Interview of John Frame
by Steve Hays
1. Have you been a Christian from childhood?
From about 12-13.
2. Did you convert to the faith? If so, please describe your conversion
experience.
I heard the Gospel through the youth ministry of my church, and through the
ministry of music. The music drove the words into my heart. I can remember
several times when I was challenged to make it personal, to make a decision,
and I usually took those challenges seriously. It’s hard to tell when and
how God worked in my heart, but I would say that at age 10 I went to church
mainly to play with my friends and to make fun of everything; at 14 I went
there to glorify God and to grow in Christ.
3. Why do you believe in the existence of God?
If
this question means, what caused my belief in God, I would say the Holy Spirit.
If it means, what are the reasons why I believe in God, I’d say that
there is variation: sometimes one argument seems more impressive, sometimes
another. Fairly constant through my life, however, has been the thought that
the impersonal cannot account for the personal; and if it cannot account for
the personal, it cannot account for anything else, for our knowledge of all
reality is inevitably personal: (1) Knowledge presupposes norms that are
ethical in character, but only a person can warrant ethical norms. (2)
Everything we know is based on the disposition of our personal intellectual
faculties, which in turn are dependent on all other aspects of our personality:
will, emotions, etc.
Apart
from argument, though, there is the intuitive sense that the Bible is true and
that the starry heavens reveal the Lord. That may be more fundamental than any
argument. As Plantinga says, it is legitimate to
believe in God without argument. God’s revelation just gets through.
4. Why do you believe in the inspiration of the Bible?
Again,
there is something intuitive about this, what theologian’s call the
“witness of the Spirit,” what some apologists have called the
“ring of truth.” Of course the Spirit witnesses to the truth in the
Bible itself, and that truth forms the logical ground of my belief. To expound
that a bit: (1) Only Scripture, of all “holy books,” teaches a
fully personal God. (2) Its Gospel rightly shows how a holy God must regard my
own sinful heart, and it presents the only possible way to divine forgiveness.
(3) That way of salvation involves written covenants. The covenant community
has a written constitution that must be honored by its members. Scripture is in
effect that covenant constitution.
5. How do you deal with Bible criticism?
(1)
Much of it presupposes a naturalistic, impersonal view of the world, and I
dismiss it appropriately. (2) Other times it is helpful in showing us the
conventions of ancient writing, warning us not to impose our modern conventions
on it. (3) Still other times, by showing me problems I cannot resolve, it
encourages my intellectual humility.
6. How do you deal with scientific objections to the faith?
Science
is not my long suit. To me it is important that (1) science, like all human
thinking, is not neutral or objective, but makes presuppositions. (2) Many
Christians with scientific training and good understanding have dealt
effectively with the science/religion conflicts. I don’t follow any
particular school of thought here. Sometimes I’m impressed by arguments
of the Creation Science movement, other times by Hugh Ross, other times by John
Polkinghorne and others. I do not believe in
the easy separation of religion and science into two spheres that never
overlap. Scripture is authoritative in all matters about which it speaks,
including matters of interest to science. (3) As I look at popular
expositions of most recent science—string theory, etc., it impresses me
that much of it is counter-intuitive (though that does not, of course, necessarily
make it wrong). That makes me wonder how much more of the conventional wisdom
in science may one day be questioned. Science in 2006 is vastly different from
science in 1906; why shouldn’t science in 2106 be similarly different?
That warns us against taking present science as some kind of final or ultimate
knowledge.
7. What other challenges to the faith would you like to comment on?
Most
challenges to the faith arise out of ideology: postmodernism, neo-paganism
(Jones), and evolutionary scientism being three examples. They all presuppose
that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist, and they present paradigms
which, taken consistently, overthrow all human knowledge.
8. At this stage of your spiritual journey, would you now give different
reasons for your faith than when you began your pilgrimage?
When
I began as a teenager, I assumed, as I had been taught, that the Bible was
true, and that there were people in the church (John Gerstner was my hero at
the time) who could answer those who thought otherwise. So my reasons for faith
came from Scripture itself. That is still true, though I believe I can now
articulate the Bible’s epistemology, and can answer the objections of
unbelief, better than I could back then. But as I said above, the specific
arguments that most impress me have varied from one point to another in my
life.
9. Looking back over your life as a Christian, how would you say that your
faith has evolved over time. How, if at all, does your lived-in faith differ
from when you were younger?
God
has given me more humility, more knowledge. I have always been awkward in many
kinds of social situations, and that has made it difficult for me to share the
gospel with people. That is still a problem for me, but I think that God has
been working with me on it, very gradually. Although there have been ups and
downs, I think my faith has become more and more inseparable from my thoughts
and actions. I have also become more and more comfortable with the Reformed way
of thinking, but more and more at odds with those who are unwilling to test
Reformed ideas by the Bible.
10. Unbelievers often point to the elusiveness of God. In your personal
experience, including your experience with other Christians, can you point to
any examples of God’s providential presence?
It’s
hard to identify the hand of God precisely, when, like me, you believe that everything
comes by his hand. But I’ve seen some remarkable
“coincidences.” For example, there was a “perfect
storm” of factors that gathered in 1999 to move me to RTS, a move that
made my ministry far more fruitful: Among other factors, (1) drawing to the end
of some ministries we were involved in, (2) need to make some changes for the
children, (3) negative factors at my previous place of employment, (4) a
remarkable welcome by RTS.
Often
the hand of God is more visible in hindsight. God didn’t provide a wife
for me until age 45, but looking back on that, and on our family life since
then, I can see that that was just the right time for it all to start.
11. Since you’ve been a Christian, have you undergone a crisis of faith?
If so, how did you work through it?
Not
really. I’ve had my ups and downs. I had my hardest times during seminary
and grad school years. Not really a crisis, but doubts about my place in the
Kingdom—doubts more about myself than about God. My response was just
prayer and pressing on. Eventually the fog lifted.
12. In your observation, why are most unbelievers unbelieving?
Because
they want to maintain their own autonomy: intellectual, ethical, emotional.
13. In your experience, what’s the best way to witness to unbelievers?
I
really have never been very good at it, frankly. My best witnessing is done in
books, and by helping potential evangelists to respond to the questions of
unbelief. But in
14. Christian apologetics tends to settle into certain stereotypical arguments
and formulaic emphases. Do you think there are some neglected areas in how
apologetics is generally done today?
My
fellow presuppositionalists need to learn to present
evidences without embarrassment, and without ten pages of epistemological
prolegomena. We also need to learn to write winsomely, with literary skill,
like Pascal or C. S. Lewis. In oral conversations, I think apologists should
learn better to go with the flow—to interact with the twists and turns of
someone’s thought as it moves along. Sometimes we will need to deal with
the inquirer in a personal or psychological way, sometimes with a syllogism.
Sometimes we need to help the nonChristian see how
beautiful it would be IF the Christian faith were true—then deal
with his objections. Tim Keller is very helpful here.
The
“intuitive” sense that God is real, which I mentioned above, can
possibly be communicated more vividly and persuasively through novelistic or
poetic writing, rather than argumentative prose. More Christians should attempt
that.
15. What do Christian parents, pastors, seminary and/or college professors most
need to teach our young people to prepare them for the walk of faith?
Young
people need to learn the Bible, first of all. But they need to learn how to
apply it to all aspects of life. The Navigators’ Topical Memory System
was a good beginning for me in that respect. Further, young people need to know
their enemy, and how to respond to the challenges of our time. Most of all,
kids need to have godly examples, people who are able to disciple them in
intellectual and practical areas.
16. What devotional or apologetic reading would you recommend for further
study?
Well,
my own books, of course! And those of Van Til and
other presuppositionalists. Some will benefit greatly
from C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, as I did, though aspects of their
thought need correction. Devotionally, I’ve been helped much lately by
books of John Piper and C. J. Mahaney. One presuppositional writer who deserves more attention is