THE FIVE VIEWS ON APOLOGETICS - John Azie Kaivin T. Pascual

         Have you ever doubted your faith? Have you ever doubted the existence of God? Have you ever doubted the resurrection of Jesus?

        Why is it important for us to know how to defend our faith?

        Knowing what you believe and why you believe it strengthens your own faith. The more you go deeper to your own faith, the more you will know how to defend it to other people, that what you believing in is the truth not just something that is handed out to you by someone else. It is important that you know that what you believe in is not just a myth or something that your grandparents or your pastor has given you but the truth that you really know and you really own. Having faith in God is not enough, we need to also add knowledge as it is written in 1 Peter 1:15. Another thing is that knowing what you believe and why you believe it prepares you to defend your faith to other people. In 1 Peter 3:15, we are reminded that we must always be ready to make an “apologia” a greek word which the word apologetics was derived.

    There are five views on apologetics namely: Classical Apologetics, Evidential Apologetics, Cumulative Case Apologetics, Presuppositional Apologetics and Reformed Epistimology Apologetics.  

       Classical apologetics allows early Christian believers to use natural theology and christian evidence to defend the existence of God by pointing them to the creations that will prove that God really exists. There is a powerful testimony of the natural world and the experience of every believers. God is seen in His creation. Classical apologetics is based on the Word of God it uses passages that shows God’s eternal power including how God created the world, how creation speaks that there is God, and the miracles that Jesus did. It uses historical evidences to prove the deity of Christ and the validity of the Scriptures.

         Evidential Apologetics has much in common with the classical method except in solving the issue concerning the value of miracles as evidence. People needs more evidence. They need to know why they need to believe our faith. Evidential apologists are the Christians who does not only say that “God has changed my life and I believe in Jesus” but offers evidence for the existence of God. They try to give credible answers to the questions of people and offers evidence for the reliability of the Bible. They evangelizes by appealing to the Bible. 

           Cumulative Case Apologetics this method belongs in the same broad family of methods as does the evidential and perhaps classical method. This approach arose because of the dissatisfaction that some other philosophers had with other evidential type methods. Those apologists of Cumulative case appeals to experiential evidence. They shared their faith by using their testimonies of God’s greatness. They love to share how God changed their lives. 

          Presuppositional Apologetics in here, the Christian revelation in the Scriptures is the framework through which all experience is interpreted and all truth is known. These are the apologists who assume that everybody believes in the Bible. They assume that everybody heard and believes in Jesus Christ. They assume that everyone believe that God exists. But what if somebody tells that “I don’t believe your bible.” This could be the weak point of presuppositional apologetics. 

        Reformed Epistimology Apologetics challenges the evidentialist epistemological assumption. Those who advocate this view hold that it is perfectly reasonable for a person to believe many things without evidence. They argue that belief in God does not require the support of evidence or argument in order for it to be rational. For them a belief in God is a basic belief. John Calvin’s belief on Sensus Divinitatis or the Sense of God is what will make a person’s belief rational without evidence. They believed that God designed our cognitive faculties to believe in God.

        I have realized that the purpose of apologetics is not to create arguments with the people whose faith is different from us, not to win the argument and make the other person lose, its purpose is not about winning and losing. It is not about who is the best speaker, it’s not about how excellent a person is when it comes on expressing his beliefs. Apologetics is defending our faith not to win the argument but to win the people to the Truth. It is important that we are not only thinking about ourselves but we are thinking on how we can best explain our faith to other people in order to reach them out and help them to realize the reality of what Jesus did on the cross 2000 years ago. It is important that we know where they are before we start defending our faith so we can know what these people need to understand. For me, the successful apologist is the one who is willing to lose non-sense arguments for the sake of winning people back to Christ.