Defending the Faith- an Introduction continued

So far I have discussed the biblical basis for knowledge(epistemology). The four incontrovertible presuppositions for knowledge assumed in Scripture are the Law of Noncontradiction, the Law of Causality,the Law of the basic reliability of sense perception and finally the Law of the anological use of language.
Today I want to discuss the two basic ways a Christian can defend the Christian faith. The first is what is called the Evidentialist method. This methods employs various evidences in history ,science, nature or Scripture to present to a non-believer to prove that Christianity is true. The Evidentialist defense can take on various approaches. The classical approach also known as the Ligonier method, argues first for the existence of God using the classical arguments first developed in the middle ages by the Roman Catholic theologians especially Thomas Aquinas. The chief argument is from the Cosmos which is the natural order. This is the argument from the Law of cause and effect. Since the cosmos exists now that shows change and contingency, it is an effect. An effect must have a cause. It is logically impossible to have an infinite chain of contingent causes and effects. It must be grounded in an Uncaused cause that has self existence within its being. That being must be God. The other classical arguments feed off the Cosmological argument like the Teleological argument which is the argument of design or purpose seen in the Cosmos. The most difficult classical argument to understand is the Ontological argument which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:
"The first, and best-known, ontological argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th. Century A.D. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. St. Anselm reasoned that, if such a being fails to exist, then a greater being — namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists — can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived — i.e., God — exists" Oppy, Graham, "Ontological Arguments", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = As you can see these arguments are intellectually rigorous and beyond the average Christian so many of the classical arguments are no longer used today though I think they have some use with certain intellectual skeptics. The Classical arguments than move from the rational necessity of God existing to the basic reliability of the biblical record and then uses the words of Christ to establish that what He said about the Scripture was true since the biblical record of Christ was that He was God and what God says is to be taken as absolute Truth. Since Christ said the Scriptures were perfect and true and it establishes the deity of Christ and the innerracy and infallibility of Scripture.
Another approach of the Evidentialist system is to argue from the historicity of Christ's resurrection from predicted prophecy and the biblical account. Bibliographical evidence which establishes the veracity of the biblical manuscripts now in existence is another. The Intelligent Design movement in Science has taken on strong emphasis in recent years and they are arguing from the empirical evidence that the created order gives off evidence even at the microbilogical level of irreducible complexity and order that refutes the Darwinian theory of gradualism and complexity through natural selection. The ID movement though is not an apologectic system in and of itself. Most of the leaders are not arguing for God's existence but simply the refutation of Darwinian natural selectiona and then letting the philosophers argue whether God exists. There is also a scientific apologetic that accepts Genesis 1-3 account of creation and the fall as historical and arguing that the scientific evidence for it. They also use this as the foundation for rationally concluding the Bible is God's perfect Word and that Christ is man's only hope for salvation. These are the general Evidentialist systems and each one can be used effectively at times based on who you are witnessing to and how open they are to the evidence.
The second major system of Defending the Faith is called the Presuppositionalist system which argues that the nonchristian is irrational in their worldview by not believing in the Scriptures or the Trinune God. This takes on various forms. One method developed by the late Dr.Gordon Clark argued from the undemonstrable axiom that the Bible is God's perfect Word of Truth and that all other systems of beliefs would ultimately be proved irrational at some point but not the chritian worldview based on the axiom of Holy Scripture. Another form of the Presuppostionalist method is to argue from the presuppositon of the truth of the Triune Christian God. Cornelius Van Til was one who developed this argument early in the 20th century and was later refined by his student Dr. Greg Bahnsen who refined it into what is called the Transcendental argument for the existence of God or (TAG). TAG says without the Christian Triune God there would be no basis for rationality,science or morality because there is no other worldview that can coherently and rationally account for the laws of logic, the laws of science and the laws of morality. All other worldviews eventually contradict themselves or self destruct at some point. Only TAG provides the preconditions of intelligibility. Rationality is found to existence ontologically in the mind of the Triune God and He is the only basis for Truth. Another prsuppostional method is called an inductive presuppositonalist approach that argue from the founding premise that the Christian faith is true but uses the best arguments whether inductive or deductive to support its claims.
Finally a new Presuppositionalist method has developed in the last few years that is more of an antiapologetic method. This approach claims that belief in God is a basic innate belief that all men have and that they do not have to defend their belief in something that is warranted and basic within man.Wikipedia free encyclopedia says:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

"Reformed epistemology is the title given to a broad body of epistemological viewpoints relating to God's existence that have been offered by a group of Protestant Christian philosophers that includes Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and Nicholas Wolterstorff among others. Rather than a body of arguments, reformed epistemology refers more to the epistemological stance that belief in God is properly basic, and therefore no argument for His existence is needed. It has been said the title comes from the fact that this view represent a continuation of the thinking about the relationship between faith and reason found in the 16th century Reformers, particularly John Calvin.

Reformed epistemology aims to demonstrate the failure of objections that theistic Christian belief is unjustified, unreasonable, intellectually sub-par or otherwise epistemically-challenged in some way. Rationalists, foundationalists and evidentialists claim that theistic belief is rational only if there is propositional and or physical evidence for it, of which they assert there is none.

Reformed epistemology seeks to defend faith as rational by demonstrating that epistemic propositions of theistic belief are properly basic and hence justified; as opposed to the truth of theistic belief. Reformed epistemology grew out of the parity argument presented by Alvin Plantinga in his book 'God and Other Minds' of 1967. There Plantinga concluded that belief in other minds is rational, hence, belief in God is also rational. Later, Plantinga in his 1999 book 'Warranted Christian Belief' argues that theistic belief has 'warrant' because there is an epistemically possible model according to which theistic belief is justified in a basic way. In epistemology, warrant refers to that part of the theory of justification that deals with understanding how beliefs can be justified or warranted. Plantinga contends that this model is likely true if theistic belief is true; and on the other hand, the model is unlikely to be true if theism is false. This connection between the truth of theism and its positive epistemic status implies that the goal of showing theistic belief to be externally rational or warranted requires reasons for supposing that theism is true [1]."

1.)" By contrast, externalist defeaters involve the obtaining of certain facts about the subject's environment or cognitive situation, where these are not mentally accessible upon reflection. For instance, defeasibility accounts of knowledge maintain that there can be true propositions that prevent over all justified true beliefs from counting as knowledge. For the distinction between internalist and externalist defeaters, see William Alston, "Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology," in Alston, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 191-192; Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 359-360; Michael Sudduth, "Proper Basicality and the Evidential Significance of Internalist Defeat: A Proposal for Revising Classical Evidentialsm" in The Rationality of Theism, ed. G. Bruntrup and R. Tacelli (Kluwer Academic Press, 1999)."

Defending the Christian faith is a command from Scripture(1Peter 3:15;Jude 3;Titus 1:8) and we have two major systems of defense and various approaches within these two major systems. The next installment of this series will talk about refuting various nonchristian worldviews using the law of noncontradiction and using the each worldview's epistemological statements against itself.