The second popular method of apologetics that I wanted to write out is evidentialism. As the name implies, evidential apologetics is the method that emphasizes the use of evidences in proving God's existence and the truth of Christianity. Traditionally the defining characteristic of evidential apologetics is that God's existence does not have to be established before arguing for Christianity. Instead of trying to establish God's existence with rational (classical) arguments, the evidential apologist argues directly for the truth of Christianity by using historical, archeological, and even scientific evidence for the Bible and Jesus.
Evidential Apologetics:
While there are a number of evidential arguments, by far the most common is arguing for the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event. According to evidentialism, to successfully argue that Jesus rose again from the dead would prove that God exists, that Jesus is His messenger, and that everything Jesus taught was truly from God. Typically, the evidentialist will argue first for the historical reliability of the Bible and then argue for the resurrection of Jesus.
Treating the New Testament as Historical Books:
First, the evidentialist will argue that the New Testament should be treated as a historical book. Rather than argue for the inspiration of the Bible, evidentialists believe we should first present the Bible as a compilation of reliable historical documents. In this case we would treat it the same way we would treat works by Josephus, Herodotus, Tacitus, or other ancient documents. Evidentialists usually emphasize this by saying something like, "For the sake of argument, let's pretend to strip off the gold binding of my Bible and treat it simply as a bunch of ancient letters that have come down to us through history."
Doing History:
Once this is established, the evidentialist will do the work of a historian and look at the Bible the way a historian would look at the Bible. The goal is to show that the New Testament documents are just as reliable as, if not superior to, the works of all other ancient authors. In the next post, I will look at issues like how early was the New Testament written, were the authors eye-witnesses, and were they biased?
Do you think looking at evidence is important? What are some common objections? Perhaps you have a question. Feel free to leave a comment so that I can respond and not be bored at work!
