The post below contains the remaining material form the first ApologetiXperiment seminar (Introducing Apologetics). We will have our second session this evening - Responding To Scientism (the belief that "science disproves God"). I'll post the material from this evening's seminar over the coming days.
Yours,
The Scribbling Apprentice
Approaches to Apologetics
There is no universally accepted way to categorise the different kinds of apologetic approaches. Nonetheless each approach has its own set of distinctive features and unique method. There are five prominent approaches (“The Big 5”) to apologetics. These are:
The Classical Method:
Classical apologetics stresses arguments for the existence of God as well as the historical evidence supporting the truth of Christianity. After God’s existence has been demonstrated, the classical method moves to a presentation of the historical evidences for the deity of Christ and the trustworthiness of Scripture. This approach is called the “classical” method simply because it is assumed that this was the basic method adopted by the most prominent apologists of earlier centuries.
The classical method uses theistic arguments to establish the existence of God apart from an appeal to Scripture. The basic thrust of this approach is as follows; on the basis of a theistic argument or proof, the apologist draws the logical inference that if God exists, miracles are possible – this, of course, includes creation, the greatest miracle of all. The credibility of miracles is essential to the next step – demonstrating that specific historical events recounted in the Scriptures (for example, the resurrection) are miraculous events brought about by God.
Alongside this basic argument, the classical method shows that historical evidence confirms the truth of Christian belief. The New Testament documents are shown to be historically reliable and reveal to us who Jesus claimed to be (and was miraculously proven to be); the Son of God. From this it is often argued that Jesus confirmed the Old Testament as the Word of God and promised the same for the New Testament, thus underlining the reliability of the Bible as a whole.
Proponents of the Classical approach include: William Lane Craig, Norman Geisler, C. S. Lewis, J. P. Moreland and R. C. Sproul. Major practitioners (and developers) of this method in the past include Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and William Paley.
The Evidential Method:
Evidential apologetics stresses the need for evidence in support of the Christian truth claims. The evidence can be rational, historical, archaeological, and even experiential. This method is quite eclectic and very broad, overlapping with other methods of apologetics. It focuses mainly on accumulating various historical and other inductive arguments for the truth of Christianity. It works from the “bottom-up”, accumulating historical evidences which support the veracity of the Biblical documents and their witness, rather then beginning first with an elaborate argument for the existence of God (a “top-down” argument).
An evidentialist might begin, for example, by arguing for the historical factuality of Jesus’ resurrection and then argue that such an unusual event is explicable only if a being very much like the Christian God exists. Having established God’s existence on the basis of the resurrection, the evidentialist might then go on to argue that Jesus’ resurrection also authenticates his claims to be the Son of God and his teaching on the divine authority of Scripture.
Proponents of this approach include: Gary Habermas, Lee Strobel, Paul Barnett, F. F. Bruce, Clark Pinnock, Josh McDowell and Wolfhart Pannenberg.
The Cumulative Case Method:
This method was pioneered by apologists who became dissatisfied with the classical and evidential approaches. According to advocates of this approach, formal proofs and arguments from probability do not demonstrate the case for Christianity in the best possible manner. As such, the cumulative case method does not conform to the ordinary pattern of inductive or deductive reasoning. Rather, this approach is more like an informed argument that pieces together various lines or types of data into a hypothesis or theory that comprehensively explains that data better than any competing alternative hypothesis.
Therefore, this method basically argues that Christianity makes better sense of all the evidence available to human scrutiny than does any alternative worldview on offer. The data the cumulative case method seeks to explain include the existence and nature of the cosmos, the reality of religious experience, the objectivity of morality and certain historical facts, such as the resurrection of Jesus. Rather than a tightly argued philosophical proof or an inventory of historical evidence, this method is more like a brief presented by a lawyer in a court of law. It is a looser, more informal approach; it is broad-based and not confined to the realm of philosophy and logic alone. It also draws on the realms of history, law and literature to show that Christianity is the best explanation of all the data available to human understanding and investigation.
Proponents of this approach include: C. S Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Paul Feinberg, Tim Keller and C. Stephen Evans.
The Presuppositional Approach:
Due to the noetic effects of sin (the way in which it distorts our mental faculties and reasoning) presuppositionalists believe that there is not enough common ground between believers and unbelievers to enable any of the above approaches to work effectively. Therefore, the presuppositionalist presupposes (hence the name) the truth of Christianity as the only proper starting point of apologetics. Rather than working from proofs that gradually build to show that Christianity is true, it is presumed to be true from the outset.
On the basis of this approach, the Scriptures are the framework through which all experience is interpreted and all truth is known. Presuppositional apologetics seeks to show unbelievers that their own worldview is inadequate to explain their experience of the world and to get them to see that Christianity alone makes sense of human experience. Presuppositional apologists generally reject the validity of the theistic proofs espoused by classical apologetics and assume there is no meaning to facts apart from the Christian framework or view of reality.
A major proponent of this approach was Francis Schaeffer. He showed that false beliefs and worldviews are inherently unliveable; only Christian truth is liveable. For example, no atheist actually lives as if there is no inherent meaning to existence; he/she still seeks to live in accordance with objective right and wrong, thereby adopting an ethical view of life their atheism doesn’t really permit because it affirms that life is meaningless and the product of chance. If life is truly meaningless, there is no objective right and wrong.
Other major proponents of the propositional approach include: Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark and John Frame.
The Reformed Epistemology Approach:
Since the Enlightenment, the commonly held belief has been that if you cannot present evidence to support personal faith, then it is irrational to hold on to it. Everything we believe must be supported by evidence of some kind (whether historical proof or rational demonstration.)
Reformed epistemology challenges this assumption. Advocates hold that it is perfectly reasonable for a person to believe many things without evidence. Most importantly, they argue that belief in God does not require the support of evidence or argument in order for it to be rational. This method of apologetics therefore argues that positive arguments in defence of Christianity are not necessary for rational faith. If John Calvin was right when he wrote that human beings are born with a sensus divinitatis (sense of the divine) then people may rightly and rationally come to a belief in God without the aid of evidence and argument. Furthermore, the inner witness of the Spirit is a self-authenticating sign that Christianity is true. Generally, this approach takes on a defensive shape as it meets the challenges levelled at Christian belief.
Major proponents of this approach include: Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff.
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