Apologetic Method

Faith and Reason: Popular culture today presents these two things as if they are incompatible. Many claim that faith "fills in" where reason stops, or faith is just the failure of reason by choosing to believe something without evidence. Is this true? Are faith and reason really in conflict? In this talk, Adam explains the history of how we got to this place and how people have viewed truth throughout the pre-modern, modern, and now post-modern history of Western culture. He shows that, as the pre-modern thinkers thought, faith and reason really aren't enemies; in fact, they work together.

Francis Schaeffer was a very influential theologian and philosopher at the beginning of the era of modern Christian apologetics as it was making a comeback in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. He ran the L’Abri ministry in Switzerland from the mid-1950s until his death in 1984 where he helped many people discover and think through the answers to hard questions about Christian faith. What made Schaeffer so influential and able to engage the culture with the truth of Christianity so effectively? What was Schaeffer’s apologetic methodology and how has it shaped the way we do apologetics today? Adam was interviewed on the “Theology Matters” podcast with Devin Pellew to discuss these and other questions about the thought, apologetics, and life of Francis Schaeffer.

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.