Apologetic Method Articles

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

There are several reasons that apologetics largely died out in the 1900s. Many of these reasons have to do with how postmodern thinking influenced how Christians thought about the role of human reason. In general, postmodern movements in the 1800s and 1900s, which viewed human reason too negatively, were overreactions to the modernism of the 1700s which viewed human reason too positively.

An example of how postmodern thinking influenced how Christians thought about human reason can be seen in the work of the most influential theologian of the twentieth century—Karl Barth.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

I loved serving as a local church pastor at Tega Cay Baptist Church from 2009 until 2017. During my time there, the church allowed me to take a four-week sabbatical in December 2014 in order to help Dr. Bruce Little do research in the Francis Schaeffer Collection at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where I was working on my Ph.D. Not only was it a terrific academic opportunity, it also blessed me spiritually in a great way.

Francis Schaeffer’s books played a huge role in my spiritual development. I became a Christian in 1994 around the age of 17, but in my twenties I went through a terrible spiritual crisis.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

It seems to me that Plantinga’s argument in this book is correct but uninteresting. If I understand him right, his argument is that if Christianity is true, then it has warrant. This seems to be only helpful in interacting with those who claim that even if Christianity were true, people still wouldn’t be justified in believing it. I don’t imagine that many people claim such a thing, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s the case that there are, or have been, some very influential thinkers who have made this argument, possibly even Marx and Freud.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

Many people don’t like the type of ministry I do. It may surprise you to hear that a lot of these folks are Christians. The reason they don’t like my ministry is that they believe what I’m doing goes against the Bible. Here is my loving and respectful reply to such individuals.

I believe there is a place for human reason in the sharing of God’s truth with the lost. Of course, there’s some tension in this issue, that is, the relationship between faith and reason. There’s always tension where the human and divine intersect – for example, the incarnation of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, the doctrine of election, our role and God’s role in evangelism, etc.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

During the mid to latter part of the twentieth century, thinkers from various disciplines spoke out against the epistemological conclusions of Modernism. Some of them thought that the modern view of human knowledge had been a major impetus behind the carnage of World War I, World War II, fascism, and communism. One such thinker, Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), a world-renowned physical chemist, recognized that this incomplete understanding of knowledge had become especially prevalent in the scientific community. He turned to the study of philosophy in order to explore how these ideas came about and to propose a much needed course correction.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

The term “strong presuppositionalism” is used to specifically refer to presuppositionalists who believe it’s wrong to use arguments1 for God’s existence during evangelism. David Turner illustrates this position well when he says in “evangelism and apologetics the Christian should not attempt to prove the existence of God to the unbeliever. The unbeliever, if he is honest with himself, knows this already. The Christian should proclaim the gospel, God’s appointed dynamic for turning the lost to Himself.”2

Not all presuppositionalists fully agree with Turner’s statement and so the term “strong” is also necessary to avoid misrepresenting presuppositionalists by painting them all with the same broad stroke of the brush.