Church simply refers to those who outwardly profess Christ, are baptised, and behave consistently with the Bible. But who they are and how to determine what "behave consistently with the Bible" means requires engagement with the particulars. There is no simple mechanical formula which can immediately identify who they are.   The doctrine of the invisible Church in Protestantism would go through some evolution in Britain as the Reformation developed there. Later on, especially in the Westminster Presbyterian system and all their heirs, the invisible Church would become identified with the sum of the elect. We however will discuss alternative notions of the invisible Church at greater length when we discuss high church conceptions.   Grappling with the Fact of Change and the Fact of Plurality   One of the most common apologetic point urged by high church Christians against Protestantism is that Protestants have changed the faith or deviated from tradition. Implicit in this charge of course is the premise that their churches and their traditions are unchanging and have remained the same today as it has been since the time of the Apostles.   In the post-Reformation age Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was quite strident on this point and represented the French traditionalist position. As the Anglican theologian William Witt helpfully summarises: Against Protestantism, which, Bossuet argued in his History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches was nothing but a history of incompatible variations, Bossuet insisted that any variation in religious belief is an indication of error. The Tridentine position was that the faith had been delivered to the Church by Christ complete and entire. The Church had preserved the faith without change. Any admission of change was heresy... For Bossuet, the doctrine of the two natures had to have been revealed by Christ and believed by the Catholic Church from the time of the apostles. The problem was that as early as the 15th century the Roman Catholics realised that the Donation of Constantine, which played a huge role in establishing papal supremacy, was a forgery. Then in the 19th century modern historical methods have more or less discredited the idea that the beliefs of contemporary Roman Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox could be so simply identified with the beliefs of the Apostles or the Apostolic church. There arose the enormous difficulty of trying to demonstrate how distinctive high church beliefs like the Marian dogmas or Transubstantiation or papal supremacy or ecumenical conciliar infallibility existed right from the start.    The 19th century British Roman Archbishop, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, was quite brutally honest about this difficulty. He writes in The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: The other objection I shall touch but briefly. It is often said that Catholics are arbitrary and positive even to provocation in perpetually affirming the indivisible unity and infallibility of the Church, the primacy of the Holy See, and the like, without regard to the difficulties of history, the facts of antiquity, and the divisions of Christendom. It is implied by this that these truths are not borne out by history and fact: that they are even irreconcilable with it: that they are no more than theories, pious opinions, assumptions, and therefore visionary and false. We very frankly accept the issue. No Catholic would first take what our objectors call history, fact, antiquity and the like, and from them deduce his faith... (bold and underline mine)   The point is that in the end nobody, at least nobody with a proper command of church history, believes that their church today, in visible outward terms, is the same as the apostolic church in terms of both belief or practice. The Eastern Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky condemns what he calls "a harmful primitivism" in the Vincentian Canon to believe only what has "always" been believed.   What does this discussion on the fact of change have to do with the visibility of the Church? It boils down to the incompatibility of two claims:   (1) My Church does not Change.   (2) My Church is Substantially Visible   However, if one accepts that in historical and empirical terms there is a difference between one's church's past and one's church's present, then the two claims are incompatible. One can maintain that one's Church does not change, but must sacrifice the visibility of the Church and not identify the Church with every visible act or writing of the Church. The alternative is to maintain that the Church is substantially visible but deny that there has been any visible change. This alternative however is basically untenable in the light of what we know now about the writings of the early church and in the light of the historical facts and empirical differences.   Roman Catholicism has in fact always implicitly accepted the fact that the Church is not as visible as they would like it to be by the way they have attempted to account for their present day doctrines and practices. Following the tradition of Bossuet, who insisted that any admission of change was anathema, his tradition basically posited some "unwritten oral tradition" going back to the apostle's time whereby all the present day unchanging Roman Catholic distinctives are transmitted. The "unwritten oral tradition" theory however, by virtue of being unwritten, saves the continuity of the Church at the expense of its visibility. Nobody obviously can discover or read  these "unwritten oral tradition" simply because they are unwritten. The "unwritten oral tradition" theory has today virtually no supporters amongst Roman Catholics for it is as crazy as the "primitive baptist" theory that their denomination has always existed from the start and has survived under the radar of history, invisible to historical records after the Constantinian corruption, only to emerge into public view after the Reformation.     Two Theories of Doctrinal Development   Now every side agrees that the beliefs and the practices of the Church today cannot simply be identified with the beliefs and practices of the Church in the Apostle's time. The Church at the Apostle's time is not visibly the same as the Church at the time of Constantine, nor is it the same as the Church at the Middle Ages nor at the Reformation nor at the 19th century nor today. The history of the Church consists of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of ecclesiastical acts, decrees, institutions, canons, writings, whether by institutional corporations or by individual "canonical" theologians, and often in contradiction with one another. In order to maintain the claim that the Church does not change, some visibility must be sacrificed. Some empirically discernible ecclesiastical acts or writings must be denied to immediately belong to the essence of the visible Church, others cannot be straightforwardly read off but needs to be "rightly interpreted", at some theoretical level, to cohere with present beliefs and practices.   So among these masses upon masses of empirical facts and events, only some of them can be legitimately identified with that of the never changing visible Church. The "true" visible Church is but a subset of the totality of church history. The question is, how do you determine which parts of visible church history legitimately belongs to the Visible Church?   It is here where we come to the (in)famous theory of doctrinal development. However it is important to distinguish between two theories of doctrinal development. One we shall call the theory of doctrinal deduction which was espoused by Aquinas, Duns Scotus, the Jesuits after the Reformation, and by the Magisterial Protestants. The other we shall simply call theory of historical development which is basically Cardinal Newman's development by historical narrative.   Let's recall the Protestant doctrine of the visible Church. The visible Church is the sum of the baptised, wherever they maybe, who outwardly profess Christ and behave consistently with the Word of God. The determination therefore as to which acts and writings in Church history properly belongs to the visible Church boils down to a simple criteria: It must be consistent with the Word of God.   The fact that what Christians believed at the 4th or the 12th or the 16th or the 21st century are not identical with one another is not a problem on the theory of doctrinal deduction. The theory of doctrinal deduction simply says that we all maintain the same faith, practices, and beliefs, simply because we all accept beliefs and practices which can be deduced logically from the Scriptures. Doctrine "develops" or "grows" as a result of logical deduction from divinely revealed Scriptural premises. As John Duns Scotus argued in his Ordinatio concerning the sufficiency of Scripture: ...many necessary truths are not expressed in Sacred Scripture, even if they are virtually contained there, as conclusions in principles; in [circa] the investigation of which the labor of the doctors and expositors was useful. It is true that there are many doctrines confessed by the church later which were not explicitly expressed in the Scriptures, but they were brought out later, not by a historical process, but as a result of a logical deduction, "as conclusions in principles". The results of these deductions were later codifed in ecclesiastical documents and writings of respected theologians. The exact same principle is operative in the Presbyterian Westminster Confession which states: The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture... As Archbishop Cranmer has already pointed out, the visible Church however is mixed with the good and the evil. Church institutions, officers, clerics, councils and most of all, Christians themselves, have erred in practice and legislation and espoused false beliefs. However out of this mess of church history, the legitimate visible Church belongs to those particular acts and teachings of particular Christians which are consistent with and logically deducible from the Word of God.   Now before we come to Newman's theory proper, we must make one thing clear. Newman's theory is not the theory of doctrinal development by logical deduction. In 1958 a letter by Newman previously unpublished was made known containing the following illuminating passage: I conceive then that the Depositum is in such sense committed to the Church or to the Pope, that when the Pope sits in St. Peter’s chair, or when a Council of Fathers & doctors is collected round him, it is capable of being presented to their minds with that fullness and exactness, under the operation of supernatural grace, (so far forth and in such proportion of it as the occasion requires,) with which it habitually, not occasionally, resided in the minds of the Apostles;—a vision of it, not logical, and therefore consistent with errors in reasoning of fact in the enunciation, after the manner of an intuition or an instinct. Nor do those enunciations become logical, because theologians afterwards can reduce them to their relations to other doctrines, or given them a position in the general system of theology. To such theologians they appear as deductions from the creed or formularized deposit, but in truth they are original parts of it, communicated per modum unius to the Apostles’ minds, & brought to light to the minds of the Fathers of the Council, under the temporary illumination of Divine Grace. - Journal of Theological Studies (9 [1958], 324-335)   (bold and underline mine)   Newman here is quite explicit, the Pope, council fathers and doctors, etc, receive their theological insight into the apostolic faith, not by logically deducing them from apostolically revealed premises, but almost like in some kind of prophetic vision, an instinct, an intuition, as it were, moved by the Holy Ghost. This is why one can teach, for example, that the doctrine of papal supremacy is still a legitimate doctrine despite it having developed out of false deductions from the Donation of Constantine.   Naturally once one has severed doctrinal development from logical deductions, the problem arises as to how exactly do they identify "developments"? Remember, there are masses and masses of writings, arguments and claims, only some of which are legitimate "developments" and others are deviations or "corruptions" from the faith. We need a method or a criteria for distinguishing the two. The theory of doctrinal deduction proposes logical deduction from Scripturally revealed premises as one such criteria.   Several options are ruled out at once, they cannot claim that something is a development by virtue of "tradition" because we already accept ex hypothesi that there are doctrinal developments/changes which are not handed down or passed down in tradition in its present form.   They also cannot claim that we simply "look at history". History, in the modern scientific sense, first and foremost attempts to discern the shape of primary facts and events through record and relic, e.g. finding out what happened and who did what and said what by determining reliability of witnesses, sifting through biases, finding collaborating evidence, etc. That does not by itself tell give you a criteria for evaluating the "legitimate" church events from "illegitimate" church events which would require a higher level of evaluation. A historian can of course frame a narrative and pass evaluative judgements on ecclesiastical acts and events, but there is nothing theologically special or significant about the historian's own opinion. He is not divinely inspired and nobody believes that a historian possesses any normative theological authority which gives him the right to pass substantive theological judgements on which events or acts or writings constitutes the legitimate visible Church and which does not. What we need is a theological principle to determine which historical events are properly developments and which are not.   Problems with the Theory of Historical Development   How then can we find the gem of the "true" visible Church from the masses of masses of particular ecclesiastical acts and writings? Ultimately the high church believer frames a coherent narrative or "story" of the visible Church. The story weaves various carefully selected elements of church history from the beginning to present arrangements. A complicated theory or explanation often accompanies their narrative to justify their selection of particular events or acts as well as their interpretation of various writings.   The first problem should be quite obvious. The account is circular. The narrative is framed precisely to lead to their denomination's present beliefs and practices. Both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics can, and have, framed historical narratives leading to the development of their denomination. They cannot very well use a narrative which presupposes the end point to justify the end point. More seriously for our present discussion, they cannot exclude Protestants from also framing a historical narrative leading to the development of their denominational distinctives. The apologetic rhetoric against Protestantism for "changing" the faith would be seriously damaged if high church denominations cannot find a more concrete and non-arbitrary way of deciding between changes which they would want to call "developments" and changes which they want to condemn as "deviations".   Or perhaps there is some intrinsic quality to narratives which allows people to adjudicate which is the "better" narrative? Here we must not be mislead by the language of "growth" and "development". We can determine the quality of development of, say, trees and animals, because we have seen many examples, from start to finish, of the development and growth of their species. Thus we can tell what a healthy plant looks like as opposed to a diseased plant, or a stunted plant, or a plant which has died prematurely, because we have seen many examples of the same plant from start to full maturity.   Unfortunately in our present case we have only one unique history of the Church and one singular Holy Catholic Church, which history has not even ended yet. It is not like we have examples of many churches from start to finish and thus am able to determine the quality of growth and development of Church to see which ones are "legitimate" developments and which ones are not. And of course if we take the end point my present denominational arrangement that would once more collapse back into circularity.   The Invisible Ideal Church of the Academic's Invention   The legitimacy of every Church is derivative of its apostolic credentials. There has to be a non-arbitrary and objective criteria for determining such apostolic legitimacy. The theory of doctrinal deduction from apostolically revealed premises, as recorded in the Scriptures, provides such a criteria. The Apostolic tradition as infallibly witnessed by the Scriptures remains the foundation of the Church, and the growth and development of the visible Church occurs in concert with our reason which draws out the logical implications of the divinely inspired apostolic premises infallibly witnessed by Scripture.   The "Church" of the high church advocate unfortunately simply "floats" in platonic space as it were. The historical narrative, which identifies the "true" Church, amidst the masses and masses of empirical facts, is essentially circular and self-justifying. It is tethered to no actual concrete foundation or standard of evaluation. Its plausibility is not derivative of any concrete fact but based on some vague "aesthetic sense" of which narrative "tells a better story".   The problems of doing ecclesiology by narrative is manifest. It is even more invisible than Protestantism's visible Church. Protestantism has a visibly discernible criteria for evaluating the legitimate visible church acts and writings among the masses of ecclesiastical phenomena, just search the Scriptures. The high church Christian has no such concrete visible criteria, the church literally exists only in tale. They cannot say, just listen to the Pope because popes has said many things and sometimes in contradiction of one another, they cannot say listen to the councils because there are many many many different councils also in contradiction of one another. They cannot say just listen to your priest because your priest might be of dubious "orthodoxy" even if he is canonically ordained. The criteria whereby they evaluate the legitimacy of various ecclesiastical phenomena is the narrative. But the boundaries of this narrative itself is nebulous, vague, and essentially open-ended.   To be sure this ideal platonic church of tale touches empirical ecclesiastical realities at certain points. However there is no visible foundation or criteria for determining when and where it so touches. It seems to merely float in and out of visible reality at random, otherwise it remains essentially invisible. The only way to "catch" the church is through the sheer existential human act of special narration for the narrative alone can identify the "true" visible Church. Without this narrative, no one would know where is the true visible Church. This is virtually gnosticism about the Church, known only to those with the special aesthetic nose to sniff it out in platonic space.   Perhaps the great irony is that the the Roman Catholics used to charge the Lutheran Reformers for precisely postulating such a platonic church. As Philip Melanchthon objects in his Apology of the Augsburg Confession: Neither, indeed, are we dreaming of a Platonic state, as some wickedly charge, but we say that this Church exists, namely, the truly believing and righteous men scattered throughout the whole world. We are speaking not of an imaginary Church, which is to be found nowhere; but we say and know certainly that this Church, wherein saints live, is and abides truly upon earth; namely, that some of God's children are here and there in all the world, in various kingdoms, islands, lands, and cities, from the rising of the sun to its setting, who have truly learned to know Christ and His Gospel. The only way in which the high church apologist manages to get away with many claims about the "Church" is simply due to a lack of interrogation of the term. But the minute you ask, "But what is the Church? How do you determine its boundaries? By what criteria do you decide who are the "Fathers"? What is Holy Tradition and how is it determined?" the entire rhetoric collapses. The "Church" rapidly vanishes into idealised platonic space. More relevantly to their apologetic, there is no qualitative distinction between their position and the Protestants. Both high church denominations and Protestantism admits to the fact of visible change in the history of the church, both have their own ways of accounting for it via historical narrative.   Conclusion: The Protestant Confidence in Reason   We have seen how the high church apologetic claims, that their Church is both visible and unchanging, are incompatible. We have also seen how a sufficiently nuanced high church ecclesiology by historical development causes the Church to vanish into platonic invisibility, discernible only to those with the right aesthetic nose to identify the correct ecclesiastical narrative.   This is not to deny the initial plausibility of the charge of Protestant denominational or doctrinal "chaos". However, our doctrine of the invisible Church already gives us some comfort here. The Protestant doctrine of the invisible Church is not the high church platonic invisible Church. The invisible Church is the fellowship of saints who truly believe in Christ according to God's word from the heart. We may not have access to the hearts of others, but we have immediate, though not perfect, access to our own. Everyone who believes in Christ as proclaimed in the Scriptures directly lays hold of Christ. In laying hold of Christ, we are already incorporated in the spiritual fellowship of the saints. From this foundation of faith in Christ, we exercise charity towards our neighbours and fellow Christians in this world, growing in communion with one another. This communion is not visibly perfect nor will it be complete in this life, however it is constantly being renewed and nourished by faith in Christ as witnessed by the Scriptures. If the communion of saints consists of faith in Christ and concrete exercises of charity according to God's word, then the fact of institutional or denominational differences means nothing to us. What is important is God's Word and our faith in Christ as revealed there and our exercises of charity in according to it. Institutional apparatus are merely after the fact prudential arrangement which constitutes no part of the essence of the invisible Church, or even the visible Church!   Ultimately the Protestant believes that everyone can, and ought to, employ their own reason to search the Scriptures for themselves and form their own judgement to the satisfaction of their own conscience. Let us not forget what Luther actually said that the Diet of Worms: "Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason..." We have a high view and confidence in our reason's ability to discern and search out the truth in the Bible. To be sure it is not infallible, but we deny that it is utterly blind or useless and we affirm that it is sufficiently reliable to attain unto those truths of Scripture necessary for salvation. We object to any epistemology which rejects the common world of objective truth, including Scripture, as not accessible to our natural reason and would have us simply make leaps of existential decisions of faith unto idealised narratives dwelling in platonic heavens.   We are also not worried about our doctrinal differences for we affirm that ultimately faith is faith in a person, Jesus Christ, not a set of propositions. The Scriptures are witnesses to a concrete historical reality and person, not just a reporter of propositions. Through the Scriptures we can directly lay hold of a person and worship Him. We employ our reason after the fact to explain our belief and make sense of him in discursive propositional form. To be sure some propositions would have greater effect upon our practical piety than others, however ultimately we hold that in this life we are simul iustus et peccator, at the same time justified and sinner.   We are justified through faith alone in Christ, a person. Yet we are still sinners, and not only in deed but also in our imperfect understanding, thoughts and occasional erroneous beliefs. While we bring to bear the best of our abilities to live the Christian life and discern the Scripture's meaning, the satisfaction of our conscience is the end point of our best endeavours. At the utmost limits of our efforts we can only plead, our best works are but filthy rags, have mercy upon me a sinner!   Addendum:   I found this passage by the German Lutheran theologian, Hermann Sasse, to be particularly relevant to our discussion. Where was the papal church before there was a papacy? Whether any church has its origin in the church of the New Testament or not is simply a matter of faith. The Baptists and the Disciples of Christ make the claim that their church was the church at the time of the New Testament. Our Lutheran fathers never had the idea that they were founding a new church. They were of the conviction that Christ's one church was being renewed with the pure apostolic doctrine in contrast with Rome, which had fallen away from the Gospel.  These are matters of faith, and one should not try to settle them by appeals to historical proofs. How this goes may be seen in the polemics between the Anglicans and English Roman Catholics. Both attempt to prove that they are the legitimate continuation of the medieval church in England. We Lutherans have no part to play in that sort of dispute, although it has often been suggested that we should.  To provide the proof for the identity of any historical construction is always enormously problematical. One may, for example, speak of an English nation and of a German nation that continue through the centuries. But if one looks more closely, one notices how great are also the differences. In what sense are the English people of Henry VIII's time identical with the 10 times as many English people today? In what sense are today's German people identical with the people of Luther's time? Was it anything more than a fiction when it was thought that the Holy Roman Empire of Byzantium was living on in the empire of Charlemagne and the German empire of Otto the Great until it expired in 1806? Is there more of an identity between the Roman Church of today and the church of Peter's day than there is between the Roman Empire of the first century and the Holy Roman Empire around 1800? It has been observed that the difference between the church before Constantine and after Constantine is greater than the difference in the Western Church before and after the Reformation. Here the historical proofs of identity simply fail. -Apostolic Succession (Letters to Lutheran Pastors No.14 April 1956)

Here I would make some personal observations about apologetics with my own experience in apologetics and doing mathematics, and then make some tangential notes about the presuppositionalist-evidentialist debate. I would like to, at the outset, make a distinction between believing in God versus the truth claims of Christian revelation, and be focused mainly on the former in the context of discussing reason and natural revelation. I remember when I was in junior college, as an unbeliever, I had a classmate who is a Christian. When I first engaged him, I was extremely belligerent about it, and then he said one thing which changed the course of the entire conversation, and probably my whole life: "Believe whatever you want." That phrase, doubtless meant to end the conversation, made me reconsider my approach and whether I was being deliberately wilful about my objections and rejection of whatever my friend had to say. When I changed my attitude, that fundamental re-orientation, from wilfulness against belief to willingness to believe, led me to explore the reasons for God's existence, then Christiainity, at greater depth and eventually led me to where I am today. However, I think there is an argument to be made that most of us may need such a "presuppositional" attitude, a willingness and desire to believe, maybe even through our whole lives. I think there are two considerations for this: (1) The noetic effects of sin, the fundamental unwillingness to believe, is so deeply rooted that we will be fighting every attempt to believe at every step in the argument, at every premise of the proof. If we don't have the fundamental "presupposition" to believe, we will never overcome it. Take as an analogy the objective difference between man and woman, or the wickedness of even allowing adults to undergo sex change operations. Most people in the West are so viscerally and morally conditioned to reject both these propositions that they will fight every argument against these at every step of the way, otherwise they will be consider wicked and evil by others. If we don't demand that they suspend their visceral wilfulness for moral respectability for a moment, we will never get anywhere. (2) For a proposition as simple and basic as God's existence, the proofs can be very complex. As I've argued in a previous post,(https://www.latitudeevangelicals.com/forum/apologetics/proving-the-obvious-things-the-via-media-between-the-presuppositionalists-and-evidentialists) there are many mathematical propositions which seems obvious to us, e.g. 1+1=2, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which can only be proven by very complex deductions based on even more abstract and elementary concepts. Who is going to master a battery of axiomatic set theoretic concepts just to prove that 1+1=2, or a battery of calculus or vectorial concepts just to prove that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? The reality is that most of us go about our lives, "presupposing" these truths without bothering our heads to learn deductively and rigorously the proofs to these. Some of us who are not mathematically inclined will never be able to grasp such proofs, but it does not follow that they are not entitled to belief in those claims. Thus, even if, in theory, you can prove propositions like 1+1=2 or the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, in practice, most of us are simply going to be presuppositionalists about those anyway. In this light, does it follow that evidences, reasons, or arguments are useless? I don't think it does, but it will re-orient and delimit the role and place of evidence and reasons. I think the "proof" will look something more like this. I remember when I was in university I had a tutorial assignment where one of the question was to find the volume of a doughnut (or torus), given the radius of the each segment of the doughnut and the ring itself as a whole. We were supposed to use some integration method to find the volume, but it seemed to me that that wasn't necessary. All you had to do was to cut the doughnut and straighten it out into a cylinder, and it's a piece of cake to find the volume of a cylinder. It was obvious and self-evident to me that this cylinder would have the same volume as the doughnut. You can find the height of the cylinder by calculating the circumference of the doughnut and then the top and bottom area of the cylinder by calculating the cross-sectional area of the doughnut. So I completed this question in like literally three steps with basic algebra. I was told to present my solution during class and after just jotting down the three step solution my professor was like, okay, your answer is right, but how does it work. When I explained that I simply cut the doughnut and straightened it out as a cylinder and calculated the volume, he got it but said that technically I assumed certain topological properties, e.g. that the volume is preserved under deformation which itself is a provable theorem. Later on, many many years later when I started reading calculus on my own, I came across the Theorem of Pappus which precisely proved that you can treat it like a cylinder by using the notion of moments and center of mass. (If you can't follow the screenshots, skip!) I suggest this as an analogy to how we can understand knowledge of divine existence. There are three ways knowledge that the torus is equivalent in volume to a cynlinder can be acquired: (a) It is just obvious and self-evident that they have the same volume. Many, or even most of us, will be able to simply imagine cutting the doughnut, straightening it out, and that it has the same volume. Likewise, to most people it should just be obvious and self-evident that there is a God. (b) Rigorous proof and deductions. A few of us, who are more mathematically inclined, can learn calculus, moments, etc, etc, and then rigorously prove Pappus's Theorem for volumes and satisfy ourselves with such a deduction. Likewise, the divine existence and be demonstrated by very rigorous arguments and deductions from exquistely rarefied and defined philosophical concepts. But what if you're a midwit, who is neither willing to grasp the "obvious" fact that a doughnut has the same volume as a cylinder, nor have the mental bandwidth or capacity for a rigorous calculus proof? Then we have the last option: (c) Rhetorical illustrations which evidences or points to the truth. Here is a way to persuade someone that they have the same volume: Take a non-absorbent but flexible cylinder, then immerse it in a bucket of water. Measure the difference in volume, then take it out and bend the cylinder into a doughnut, then immerse it again into a bucket of water. Measure the difference in volume again. Compare and they should be the same. Is this a "proof"? Obviously not, physical experiments are never mathematical proofs, nor is this a completely rigorous proof (the results may vary depending on the material, water, temperature, etc, etc). But as an illustration, it suffices to be a token of the truth of the proposition, a promissory note as it were, that there is a proof to be had even if one lacks the conceptual toolbox to grasp it. Thus, we can have a lot of lay level apologetics or easy illustrations for God's presence in this world, which should satisfy the curious or the doubtful. In the end, I suggest that there is something to be said for the Westminster Confession of Faith understanding of how "assurance of salvation" works, but as applied to knowledge and certainty of the divine existence: This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. Thus, the "infallible assurance" or knowledge by rigorous proof, does not "belong to the essence of faith", and true believers may have to wait long, very long, (or even ever in this life!) before they can partake or acquire such rigorous proof. Yet, such rigorous infallible proofs are not required nor demanded by faith, and that is the essence of presuppositionalism: rigorous proofs come after presupposing or being willing to belief, and they are the gifts to some of the faithful after long and hard pursuit, but does not constitute the essence of faith. In the mean time, there are many (c) kind "evidences" and rhetorically helpful illustrations which can be given to point the way to the knowledge of faith.