How Should We Do Apologetics?

This month’s column marks the sixty-seventh installment of Ready to Give a Defense, dating back to March 2020. Early on, we indicated that our challenge in these columns would be to provide positive answers to the question, Do we have good evidence to believe that God exists? The answers depend, in part, on the approach to Christian apologetics one chooses to employ.  

In the next four columns, we will examine four different popular apologetical methods, each with its own strengths and limitations, used to answer that question. I will indicate in footnotes where I have written previously on issues relevant to these discussions, for the reader who wishes to dig deeper into the subject. 

Since terminology varies somewhat from author to author, I will be using Steven Cowan’s categories from his anthology on apologetic methodology, Five Views on Apologetics: Classical Apologetics, Evidential Apologetics, Cumulative Case Apologetics, and Presuppositional Apologetics. I have chosen not to discuss the fifth view in Cowan, Reformed Epistemology Apologetics, since it shares some features with the other approaches, but, in my opinion, is not as well-reasoned. 

We will begin with Evidential Apologetics because this is the approach primarily used by the early church in the New Testament. Evidential Apologetics is also referred to as Evidentialism, the Historical Method, and the Probability Apologetic (by its critics). Cowan notes that the term Evidentialism can be used in three ways. ii Our interest is in the second way, which he defines as “a particular apologetic methodology that focuses primarily on historical evidence in constructing an argument for Christianity.” iii 

Gary Habermas, a leading proponent of evidentialism, explains his employment of this approach: 

I have said that the chief interest of this method is the postulating and developing of historical evidence (one species of propositional data) for the Christian faith. This is its single, major contribution to the issue. Not only is it thought that these evidences provide the best means of deciding between the theistic systems of belief, but also that they can be utilized as an indication of God’s existence and activity.iv 

When we speak of “historical evidence,” we, of course, include biblical history (both Old and New Testament), ancient secular history which is relevant to biblical history, the writings of ancient Jewish, Christian, and non-Christian historians and other authors, and archaeological evidence.  

Now, it is quite common for skeptics to claim that religious faith has nothing to do with evidence or facts. This allows them to characterize religious faith as belief in myth, fantasy, and superstition, while science deals with facts, hard evidence, and reason. Thus, religious faith is viewed as totally subjective, while science is objective.v This argument is extended by Postmoderns and others to include all historical claims.vi 

Habermas responds to this charge, saying, “For [historians such as] W. H. Walsh, the subjectivity of the writer is certainly present, but it does not keep us from obtaining historical truth. This subjectivity must be allowed for, but its effects can be offset.” vii.  

Another objection to evidentialism is the charge that, at best, its conclusions are only probable, not conclusive. Hence, the negative label, Probability Apologetic. However, historical knowledge, like legal verdicts, need not be absolute. They only need to be beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, noted historian Jacques Barzun maintains, “Large parts of man’s history are thoroughly well known and beyond dispute. … Taken all in all, history is genuine knowledge, and we should be lost without it.” viii. 

Regarding biblical history, New Testament scholar N. T. Wright concurs with our view when he writes, “I simply record it as my conviction that the four canonical gospels, broadly speaking, present a portrait of Jesus of Nazareth which is firmly grounded in real history.” ix Consequently, we can construct the following four-step historical argument for God’s existence: 

First, the New Testament in general, and the Gospels in particular, provide us with historically reliable information about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Eighteen months ago, I wrote an extensive, nine-part series on the authenticity of the Gospels in my column.x My conclusion:  

In the early church, the solution to this problem [Scriptural ignorance] was to teach [apostolic] truths to the congregations and then encourage them to “hold firmly to the [apostolic] traditions, just as [the apostles] delivered them to you.” xi Understanding that the Scriptures we have are the historically reliable source of those truths is an important first step in this process. xii 

Second, despite the claims by some skeptics, there is abundant evidence that Jesus was a real, historical person, not a mythical character borrowed from some ancient pagan tradition. In my three-part series, “Was Jesus a Myth?” I examined such claims in Bill Maher’s 2008 “mockumentary,” Religulous, and writings by Gerald Massey and others. xiii I concluded that there is no similarity between the Gospels’ account of Jesus’s virgin birth and the so-called virgin birth narratives of Mithra. Moreover, the mystery cults, such as Mithraism, did not develop until after the first century AD, which means that if there was any copying between Christianity and the cults, it was the cults that borrowed, not the Christians! Finally, I pointed out that there is no evidence that those mystery cults had any influence in first-century Palestine. 

Third, the Scriptures are clear that Jesus claimed to be divine and that He fulfilled the Old Testament Messianic prophecies related to that claim. xiv 

Fourth, both the Scriptures and secular historians are clear that Jesus was crucified by the Romans, xv, and the Scriptures are equally clear that Jesus rose from the dead. xvi 

When all is said and done, evidentialism says that the historical fact of one single event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the ultimate rational ground for the Christian faith. Our principal record of this fact is the Bible, especially the New Testament, and most particularly, the four Gospels.  

For example, Romans 1:4 says Jesus “was declared the Son of God with power by [as a result of] the resurrection from the dead.” xvii Again, when Paul declared God’s existence to the Athenian philosophers on the Areopagus, he concluded, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” xviii 

In fact, a cursory examination of the New Testament reveals at least thirty-seven references to Jesus’s resurrection scattered throughout seventeen of the twenty-seven books. Therefore, the authenticity of the Bible is the primary evidence for the factuality of the resurrection, which, in turn, is the primary basis for our belief in God. 

Some noteworthy advocates of evidentialism: 

Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. 

Mike Licona (with Gary Habermas), The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. 

John Warwick Montgomery, Faith Founded on Fact. 

Clark Pinnock, Set Forth Your Case. 

Bernard Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences. 

Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. 

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God.