Which Is Better, Presuppositional or Evidential Apologetics (Full Guide)
I was asked which approach to apologetics is better, presuppositional or evidential. Before we can answer this question, we have to talk about the two broad ways of doing apologetics. As you will see, evidentialism is going to fit into one of these categories, and presuppositionalism is going to fit into the other.
I need to say this at the outset: if you are out there sharing and defending your Christian faith, then kudos to you. Whichever approach or method you are using, I hope the Lord blesses you with abundant fruit and that you see lives changed by the power of the Gospel.
“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Is 55:11).
What Are the Two Types of Apologetics?
Apologetics is the discipline of defending the truth of the Christian message. Broadly speaking, there are two ways of doing apologetics. These are “skeptic-first” and “Scripture-first.”
The skeptic-first method begins with the unbeliever, or skeptic (skeptic here just means doubter).
Skeptic-First Apologetics
Envision this scenario. One day you decide to share the message of the Bible with your neighbor. He says he's not a Christian but that he'll believe in Jesus if you can prove that God. Here's the catch: he says you can't use the Bible to do so, because he doesn't believe in it.
What do you do?
As you think about your answer, back up for a moment and think about this situation. What's going on here is that your neighbor has different presuppositions, different starting assumptions, than you do.
As Christians, our basic presuppositions are that God is there and the Bible is true. What God has revealed to us in the Bible about Himself, and reality, and ourselves are the basic beliefs that form our worldview. The Bible, God's written word, is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105). It's through the Bible that we interpret all of life—including our encounters in apologetics!
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tm 3:16–17).
"Every good work" includes sharing and defending the Bible’s teaching —the Christian worldview.
This means the truth of the Bible is not a conclusion we're working toward, from some non-biblical foundation.
The truth of the Bible must be our starting presupposition!
Your neighbor wants you to abandon that presupposition, and to choose a different starting point and prove God's existence to him on his terms. If you comply with this, you are putting the skeptic first. Hence, we say you are engaging in “skeptic-first apologetics.”
If you were to take a skeptic-first approach, You would take his or her claims at face value, and act as if they are true.
The skeptic says, "I don't believe the Bible, so you can't use it in your argument. You have to find neutral ground we can both agree on." So, in this first kind of apologetics, that's what you attempt to do.
Here's how this often plays out:
The unbeliever says he needs scientific evidence in order to believe in God.
You take his claims at face value (skeptic first). He says he needs evidence, so that’s what you’ll get him.
You go and research the evidence. And you find it!
You come back and present the evidence to your unbelieving friend, in a reasonable and winsome way. You hope he will keep an open mind and, ultimately, become convinced by the evidence.
What happens then? Your skeptical friend interprets the evidence through his unbelieving worldview and remains unconvinced.
He says he needs more evidence.
Repeat ad nauseum.
Scripture-First Apologetics
In a Scripture-first approach to apologetics, you begin with the Bible.
You take the teachings of Scripture and act as if they are true (which, of course, they are), even if they contradict what your discussion partner is telling you.
In this way of apologetics, you let Scripture tell you what is true about the unbeliever, his challenges, what he already knows, and the whole conversation. And you view the whole conversation through the lens of Scripture.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Pr 1:7).
That tells you something about your discussion partner's situation. He does not fear the Lord, so he has not yet attained to the very beginning of knowledge.
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Ro 1:20, LSB).
That tells you something about your skeptical friend’s situation too. His problem really isn’t a lack of evidence, is it?
For a Christian engaging in Scripture-first apologetics, Scripture is the starting point and gives the frame for the encounter. This is true, even if the skeptic disagrees with what Scripture says.
What Is Evidential Apologetics?
There are many different methods of apologetics that fall on both sides—skeptic-first and Scripture-first. Evidential (or evidentialist) apologetics falls on the skeptic-first side of the divide.
Evidential apologetics primarily seeks to use evidence to demonstrate the truth (or at least the likelihood) of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
If Jesus really rose from the dead, the evidentialist argues, then the best explanation is that God raised Him.
From there he seeks to establish other Christian truth claims such as the existence of the Triune God of Scripture.
Evidential apologetics uses evidence to show that the truth of Christianity is the most probable explanation for the preponderance of the evidence.
Presuppositional Apologetics Definition
Presuppositional apologetics is a Scripture-first method. It uses Scripture to show that Christianity is not just probably true but absolutely true. Presuppositionalists do this by addressing those starting presuppositions that are brought to the discussion by the skeptic and showing that they only make sense if the biblical worldview is true.
There are different schools of presuppositional apologetics, but as I teach it, there are three steps:
Step one: Show the problem with the non-Christian position. For example, your skeptical friend demanded evidence. Evidence consists of facts that point to the truth of a conclusion. However, the concept of evidence requires that there be absolute truth, and that our minds are aimed at discovering it, and that this world is a favorable environment for that kind of discovery. These assumptions all make sense within the Christian worldview, but without the Triune God of Scripture there is no basis for believing any of them! The skeptic’s position undercuts itself.
Step two: Show how the Bible solves that problem. For example, unlike the skeptic’s self-refuting worldview, the Christian worldview makes perfect sense of the concept of evidence. Jesus Christ is the truth and God watches over knowledge (Pr 22:12). He designed our minds to be aimed at truth, and created the world as the kind of place where we could discover truth. Yes, there is a ton of evidence for the truth of Christianity. However, the very concept of evidence requires Christianity to be true anyway!
Step three: Show how Jesus solves the ultimate problem. The same Bible that teaches that God is the basis for evidence being a meaningful concept, also teaches that man’s biggest problem is not lack of evidence. Rather it is a failure to glorify God or give Him thanks (Ro 1:21). Our biggest problem is sin. The solution for sin is the atoning death of Christ. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro 6:23). Tell your skeptical friend the Good News, that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day. He now reigns and forgives all who trust in Him.
When you are engaging in presuppositional apologetics, you must always try to take the person to the cross of Jesus Christ. That is where hearts are truly changed.
Presuppositional vs Evidential Apologetics
So which is a superior approach, evidential or presuppositional apologetics?
If Christianity is the only worldview that contains the conditions needed for evidence to make sense anyway, then it would seem that the skeptic must enter into our worldview in order to ask for evidence. He does this whether he acknowledges it or not.
However, within our Christian worldview, there is of course no error or lack of evidence. Do you see what is happening? The skeptic wants to use evidence as a weapon against Christianity, yet he can only get his weapon from our worldview! So he has to pick and choose which pieces to take—he will take the pieces that allow him to make sense of evidence, but he wants to leave the pieces that explain how evidence is meaningful—namely the reality of God and the doctrine that the skeptic already has enough evidence!
The fact is, the various pieces of the Christian worldview cannot be chopped up and separated in this way. They come as a unit, with Lord Jesus Christ acting like the glue that holds it all together.
“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Cl 1:17).
If you want evidence, you have to take Christ, too. No Christ, no evidence. Know Christ, know evidence.
Therefore, insofar as evidential apologetics appeals to the skeptic to believe in Christianity based on the preponderance of the evidence, as though the skeptic himself were neutral toward God, it gets off on the wrong foot. There is nothing wrong with giving evidence. Again, there is a ton of evidence for Christianity. It is just that, as Christians, all the evidence will always be on our side, because our side is the only one that can make sense of evidence at all.
This is confirmed when we look at how Jesus and Paul argued. They never gave evidence to their opponents as if they were neutral. Yes, Jesus pointed to miracles to authenticate his teachings (Jn 10:38) with the Pharisees. However, miracles had significance to his Jewish audience, because they already believed the Old Testament (viz., the biblical) worldview. In that worldview, miracles matter. So by not believing in Jesus, the Pharisees were being inconsistent with their own professed worldview.
When Jesus was talking with Sadducees, who had different presuppositions, He changed His approach. What did not change, however, was how He showed that his opponents were being inconsistent with their own positions. He showed them the problem with their positions. Paul did the same thing (cf. Acts 17). Jesus and Paul argued presuppositionally.
What Is the Proper Role of Evidentialism for Christians?
First of all, evidence is a wonderful and powerful apologetic tool when defending the faith to skeptics. It just must be presented in a presuppositional way.
That is, we as Christians must never grant to the skeptic the power of his own false claims. We can show the evidence, but we must never feign neutrality or act as though we really believe that he doesn’t have enough evidence for God. To do so is to disagree with God (cf. Romans 1:18–22) and to give up before we even get started.
Think about this: even if you could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt to the skeptic that Jesus did rise from the dead, how could you possibly prove the theological significance of this without proving it from Scripture? The idea of reasoning from a kind of neutral platform of evidence to the infinitely high reaches of biblical theology, without relying on the truth of that biblical theology to do so, is not reasonable.
All that being said, something like evidentialism can be very effective when used to help Christians who are struggling with their faith.
When believers, who already believe in the existence of God and the general truth of the biblical teaching, feel doubtful toward Christian truth, we may show them the tons—mountains!—of evidence that corroborates the Bible. This has been a source of encouragement in my own life, and I’ll bet the same is true for you or someone you know.
Problem With Presuppositionalism?
Presuppositionalism is not as intuitive. We naturally gravitate toward a more evidential approach. Evidence is fun to learn about and satisfying to use in an argument. Presuppositionalism can often veer off into what seem like obscure philosophical debates about the preconditions of intelligibility.
However, when approached simply, confidently and biblically presuppositional apologetics is the superior approach to apologetics.
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Resource for You:
Watch “What Apologetics Method Is Really Best? | Dean Meadows of The Daily Apologist” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUu6DkKAafg