Apologetic Groundwork #3: Presuppositional and Negative Apologetics

Presenting evidence for theism in general (classical) or for Christianity specifically (evidential) is only one side of the apologetic coin. A person might view the portrayal of evidence as a “positive” apologetic. On the other side of the coin is a “negative” apologetic that exposes anti-Christian worldviews as lacking and irrational. The prophets take this “negative” approach towards pagan idol worship:

“Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand” (Isaiah 44:16-18).

Jesus employed this tact against the Pharisees as he exposed the hypocrisy of the wolves who feed on his sheep. The apostle Paul advocates such an approach when he writes: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

The duty of a shepherd is not just to lead the sheep to green pasture but to protect them from the wolves.  In Paul’s farewell to the Ephesians he says,

“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.” (Acts 20:28-31).

Confessional Lutheranism has always taken this task seriously. The Lutheran confessions are set up in an antithetical manner because our doctrinal positions are made clearer when contrasted with false teachings. Our forefather’s took this task seriously, do we? Pieper quotes Walther:

“A man may proclaim the pure doctrine, but if he does not condemn and refute the opposing false doctrine, does not warn against the wolves in sheep’s clothing, the false prophets, and unmask them, he is not a faithful steward of God’s mysteries, not a faithful shepherd of the sheep entrusted to him, not a faithful watchman on the walls of Zion., but, as the Word of God says, an unfaithful servant, a dumb dog, a traitor.”1

“Negative” apologetics has received new life in recent years as apologists have pushed back against the so-called “new atheists” exposing atheism as a parasitic worldview which must borrow concepts such as rights, equality and morality from a theistic perspective. Atheism has to borrow the morality of the religious to condemn the religious. Atheism is to religion what anarchy is to politics. The anarchist points out the shortcomings of various systems of governments but offers nothing in return. Atheism is a self-aggrandized nude emperor, blind to his own nakedness, while criticizing the clothing of everyone else.  Christians can and ought to expose the atheism’s inconsistency, irrationality and unviability.

Nancy Pearcey and her mentor, Francis Schaeffer, take an apologetic approach that finds the weakness or the “tension” within the non-Christian worldviews and exposes these weaknesses. This approach comes from what some call the transcendental argument for God’s existence. In other words, the Christian God is not the conclusion to the argument but the one who makes the argument possible. 2  The alternative to the Christian framework should be Solomon's Ecclesiastic approach of meaninglessness. Nihilism, not enlightenment, is the endgame of atheism.

Pearcey applies this tact to philosophical materialism:

“You might picture a worldview as trying to stuff the entire universe into a box. Invariably, something will stick out of the box. Its categories are too “small” to explain the world. As a result, it will lead to an inhumane view of the person. To use biblical language, those who exchange the glory of God for something in creation will also exchange the image of God for something in creation—and because it is something less than God, it always leads to a lower view of humanity. Let’s use materialism as an example, since it’s the underlying assumption in virtually every subject area in the academic world today. The most consistent versions of materialism deny the reality of anything beyond matter—no soul, no spirit, no will, no mind. This is called reductionism: Humans are reduced to biochemical machines. For example, Richard Dawkins says humans are nothing but “survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed” by their genes.”3  

Negative apologetics and worldview analysis are valuable contributions from what we would call presuppositional apologists. Presuppostional apologetics considers the worldview lens through which humans view the universe. David Nobel has produced an apologetic course that analyzes the main non-Christian worldviews that are vying for modern man’s allegiance.4  These worldviews include Secular-humanism, Cosmic-humanism, Postmodernism, Marxism and Islam. Part of our apologetic must be an analysis of worldviews that are competing for the minds of our young people. To do so is to follow in the footsteps of the reformers who were eager to point out and destroy the errors of those that set themselves against the Word of God.

For the strict presuppositionalist evidence is secondary and perhaps useless until a person puts on the appropriate lens. Presuppositional apologists are often Calvinists. Reformed theology may ignore evidential apologetics because in their view sinful man has lost his reason. The Calvinist emphasis on presuppositionalism places its starting point on the sovereignty of God rather than the incarnation creating a philosophically-based approach rather than an evidence-based approach.

Lutherans hold that reason, while corrupted by the fall into sin, was not destroyed. “Lutheranism knows that man is a rational creature before his conversion, and knows that he remains a rational creature after his conversion.”5  Humans can still interpret facts correctly. Parton warns, “The moment the Christian sequesters the life, death, and resurrection of Christ into a hermetically sealed world that the unbeliever may not enter, he divorces Christianity from its incarnational moorings.”6  It should also be noted that the correct interpretation of facts does not equate to a saving faith. The Bible is filled with humans who saw miracles and rejected them. A man can know the truth but that correct knowledge may be nothing more than a demonic shuddering (James 2:19).

The Calvinist and Arminian often battle each other in the field of apologetics. The former taking the presuppositional approach while the latter gravitates toward the classical or evidential approach with some overlay in between the two. The Lutheran approach to apologetics ought to begin with Christ. Our beginning is not in the realm of philosophy in which our corrupted reason will break its neck and our end is not to encourage man to make a decision for Christ through his reason. Our beginning and end is Christ. God, in Christ, intrudes into the world of flesh and facts. One of the reasons why our theologians need to take the apologetic task seriously is so that they can rightly excise the Calvinist and Arminian theology that lurks within the world of apologetics. We must stop sitting at the feet of the wayward children of the reformation and teach apologetics from a Confessional Lutheran point of view.

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1 Pieper, Francis. “Christian Dogmatics.” Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950, Vol. 1, p. 49-50.
 2 Gundry and Cowan, “Five Views on Apologetic” p. 220.

3 “Finding Truth: An Interview with Nancy Pearcey.” Dec 10 2015   

  https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2015/12/finding-truth-an-interview-with-nancy-pearcey/

4 Nobel, David A. “Understanding the Times.” Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 2006.
 5 Becker, “The Foolishness of God.” p.188

6 Parton, Craig A. “The Defense Never Rests.” Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2015, P. 73