Common Apologetic Approaches

Evidentialists

There is what is called evidentialist apologetics. It is focused on providing evidences of God and showing how the world demands that there must be a God.

Have you ever heard this illustration. If I take all the parts of a watch, put it into a bag, and start shaking it, how long will it be before I end up with a watch? The fact that we have watches is evidence that there is a watch maker. That fact that we have creation is evidence that there is a creator.

There are many evidential apologist who have done a lot of great work to defend the reliability of the Scriptures and such.

However, I’m not a evidentialist. There are three main problem I have with this approach.

Any guesses?

First, These kinds of apologetics assume that everyone you are talking to is an atheist. That they reject the concept of God and we need to prove that God is real. Not everyone is an atheist. In fact, the Bible says that no one is REALLY an atheist, they are merely suppressing what they know to be true. This ties in with the second issue,

Let’s say you convince someone that there is a creator. Who is he? Is he the mormon God, the hindu god, the god of islam? Many of these apologetic approaches can only take someone so far by themselves. They only take someone to the

third, this places mankind in the position of judge over God. I am going to look at everything and be the judge that determines whether or not I think God has sufficiently revealed himself. I think this is a very dangerous place to be.

Now, I do think there is value to the work evidentialists have done. I’m not dismissing it. And I do think evidences can be used in our apologetic encounters! I don’t think it should be the cornerstone for how we do apologetics.

The method of apologetics that I prefer is called presuppositional apologetics.

Presuppositional apologetics

Presuppositionalists would stress that evidences will not convince unbelievers to follow God, because people are governed by their presuppositions.

What is a presupposition?

These are thing we already bring to the table in any discussion. These are the things we supposing to be true before the conversation has even started. Sometimes these are called “axioms”. Its a truth that is necessary to believe before the conversation even starts or else conversation itself isn’t ever really possible.

The Christian worldview begins with the assumption that God exists. God has revealed himself. So all truth claims, everything I assert to be true, is based on the facts that God is and has revealed himself. I am a sinner. how do I know that? God has said so in his word.