Apologetics is the justification of the Christian hope, which we are required to present to those who challenge us (1 Peter 3:15). Many different schools of apologetics seek to obey this commandment, with more or less success. Some apologists seek to demonstrate the existence of God by force of logic. Others appeal to aesthetics or moral sensibility. Still others present historical evidence for the reality of the Christian account.

Presuppositional apologetics is the name given to the approach taken by those who stand in the tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Cornelius Van Til. It does not minimize either logic or evidences, but it incorporates them into a framework of basic commitments by which they can make sense.

Presuppositional apologetics seeks to do justice to the intellectual and spiritual conditions whereby anything has meaning. It affirms the finitude and the sinfulness of our estate, and the insufficiency of human beings to comprehend the universe. But at the same time it presents God as the great Creator. Only a world whose meaning is defined by the living God makes any sense at all. The challenge of presuppositional apologetics, then, is the challenge addressed to Job so long ago,

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.Job 38:4

The heart of presuppositional apologetics is just that: the heart. Because God has revealed himself clearly in the visible things that have been made, and also in the special revelation of Jesus Christ, our hearts, the center of our being, must respond in the love of the truth. The apostle Peter begins his definition of the Christian's “answer” to inquirers by telling us to lift up Christ in our hearts (1 Peter 3:15). Apologetics is legitimate only as an expression of the worshipful heart. It goes together with the “gentleness and respect” he calls for in the same verse. The most consistent apologetic approach is one that begins with worship and ends in humility.

Presuppositionalism, then, begins and ends frankly with authority – not a blind leap of faith that denies reason, but with a proper biblical authority that is the most reasonable move one could make. Our presuppositions do not avoid argumentation, but rather make it possible. Neither reason, nor any other part of the created world, is neutral, isolated from the total framework for things.

Let me present four reasons why presuppositionalism is the best form of apologetics.

Apologetics of the Bible⤒🔗

Presuppositional apologetics accords better with biblical doctrine than other positions. First and foremost, it is the reality of God we want to proclaim. In a way, nothing else really matters. Reformed theology does not claim to have arrived at the final formulation of God's nature, but it has consistently attempted to describe his attributes in the most magnifying way.

The doctrine of the covenant expresses the relation between God and his people in its richest manner. The root notion of covenant theology is the glory of God. We exist to know God and commune with him.

This means, in turn, that we are religious creatures. We need to depend on God. When we do not, it is not that we cease to be religious, but we turn our faith to another object. Presuppositional apologetics recognizes the religious core of our natures better than other systems, I believe. It understands that we are always directed toward a goal, be it the true hope of the gospel or the deceptive promise of the idol.

Our religious drive makes us tend toward some kind of final authority. This is why, in presuppositional thinking, it is not embarrassing to confess at the outset that we trust in a self-attesting God. Though proof is required in order that responsible commitment can be made, ultimately there is no proof above God by which he must be justified. Similarly, since no good reason for sin can be found, unbelief is based on the unprovable authority of some standard other than God.

The dynamics of unbelief are crucial to grasp. Even non-Christians believe in God at some basic level. The argument in Romans 1 and 2 is that sinners turn away from their knowledge of God and deny him. They deny what they already know. Because of this, we have a point of contact with unbelievers. When we face a friend who challenges our faith, we know we have in front of us an image-bearer of God who already knows God! It is important to appeal to that knowledge in the right way.

This brings us to consider the noetic effects of sin. We are not only fallen in our bodies and desires. Our ability to reason has also been affected by sin. Because the Fall is primarily an ethical tragedy, disobedience characterizes everything we do, or say, or think. Seeking to persuade others about the truth of the gospel, then, involves more than a few logical demonstrations. It means laying bare the fallacies of unbelief in all its facets.

Apologetics of the Heart←⤒🔗

Because of its concern to go to the heart, it is natural for presuppositional apologetics to drive inquiry right to the very foundations. It looks deeply into each trend, each philosophy, each worldview, but it also looks broadly into areas beyond ideas.

First, then, our approach seeks to expose the basic assumptions that control people's thoughts and lives. This involves identifying the driving motives behind a society's trends or a person's lifestyle. This point was brought home to me in a debate I witnessed between a liberal theologian and an evangelical law professor. The evangelical masterfully argued that Jesus' resurrection was the only reasonable explanation for the empty tomb. The response by the liberal was disconcerting. He simply agreed with the evangelical, and complimented him on his eloquence.

Then the liberal added that whether or not the physical resurrection occurred was of no consequence for his faith. The more the evangelical argued that the resurrection was physical, the more the liberal said he did not care. What mattered to him was its “meaning,” symbolical truth, and so on.

What was happening here? Quite simply, the evangelical had airtight arguments that only stayed on the surface. He did not see that until the liberal's dichotomy between history and faith, physical and spiritual, was confronted and refuted, the discussion could not get anywhere.

Psychology and Culture←⤒🔗

The presuppositional approach reckons with the reality of human psychology better than other methods. Rather than treat people as ideas with feet, it considers the issues of motivation, doubt and certainty, spiritual hunger, and the like to be as important as the use of logic. Take the problem of evil. On the surface, many questions can be raised. How can God allow children to suffer? Why should believers be the only beneficiaries of grace? But beneath the surface, other questions lurk. One person may genuinely have a philosophical problem, but another may have been brought up by a hostile father and may have nurtured hatred for the God whom he has mistakenly identified with that father.

Presuppositional apologetics at its best will know how to sort out the surface and the deeper matters. Furthermore, it will know how to identify the points of tension, where a skeptic, however justified his objections may be, will have admitted engaging in an ethical maneuver to escape God at some level. I say “at its best,” because it is possible to understand all of this methodology and still lack compassion for the lost.

Second, our approach is freer than many to explore other realms of experience besides ideas. We are more than logical robots. Our thinking and our behavior are as much influenced by the place we grew up in, the models we trust, and the music we listen to, as by a philosophical argument.

Ideas are important, but so are the other dimensions of human life. It is in culture that we live and move and have our being. So presuppositional apologetics looks into the social trends and the styles of life in order to communicate the truth of Christianity in a way that reaches real people in the real world. World religions, science, the media, therapy, ethnic minorities, and of course philosophy itself are all legitimate arenas where we may engage the forms of unbelief: It is important to examine popular culture if we are going to take stock of a large segment of our population.

Our goal in this research is to discern the minds of our fellow human beings, who are lost and confused in the culture of disbelief. As increasing work is being done on the dimensions and implications of culture, we gain new awareness of the ways in which the world can influence us. Culture provides an intimate testimony as to who we are and what we think. Presuppositional apologetics has not done much with the cultural dimension, to be sure. But it is uniquely qualified to do so, because it recognizes that we are more than ideas with feet.

Apologetics of Freedom←⤒🔗

A third implication of presuppositional apologetics is the freedom it gives to be guided by scriptural principles. Put very simply, we are free to have the Bible tell us what side to take on each issue, rather than having our views dictated ahead of time.

In the current culture wars, it is often assumed that evangelical Christians will always take the conservative side against the progressive one. But we must be free to get past the preassigned roles and find out what Scripture says about each issue. The Christian worldview begins with a commitment to the authority of Scripture, and then interprets all of life under the lordship of the author of Scripture, whose service is perfect freedom.

Apologetics of Surprise←⤒🔗

Finally, presuppositional apologetics promotes the art of persuasion with both intellectual rigor and imagination. In the Bible, the divine message is cast in many different forms. What Van Til called the “Christian story” can be told in narrative, but also be in poetic form, or in parables.

At the heart of the presuppositional approach is the two steps of first getting over onto the opponent's ground in order to discover the impossibility of his position, and second to invite him onto biblical grounds in order to taste and see that the Lord is good. Since people are often not ready to hear a direct version of the message, both steps should involve some destabilizing. The tellers of biblical times were constantly keeping people off-balance, because the roadblocks caused by sin prevent the most direct approach.

The great prophets often used subversionary tactics. After King David had sinned, committing both adultery and the equivalent of murder, he had numbed his senses. So Nathan the prophet told him a story that aroused his righteous indignation and led to his repentance. This is presuppositional apologetics in its Old Testament form! Jesus did the same thing with the rich young ruler, hitting him with the surprising requirement to sell everything and follow him. Both Nathan and our Lord were aiming at the most basic level of what motivated their audience. But to get there they made them lean in one direction, until they were off-balance, and then were vulnerable to the truth.

Our culture has in many ways sealed itself off from reality. What is most likely to reach its vulnerable side is not prosaic discourse, but imaginative subversion. Presuppositional apologetics should be most conversant with surprise, since the gospel is itself God's everlasting surprise. The surprising grace of God is the very essence of the Christian story. That is why I am a presuppositionalist: because I believe that in the world we have trouble, but Jesus Christ has overcome the world by the grace of the gospel.