unbelievable

"As long as I can remember, I’ve had a deep desire to defend the truth of Christianity, but for most of my adult life I was doing it wrong. I was not glorifying my Lord and Savior in my apologetic. I was using a man-centered apologetic rather than a Christ centered apologetic. Man centered apologetics agrees with the unbeliever that man is the authority. Sadly this is the apologetic that the vast majority of Christians are using.

Presuppositional apologetics on the other hand defends the view that God is the ultimate authority over all aspects of life. It is what is known as a worldview apologetic. We defend the truth of Christianity as a whole rather than piece by piece. We demonstrate that things like knowledge and proof make sense in the Christian worldview with Christian presuppositions but they do not make sense in the unbeliever’s worldview with their presuppositions (that is the things they take for granted and bring to the table). We take the Biblical view of faith in that it is not a blind leap. It does not take over where reason leaves off but faith in God is the foundation for all reason – not just Christian reasoning, but atheistic reasoning as well. It is only through faith in God that we can be certain of anything. Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

Since faith in God is the foundation of ALL knowledge and unbelievers actually do know things, it follows that they do actually know God, but are suppressing the truth about Him just as it says in Romans 1.

Presuppositional apologetics defends the consistency of the Christian worldview and exposes the inconsistencies of a worldview where man is the authority.

The Christian has as his ultimate authority the Word of God. From the Scriptures we see that all knowledge is founded on God. Proverbs 1:7 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Colossians 2:3 tells us that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. The unbeliever, on the other hand says that all knowledge is gained via sense and reason - which is not dependent on God. They maintain that they can think for themselves and by themselves – they are autonomous – a law unto themselves. They are their own ultimate authority.

The Bible says that knowledge that is NOT based on the authority of Jesus Christ is not knowledge at all but calls it “False knowledge.” Paul actually warns Timothy about engaging in reasoning where Jesus Christ is not the authority. In 1 Timothy 6:20 he says:, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge.

Now of course the unbeliever does not agree that all knowledge comes from God, and will come up with fine sounding arguments to justify their ability to know things apart from Him. But listen to what Paul warns the Colossians in chapter 2 verse 4: This is right after He tells us that all knowledge is hidden in Christ: ”I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.” And in verse 8: See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. Yet this is precisely what Christians are doing TODAY. We are using what the unbeliever calls knowledge to defend the faith, rather than what Scripture calls knowledge.

When the unbeliever wants to debate with us, they want us to take a neutral position and in the name of open-mindedness we happily oblige. But who is the authority of a neutral position? Man! The position is not neutral at all. We are giving up our position that God is the authority, and assuming the position that man is the authority.

If you use the unbeliever’s authority rather than the authority of Scripture, you lose before you start. It’s like getting on the unbeliever’s airplane. It doesn’t matter what you talk about - you are going to the unbeliever’s destination. Here’s an example; Let’s say that you appealed to the ultimate authority of the unbeliever – his senses and reasoning – and you used evidences to prove beyond doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. The unbeliever could easily say: Wow, strange things happen in this world, and someday we’ll have a naturalistic explanation as to why that body came back to life, in the meantime call Ripley’s Believe it or not. You proved that Jesus rose from the dead, but there was no reason for him to give up his ultimate authority.

It’s worse than that though. Let’s say the person says: Yes, you have met my standard of proof and I want to become a Christian. Problem is, his ultimate authority STILL has not changed!!! He is being the judge over whether or not God exists based on his standard of reasoning rather than bowing the knee and submitting to Christ.Let’s say that next week he sees a Richard Dawkin’s video and now the balance of evidence seems to sway the other way - does he cease being a Christian then? That’s one of the dangers of using bad apologetics. God can and has used bad apologetics to genuinely bring people to him, but there may be many people walking this earth who think they are Christians, when their human reasoning is still the judge over God.

For the Christian the foundation of reason is the Word of God. We even believe things our senses and reason would tell us cannot happen - that a man came back to life after being dead for 3 days. When there are things we don’t understand though we are to trust God because He is our foundation for reason.

Proverbs 3: 5,6 says: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” The role of apologetics then is to constantly demonstrate the tension between worldviews and doggedly stick to it.

When the unbeliever says that they do not believe in God, don’t believe them, but expose the inconsistency of denying Him. Let God dictate to us the condition of the unbeliever’s heart, not the unbeliever!

As it says in 1 Peter 3, Christians are commanded to answer anyone who asks a reason for the hope that they have. Doing apologetics the wrong way is tough. It’s not only unbiblical it is very intimidating because you have to be as smart as the physicist, the micro biologist, the university professor, the psychologist in order to be able to argue with them. But when we set apart Christ as Lord, as the beginning of verse 15 states, we become equipped to handle any objection to Christianity. We see that all objections to Christianity are actually based on the truth of Christianity. When God commands us to do something, He also equips us.

This apologetic is not about fragments of paper, it’s not about dinosaurs, it’s not about carbon 14 dating, it’s about proclaiming the certainty of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I want people to repent for denying the God they know exists, rather than believe in a so-called ‘god’ who only probably exists.

Your guest Paul wants objective proof that God exists, well here it is: Since the very concept of proof is dependent on God, the proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove anything."