After the Vida Nova congress on “contemporary apologetics for a world of uncertainty,” I imagine you’re interested in apologetics, but did you know there are at least five views on the subject?Craig, President of Congress, is one of the proponents of the classical method, but there are also evidence-based methods, methods of cumulative epistemology, budgets and reforms. Learn a little below.
The book Five Views on Apologetics, edited by Steven B. Cowan, does it lead the reader to compare and contrast different ways of doing things?Apologetics:
- The purpose of apologetics is to respond to convincing and honest objections that keep people away from faith in Jesus Christ.
- Five Views on Apologgetics examines how to do it? From apologetics.
- Placing five important views under the microscope: classical epistemology.
- Probation.
- Presupposposition.
- Reformed and cumulative case.
- Offering a forum for presentation.
- Criticism and advocacy.
- This book allows taxpayers to interact with different points of view.
- 4th cover.
- Five visions of apologetics.
The following is an excerpt from the book’s introduction
The classic method is an approach that begins by using natural theology to establish theism as the right worldview. Once God’s existence is demonstrated, the classical method moves on to a presentation of historical evidence of Christ’s divinity, the reliability of the scriptures. , etc. , to show that Christianity is the best version of the sameism, unlike, say, Judaism and Islam. This school is called the “classic” method because it assumes that it is the method used by the most important apologists William Lane Craig contributes to the defense of the classical apologetics of this volume. Other contemporary apologists who can be classified as classical apologists include RCSproul, Norman Geisler, Stephen T. Davis and Richard Swinburne.
It is often argued that the order of the two phases of classical apologetics is essential. In other words, before anyone can meaningfully discuss the historical evidence, the existence of God must already have been established, because a person’s worldview is a grid through which miracles, historical facts, and other data are interpreted. empirical. Without a theistic context, a historical event could never prove to be a divine miracle. The flip side of this statement is that no one can use so-called miracles to prove the existence of God. As Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley claim, miracles cannot prove the existence of God. In reality, only God can prove miracles. In other words, is it only under the prior proof that God exists that a miracle becomes possible? However, no one who considers himself a classical apologist will insist on this point, as William Lane Craig makes clear in this volume (?). Craig argues that classical methodology need not insist on the theoretical necessity in the order of these two steps, but only, given the nature of probabilistic arguments, that this order is the best argumentative strategy.
The test method has a lot in common with the classic method, except to solve the problem of the value of miracles as proof. Evidence as an apologetic method can be characterized as a one-step approach. Miracles do not presuppose the existence of God (as most contemporary classical apologists claim), but they can serve as a kind of proof of God’s existence. This method is quite eclectic in its use of the various positive and negative critical tests, using both philosophical and historical arguments. However, it tends to focus mainly on the legitimacy of accumulating various historical arguments and other inductive arguments in favor of the truth of Christianity.
Given this approach, the obvious can defend and defend Christian theism and theism at the same time, without resorting to an elaborate natural theology. They could begin, for example, by arguing in favor of the historical factuality of Jesus’ Resurrection and then arguing that such an unusual event is only explainable if there is a being very similar to the Christian God. Having established the existence of God through the miraculous resurrection of Christ, the evaluatalist will then affirm that Jesus’ Resurrection also authenticates his claims to be God incarnate and his teaching about the divine authority of the scriptures.
In addition to Gary R. Habermas, one of the book’s collaborators, evidence advocates include John W. Montgomery, Clark Pinnock and Wolfhart Pannenberg (see Harbermas’ article for several others that he classifies according to this method).
The third of the big four is the cumulative case method. Apologists use the term “cumulative case” in different ways than we use in this context, but Basil Mitchell, a long-time supporter of this view, has given His name to this method, and we will use it here. The attentive reader will no doubt notice that this method belongs to the same large family as the evidentiary (and perhaps classic) method. However, it will also be clear that as an argumentative method strategy, the cumulative case method has something different to offer. In fact, this apologetic approach arose from the dissatisfaction that some philosophers had with other evidentiary methods (i. e. the first two of the big four).
According to advocates of the apologetics of the cumulative case, the nature of the case in favor of Christianity is not strictly a formal argument as evidence or an argument of probability. In Mitchell’s words, the cumulative case method “does not conform to the ordinary standard of deductive or inductive reasoning. “The case is more like a lawyer’s summary of the court or a literary critic for a particular interpretation of a book. It is an informed argument that gathers multiple lines or types of data into a kind of hypothesis or theory that explains this data globally and does it better than any alternative hypothesis.
Paul Feinberg, the methodologist for cumulative cases in this volume, says that “Christian theists insist that Christianity makes better use of all available evidence than any other proposed alternative worldview, whether this alternative is another theistic or atheistic vision. “that the cumulative case seeks to explain include the existence and nature of the cosmos, the reality of religious experience, the objectivity of morality, and other historical facts, such as the Resurrection of Jesus.
In addition to Feinburg and Mitchell, the cumulative case school would likely include C. S. Lewis and C. Stephen Evans.
Because of the harmful effects of sin, presuppositionalists generally argue that there are not enough common ground between believers and disbelievers to allow followers of the three previous methods to achieve their goals. The apologist must simply assume the truth of Christianity as the appropriate starting point for Here, Christian revelation in the Scriptures is the framework through which the whole experience is interpreted and the whole truth is known. Various tests and arguments can be established in favor of the truth of Christianity, but these at least implicitly presuppose premises that can only be true if Christianity is true. The presuppositionists then try to argue momentously. In other words, do you argue that every meaning and thought?In fact, each fact logically presupposes the God of Scripture.
John Frame represents presuppopositionalism in this volume, and puts it this way: “Should we present the biblical God, not only as the conclusion of an argument, but as the one that makes the argument possible?”(?). By demonstrating that non-believers cannot argue, think, or live without presupposing God, presupposes try to show that their worldview is inadequate to explain their world experiences and make them see to the unbelievers that only Christianity can make their experience meaningful.
Other assumptions include Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark (?), as well as Greg Bahsen and Francis Schaeffer.
These four apologetic methods fought for supremacy when I began to study apologetics and the problem of methodology in the 1980s. However, much has happened in philosophy and apologetics over the past twenty years or more. One of the most dramatic developments was the emergence of a reformed epistemology. Kelly James Clark contributes to this volume by suggesting that this new religious epistemology has something different to say regarding the apologetic method.
“Since the Enlightenment,” Clark says, “has there been a request to expose all our beliefs to criticism of reasoning?(?) We are told that if a belief is not supported by any evidence, it is irrational to believe it. Reformed epistemology challenges this “obvious” epistemological hypothesis. Those who have this view argue that it is perfectly rational for a person to create many things without proof. Even more impressive, they argue that believing in God does not require the support of evidence or arguments. The rheologist of reformed epistemology does not necessarily avoid making positive arguments in defense of Christianity, but will argue that such arguments are not necessary for rational faith. If Calvin is right to say that human beings are born with rational faith. sensus divinitatis innate (sense of the divine), then people can come to believe in God correctly and rationally immediately, without the help of trials.
For the reformed epistemologist, therefore, the emphasis tends to be on negative or defensive apologetics, when one encounters challenges to theistic belief. On the plus side, however, the reformed epistemologist, in Clark’s words, “will encourage the disbelievers to put themselves in situations where people are generally caught up in faith in God?”(?), trying to awaken in them his latent sense of the divine.
The list of contemporary reformed epistemologists includes the contributor of this volume, Kelly James Clark, already mentioned, but four other names topped the list would be Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, George Mavrodes and William Alson.
Again, let me say that these five apologetic methodologies are not an exhaustive list of apologetic approaches. However, they represent the most well-known and popular argumentative strategies in the apologetic academic community. I hope, together with that of other collaborators, that this work will foster a more fruitful discussion about the apologetic methodology and will be of use to the Universal Church and to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Source: Cowan, Steven B. (editor), Five Views on Apologetics, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000, pages 15-20.
The iProde team produced a podcast with Felipe Sabino of monergismo. com on apologetics, focusing mainly on the budget method, click on the image below to access.