Apologetic Method

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.

What is apologetics? In short, it is giving good reasons and evidence to believe that Christianity is true. Apologetics focuses on some big questions about the truth of Christianity such as the following: Does God exist? Who was Jesus? How do we know Jesus was God? Is the Bible even historically reliable? Questions like these often appear front and center in our culture where skepticism of religious claims is the norm. The lectures below can help prepare you to address these questions in a Biblical manner, giving a "defense for the hope that you have" in Christ "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15). Follow along with Adam’s Introduction to Apologetics class to learn about the good reasons and evidence for God, Jesus, and the truth of the Scriptures.

Does the Bible condone the use of apologetics? The intuition found in the first cause, design, and moral arguments for the existence of God seem to be affirmed in Romans 1 and 2. Many cultures concluded that a supreme being exists based on general revelation alone, and this is not a coincidence. This is confirmed by Paul’s speech in Acts 17. Arguing that Jesus is God is also confirmed by the Bible when Jesus tells people to use a “miracle test” and look at His miracles to know if He is really God. In the Old Testament, God gives Moses miracles to prove a message was given to him by God. Moses said to test claims to have messages from God by evaluating the evidence, and the Bible affirms that we should use historical investigation to see if its claims are true. However, some Christians still object to the use of apologetics. Modern philosophy has influenced the church to separate faith from reason and look down on reason and think of faith as uncertainty. Thomas Aquinas used faith and reason together and did particularly well in balancing general and special revelation properly. It can be said that philosophy is the study of general revelation and theology is the study of special revelation. Many verses that Christians use to try to say that the Bible opposes using reason to ascertain truth are not interpreted properly in context. Yes, the Bible is both self-sufficient and self-authenticating, but we must be careful about what we conclude from the meaning of those terms.

Objections to doing apologetics can come from non-Christians and from Christians alike. Some people say that to claim that your religious faith is objectively true, which implies that other religious are false, is intolerant. However, this assumes an incorrect definition of tolerance. One can do apologetics and be confident about his beliefs while being fair and respectful to other people’s positions. Others claim that religious faith is only a subjective preference; they believe that it can’t be objectively true. The claims of apologetics, however, like so many other fields of study, are claims to objective truth, because they are claims about how reality really is. They don’t just focus on what is “true for me,” but on what actually corresponds to objective reality. Finally, there are some who think that faith and reason can’t or shouldn’t go together – that to have faith is therefore not to be thinking rationally. This view results from many years of Western history where various thinkers separated the roles of faith and reason. However, a premodern understanding shows that faith and reason can actually support and reinforce one another.

Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means “to give a defense.” Apologetics, then, is giving a defense using good reasons and evidence for why our faith in Jesus is true. Apologetics is useful for two reasons: to help Christians who may be struggling with doubt about Christianity and to encourage non-Christians to trust in Christ for salvation. It primarily focuses on three areas of study, philosophy, science, and history, that form the basis for evaluating the evidence for Christianity. When doing apologetics, three different methods have developed which various Christians have used. They are the classical approach, the evidential approach, and the presuppositional approach. The classical approach often starts by examining the evidence for the existence of God and connecting that to Jesus. The evidential approach usually emphasizes historical evidence for the Bible and for the resurrection of Jesus. The presuppositional approach reverses these paradigms and argues that God’s existence and the Bible’s truthfulness must be presupposed before we can use our reasoning ability to consider these types of questions.

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.

Philosophy presents us with many ultimate questions about life. How do we find the answers to these questions? Thinkers have proposed both faith and reason as ways to answer them. Popular culture today presents faith and reason as if they are incompatible. Some say faith is just the failure of reason by choosing to believe something without evidence. Others say reason is inadequate and that we just need to make a "leap of faith." Is this true? Are faith and reason really in conflict? Two very influential Western thinkers, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, would disagree. They both thought faith and reason could work together, that faith and reason worked best when they reinforced each other, not when they were separated. Join Adam as he talks about the ideas of these two great thinkers.

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.